There is only 1 Brock Bowers. For my money, he’s the best tight end in college football history. The Georgia star was a 3-year starter who was the best offensive player all 3 years on a team that had the same number of national titles as games lost (2). To say that anyone will be Bowers 2.0 would be disrespectful to his legacy.

But there’s now a void that can be filled. That is, a uniquely talented tight end who can take over games and be his team’s best offensive player.

Give me Luke Hasz as the best option to do that.

(I realize that this is the part of the column in which Georgia fans are yelling at their phones/computers/tablets for not saying that Oscar Delp will be the second coming of Bowers. I don’t know that the volume for Delp will dictate such a comp in the way that it will for Hasz, which I’ll explain if you don’t close this article in disgust, Georgia fans.)

To be clear, I’m not saying that 4-plus games make Hasz worthy of a preseason first-team All-SEC selection. That should go to Ole Miss’ Caden Prieskorn, who closed his 2023 season with a 10-catch, 136-yard, 2-touchdown performance in a Peach Bowl victory. He’s the top returning tight in the conference.

Prieskorn is also going to be 25 years old this September. The career arc of the former Memphis transfer doesn’t resemble Bowers, who was an immediate impact guy from the moment he stepped on the field as a true freshman and carried that through a historically prolific 3-year career before heading off to the NFL.

Hasz can follow that Bowers blueprint of sorts because in a way, he already started that process as the best offensive player on his team as a true freshman tight end in 2023. Go ask LSU fans about that. They know. In his first career game vs. SEC competition, all Hasz did was go into Death Valley at night and get lost in the LSU defense for 6 catches for 116 yards and 2 scores (via @DevyDeepDive).

That was like the first time that Bowers played in Sanford Stadium and he casually put up 3 catches for 107 yards and 2 scores.

The difference, of course, was that the rest of Bowers’ true freshman season ended up being one for the ages — I’ll bang the drum until I die that he should’ve won a third Mackey Award for his 2021 season — while the LSU game was the last one that Hasz finished. A season-ending clavicle injury against A&M the following week brought his blistering freshman campaign to a screeching halt. How much his absence limited the Dan Enos version of the Arkansas offense is up for debate, but what’s not was how impactful Hasz was when he was on the field.

At the time he went down, he was 6th among all FBS tight ends in receiving. He was so good in 1/3 of a season that On3 named him a Freshman All-American. Even though he didn’t play a single game after the month of September, he still logged 232 snaps (84% lined up inline) and was the No. 10 highest-graded tight end, according to PFF. Hasz had the No. 3 receiving grade among FBS tight ends. Mind you, that was in an offense that struggled to scheme with Enos and it couldn’t protect long enough to attack downfield.

That led to Enos getting the boot, and in stepped Bobby Petrino. Again.

This time, though, he was brought in as the Arkansas offensive coordinator/savior. He wasn’t quite able to save Jimbo Fisher’s job last year, but improving that A&M offense by 11 points per game with 3 different starting quarterbacks for multiple games showed why he’s still a darn good offensive mind. For Hasz’s sake, Petrino is a darn good offensive mind who relies on the tight end. Petrino utilized plenty of 2-tight end sets at A&M. Max Wright and Jake Johnson ranked No. 9 and No. 11, respectively, in snaps among SEC tight ends. Johnson averaged 11 non-inline snaps per game while Wright averaged 7.

Petrino has big plans for Hasz, who he already called “special” (via NattyStateSport).

Listen to Hasz talk about his new offensive coordinator and you’ll see the feeling is mutual. Hasz is fired up for the option routes that the Petrino offense allows for.

“It’s been exciting,” Hasz said on The Saturday Down South Podcast in April. “He’s giving us freedom as a tight end room to go play all over the field. He’s allowing us to play in a position where we’re gonna be at our best. His offense has a bunch of diversity and discipline to allow us to go wherever we want to go. He creates mismatches for us all the time and the run-blocking stuff is making a lot of sense.

“It’s just great having an offensive line and a quarterback like Taylen (Green) who’s communicating really well and making practice go good so far.”

There’s more flexibility than he had last year, which is good news for someone who showed early promise at getting open when plays broke down. Now, though, he’ll be catching passes from Boise State transfer Taylen Green.

As Petrino said, Hasz becoming Green’s best friend feels inevitable. That’s the guy you look for on third down, that’s the guy you target in the red zone and above all else, that’s the guy you trust to make a play.

Those 3 things personified Bowers throughout his time at Georgia. Even when UGA lost 1 of those 2 aforementioned games in his 3 years in Athens, Bowers was the best non-Bryce Young player on the field in that 2021 SEC Championship. Nick Saban said during the NFL Draft that Alabama couldn’t find any way to stop him. Hasz, more than any other tight end returning in the conference, can be that type of matchup nightmare for opposing defenses throughout his SEC career.

A guy who only started playing the sport in high school after COVID halted his AAU basketball tournaments is still football-young (it helped that his twin brother Dylan was already on the team and is with him on the team at Arkansas). A late start in high school and an early end to his freshman season at Arkansas means that there are still some growing pains that could await, perhaps in the run game where he’s an unpolished but willing blocker.

But the receiving chops? He’s more than just a natural. It’s unfair to say that Hasz’s ability to move at 6-3, 240 pounds is Bowers 2.0 (Bowers is 6-3, 243 pounds), but it isn’t as far off as one would think for someone with such limited college reps.

The question for Hasz is different that what it was for Bowers, who was asked to be in a starring role for a national championship team. It’s more about whether Hasz can be the driving force behind a bounce-back season in a pivotal year for Sam Pittman. There’s plenty of reason to believe that he can do just that.

It’ll take a whale of a season for Bowers comps to start coming in spades. For now, though, the potential of a healthy Hasz is enough to be excited about.