Jim Chaney discusses challenge of playing both Jake Fromm, Justin Fields this season
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For the second time in a year, Georgia is expected to lose a former five-star quarterback prospect to transfer with the anticipated departure of Justin Fields. The freshman quarterback would follow in the footsteps of Jacob Eason, who lost his starting job to Jake Fromm last season and transferred to Washington.
Fields’ departure isn’t official yet, he’s still with Georgia as they prepare to play Texas in the Sugar Bowl, however, he has reportedly entered himself in the NCAA transfer portal. That gives other programs the option to contact him regarding a potential transfer.
While the Georgia quarterback room may have been somewhat of a revolving door for elite arms in recent seasons, the same man has been in charge of the offense in Athens all throughout Kirby Smart’s tenure with the Bulldogs — that being offensive coordinator Jim Chaney.
During his Sugar Bowl press conference, Chaney was asked to share his thoughts on just how difficult it is to please multiple quarterbacks in today’s era of college football, where transfers are becoming the norm and not the exception.
“Well, it’s challenging. Anytime you’ve got good quality depth anywhere, regardless of what position it is, you’re trying to find a way to get good players on the field. When you have them both stuck at the quarterback spot, you want to make sure you’re trying to utilize their skills the best you can to help your team win a football game,” Chaney said.
“And I think kids are kids. They want to play. They’re good football players. They want to play. And, as a coach, our job is to take the existing players on our football team and put them in a position to win. And we try to do that the best we can, all the while having conversations with these kids to know what they’re thinking.”
Georgia’s offensive coordinator was then asked a follow-up on how he specifically tried to play both Justin Fields and Jake Fromm this season and how difficult that was at times during the season.
“Well, it’s been tough, there’s no question about that. Once again, if you separate the quarterback spot and look over there at the wide receiver spots and you say, hey, that kid standing by me on the sideline, he has a unique skill set. Let’s try to utilize him,” Chaney continued.
“If you look at the quarterbacks the same way, we kind of tried to do that with Justin a little bit this year. We don’t want to leave our team at a disadvantage because of any particular position. You try to do the best you can by utilizing the skill set of your existing players. That’s what we try to do.
“You look back on the season, I don’t know. I’ll reflect back on it when the season is all the way over. Right now I think we did right and we’ll see how it plays out.”
Finally, while Fields may be one foot out of the door already in Athens, Georgia just signed two new quarterbacks during the early signing period. One of them is a familiar face in Stetson Bennett, who previously served as a walk-on in Athens before leaving the program to attend a junior college, and the other in former Ohio State commit, Dwan Mathis.
Chaney was asked to comment on Georgia’s two recent signees, starting with the return of Bennett.
“He’s an athletic kid. We’ve been trying to get the depth that you’d like to have at that position for some time. And it just showed up at that particular time in the recruiting cycle that we could do that,” Chaney said. “And Dwan is a good, talented kid. We had him in camp a couple years ago. We’ve always kept our eyes on him. We watched him and liked him. He’s athletic. He can deliver the ball the way we like for him too.
“And Stet, we knew everything about him. We figured he could come right back in our program and know our system very well. And he’s a good football player, so we’re glad to get both of them.”
(Photo by Cassie Wright; UGA Athletics)
A graduate of the University of Tennessee, Michael Wayne Bratton oversees the news coverage for Saturday Down South. Michael previously worked for FOX Sports and NFL.com
