Kirby Smart reveals how Trevor Lawrence's early success at Clemson affected Justin Fields at Georgia
Trevor Lawrence and Justin Fields were the top 2 prospects in the 2018 recruiting class, and both play quarterback.
Both have since become superstars, but it didn’t take as long for Lawrence to become a star at Clemson as it did for Fields, who transferred from Georgia to Ohio State to get his chance.
During a recent appearance on the “All Things Covered” podcast, Georgia coach Kirby Smart revealed that Lawrence’s immediate success at Clemson had an impact on Fields at Georgia (via DawgNation):
“It was very evident to us early on in the year that as Trevor had success, and began to play, and in the Texas A&M game (second of the season) he got in and played more and more, Justin felt the same way that, ‘Hey, I’m as good as him, and I should get an opportunity to play,’ ” Smart said.
“And at the time, we had Jake Fromm, who was playing pretty well.”
Smart admits that the transfer to Ohio State has benefited Fields, who has become a superstar with the Buckeyes:
“You can’t say it (transfer) hasn’t benefited him, because he got to go to a really good program, and he got to play right away, and he’s played a lot more football because he chose to go there,” Smart said. “So you can’t say that it was wrong or right, but I would say what you said earlier, the accountability factor and guys sticking it out, sometimes it pays off to do that. Especially at other positions.”
Can Fields finish off his college career by beating Alabama in the title game on Monday night? We’ll see what’s in store for the former Bulldog soon enough.
I’m surprised Fields wasn’t satisfied being featured in the dumbest fake punt in SEC history while Lawrence was lighting it up in real offense. Weird.
You mullet would have let Fields throw shoes?
It is true tdow. Don’t get all butt hurt.
Georgia fans need to get a bit more creative in making fun of Florida. Please don’t make me read shoe jokes on every post for the next five years.
Fair enough, when yall when your next game that’ll be a shoe in for the jokes to stop
Are creative retorts such as ‘1980’ or ’44-28′ along the lines of what you’re thinking? those are pretty fresh.
We’re going to talk about throwing shoes until next October at least. It was just the stupidest way that a game, a CFB playoff berth and a Heisman have all been blown in a split second. You gotta love it!!!!
Salient points all.
But still…
Naa…Georgia article and he’s on here talking smack the first post.
He gets the shoe.
Really hard to say who is better, Lawrence or Fields, but both are better than Fromm, in hindsight. I can understand why Kirby went with Fromm. At the time, considering the offense Georgia was using, it may have been the better choice. Ultimately it was a mistake.
At the time when swinney made the move to lawrence, these were the 2017 and 2018 stats of both opening day starters for clem and uga.
– bryant ’17: 65.8% compl, 2,802 yds, 13 tds & 8 int
’18: 66.7% compl, 461 yds, 2 tds & 1 int
-fromm ’17: 62.2% compl, 2,615 yds, 24 tds & 7 int
’18: 74.4% compl, 709 yds, 11 tds & 2 int
would love to hear someone try to argue that smart and swinney were in the same position here.
That’s a very surface level argument there. For one, you’re leaving out some pretty important stats from Bryant’s ’17 season, and that is 665 rushing yards and 11 rushing TDs. He unfortunately had to face Bama one game earlier than Fromm did in the playoffs otherwise their seasons would’ve been pretty much identical. You can’t compare the ’18 seasons, because unlike Smart, Dabo was smart enough to recognize the talent he had and basically made the decision before the season started, that he was going to give Lawrence a legit shot to take the starting spot away from the guy that just led them to the playoffs. Through the first 4 games, Lawrence had 60 passing attempts to Bryant’s 54. Fromm didn’t have Fields swiping away almost half the snaps in every game he played leading up to the decision to roll with Lawrence.
Wow, even for SDS this is atrocious. Even fans from other SEC programs, do yourself a favor and look up other articles that reference this interview with Kirby. Disagree with him or not he does a pretty good job of explaining his thinking during the whole process, not just ““And at the time, we had Jake Fromm, who was playing pretty well.”.
Spencer, you’d do great at the “Daily Sun” or some other tabloid, or maybe you just missed you calling as a whole.
I don’t fault Kirby for starting Fromm over Fields, at that point out in his career Fromm had been golden.
However, not giving Fields ,and Eason the season before, more playing time and allowing him to run the real offense was a screw up on Kirby’s part.
In the one game Fields came in and was allowed to run the offense, U Mass, Fields looked awesome.
Yeah, but it was UMASS. I would hope that a kid that thought he was good enough to be a starter for a major program could look awesome against UMASS.
It must suck having to answer ?s about a qb that hasn’r been on your roster for 2 years. We’ll never know if Fields could have been the one to bring us that allusive NC. Kirby will be answering ?s about fields until UGA wins it all. Im tired of hearing this number. 1980.
Get a life and go away fake Dawg fan.
I eagerly look forward to putting this entire story behind us. What-ifs are an exercise in futility because it’s impossible to ever know what would have happened, so it’s pointless to debate it.
I think Fields turned out better that Sunshine. The Clemson schedule was/is littered with light weight scheduling. Lawrence was only pushed in post season games and was 3-2 I think. The buck i’s at least play tough games during the season.
Lawrence did manage to win it all. Managed to get almost as close as Jake Fromm
Fields