Quarterback: The most important position in football, and a position of strength across the SEC in 2022. Each week this summer, QB Class will dive deep on a projected SEC starter — the good, the not-so-good, and what to expect in the upcoming season. Today: Georgia’s Stetson Bennett IV.

Typecasting: The Survivor

No position in college football has generated quite as much scrutiny or angst over the past few years as the starting quarterback at Georgia, and if they’re being honest, when UGA fans imagined the guy who would eventually lead them out of the wilderness Stetson Bennett was quite specifically the last guy they had in mind. In fact, from pretty much the moment he set foot on campus in 2017 every phase of Bennett’s ascent from five-foot-nothin’, hundred-and-nothin’ walk-on to local legend has been a little bit more unlikely than the last.

The fact that his presence has registered at all defies the odds. As a freshman, he was little more than an obscure name on the roster during the Bulldogs’ ill-fated run to the national title game. With Justin Fields’ arrival as heir apparent in 2018, Bennett took that as his cue to move on via the juco route; when Fields bailed out for Ohio State that winter, Georgia welcomed Bennett back to fill the unexpected vacancy behind Jake Fromm. When Fromm declared for the draft a year ahead of schedule, the idea of putting a championship-or-bust campaign in the hands of an untested walk-on was such an obvious nonstarter that the Dogs added not just one but two big-ticket transfers in 2020, Wake Forest’s Jamie Newman and USC’s JT Daniels, to prevent it from happening.

When Bennett did get on the field, the response tended to be more concerned with how long it would take for him to be led back off. After both Newman (covid) and Daniels (knee) went on the shelf before the 2020 season, Bennett was passed over for the starting nod in favor of redshirt freshman D’Wan Mathis. After Bennett replaced Mathis in the opener, staving off a potential disaster in the process, his turn as QB1 was largely overshadowed by the speculation around Daniels, who eventually took over for the last four games to acclaim and relief. Again, Bennett was a footnote at best heading into the 2021 campaign. When Daniels was briefly sidelined by a minor injury last September, his quick return to the top of the depth chart seemed like a foregone conclusion. Months later, Bennett’s status was still very much up for debate even as he was preparing to lead the Dogs into the Playoff with a 9-1 record as a starter. The one, an all-too-familiar flop against Alabama in the SEC Championship Game, loomed too large to give him the benefit of the doubt in a potential rematch.

And yet: After all of that, when the myths of Georgia football get passed down among the generations, Bennett’s name is the only one that’s going to endure.

If this were a movie, the Bulldogs’ come-from-behind, decades-in-the-making triumph over Bama in the national title game would have been the final scene: Underdog vindicated, rival vanquished, doubters humbled, streaks broken, curse lifted, credits rolled. (Eyes, too.) Far from being overmatched by the stage or the blue-chip talent on the other side of the ball, Bennett’s CFP heroics guaranteed he’ll drink for free in the state of Georgia for the rest of his life. (Based on his appearance on national TV the following morning, he started immediately after the final gun vs. the Crimson Tide.) It was dramatic and emotional. As career arcs go, it was about as close to a true storybook ending as real life gets.

Except, well, he’s still here. Instead of riding off into the sunset – or, in his case, law school – Bennett opted for a victory lap in Year 6, his first and last chance to go start to finish as an entrenched starter without being treated by everyone outside the building like an understudy filling in on an interim basis. Why not? He’s made the throws. He’s won the big one. He’s earned it every step of the way. Now, finally, he just gets to be the starting quarterback at Georgia.

The good

The focus on Bennett’s Rudy-esque backstory and stature tends to obscure the fact that, adjusted for volume, he was easily one of the most productive passers in the country. The numbers are legit: He ended the season ranked fourth nationally in pass efficiency, third in yards per attempt, and third in Total QBR, behind only C.J. Stroud and Bryce Young. His overall passer rating (176.7) set the school record. He threw for multiple touchdowns in nine of his 11 starts, including all three games in the postseason. And while he had quite a few conservative outings that limited his attempts, he didn’t have anything approaching a truly bad one. His worst rating of the season per QBR came in a 56-7 romp over Charleston Southern. Against everyone else, he came in well above the Mendoza line, week-in, week-out, despite dealing with a depleted wide receiver rotation that remained in flux all year.

More importantly for Georgia’s championship-or-bust goals, he didn’t regress into a shell in the biggest games. On the contrary: Factoring in the competition and the stakes, Bennett’s 313-yard, 3-touchdown performance in the Orange Bowl win over Michigan was the best of his career, by far — the first time he’d looked convincingly up to the task against a championship-caliber defense. He turned in a nearly flawless first half, going 16/22 for 234 yards on the Bulldogs’ five first-half scoring drives; he posted his best grade of the season on pressured dropbacks, per Pro Football Focus; and he was accurate throwing down the field, connecting on 3/4 attempts of 20+ yards to three different receivers.

Beyond the numbers, those are the kinds of throws that had been largely missing from Bennett’s previous big-game outings, and which his skeptics (including yours truly) doubted he had the juice to make on the heavier end of the schedule. Throughout the season, more or less the entire argument for reinstating Daniels was based on the premise that a former 5-star is equipped to challenge top-shelf opponents deep where Bennett is not. If Bennett can make those throws with any kind of consistency, the supposed gap between his skill set and a more conventional next-level prospect shrinks significantly.

The go-ahead touchdown drive in the fourth quarter of the national title game was another answer to a longstanding question: What happens when the scoreboard forces Bennett to make plays with his arm and the defense knows it? The few times he’d found himself in that situation prior to Jan. 11 had all ended badly. (See below.) This time, though, trailing 18-13 with 10:07 to play following Alabama’s only touchdown of the night, he was on point, going 3/3 for 68 yards on the ensuing possession — a fourth attempt drew a flag for pass interference — capped by Georgia’s answer to 2nd-and-26: A 40-yard, 2nd-and-18 bomb to Adonai Mitchell that might go down as the biggest throw in UGA history.

It might be an exaggeration to insist that you must have a first-round, Heisman-caliber quarterback to win it all in the spread-passing era. But you do still need a guy who can step up and hit the mark in a tight window when the situation demands it. If nothing else, no one can ever argue that Bennett isn’t capable of being that guy again.

The concerns

Bennett’s physical limitations are what they are. He’s not getting any taller. His arm’s not getting any bigger. He’s not about to turn into Johnny Manziel under pressure. As an NFL prospect, he projects as a fine lawyer. It’s impossible to separate his success from the fact that he’s surrounded by arguably the most talented roster in the country, or imagine how he’d fare if he wasn’t.

Last year, especially, Georgia’s dominance on defense afforded Bennett the enormous luxury of taking almost every snap on his own terms. In their 12 wins prior to the national championship game, the Bulldogs held every single opponent to 10 points or less across the first three quarters; they never trailed after halftime, and only played one game that was realistically in doubt in the fourth. (The season opener against Clemson, a 10-3 decision where Daniels went wire-to-wire and Bennett didn’t see the field.) At no point did they put the quarterback in a position where he had to force throws in obvious passing situations to erase a deficit or keep pace in a shootout.

So the doubts prior to the championship game about Bennett’s ability to make plays outside of structure or generally to function outside his comfort zone were well-founded, and still linger going forward. His two most uninspiring performances as a starter both came in losses to Alabama that unfolded similarly and ended with the identical final score of Tide 41, Dogs 24. In the first, a regular-season trip to Tuscaloosa in October 2020, Bennett finished 18/40 passing with two touchdowns and three INTs, the last two coming after Bama pulled ahead in the second half and Georgia effectively abandoned the run. In the second, the SEC Championship Game last December, he put the ball in the air 48 times, easily a career high, and was again picked twice with UGA trailing in the second half — once on a crucial red-zone opportunity in the third quarter, and again a few minutes later on a dagger of a pick-six that put the game on ice.

It’s hardly a coincidence that those two losses are the only games in which Bennett has been forced to throw 30 times. Opposing offenses with enough firepower to turn the game into something other than a defensive slog (read: Alabama’s) will continue to put him in situations that require him to level up or get exposed trying. And with most of last year’s starting defense currently on NFL rosters, this time around Bama may not be the only one that manages to do it.

A big part of keeping Bennett within structure is keeping him well-protected. He was relatively unhurried last year, facing pressure on just 27.2% of his total dropbacks per PFF, but his completion percentage on those snaps (35%) ranked near the bottom of the SEC. In the SECCG loss to Alabama, he was just 1/10 on pressured attempts and took three sacks. He improved in the rematch, going 5/11 for 41 yards under duress, but still had an extremely costly turnover while in the grasp of a blitzing linebacker that set up a short field for the Tide’s only touchdown. Given Bennett’s marginal escapability, the more heat he faces, the greater the risk for that type of disaster.

The backup plan

As far as coaches are concerned, Bennett is the starter, full stop. Barring injury or a complete meltdown, that’s not going to change. Still, if he regresses early on or at key points along the way, you can count on some of the terminally online corners of the fan base demanding their day in court on behalf of backups Carson Beck and Brock Vandagriff. Beck, a lanky redshirt sophomore, got in some garbage-time snaps in 2021 and acquitted himself well in the spring, solidifying his case to open the season no. 2 on the depth chart. But don’t sleep on Vandagriff, a former 5-star who grew up more or less across the street from the UGA campus and has spent close to half his life being groomed for the job – not the kind of guy, in other words, who typically projects as a third-stringer in Year 2.

Whether or not either of them winds up seeing any significant action this season, the dynamic between Beck and Vandagriff will still be closely scrutinized to get a read on the competition to succeed Bennett next year. The youngest player in the room, true freshman Gunner Stockton, figures to be in that mix, as well. Georgia put all its eggs in the 2023 recruiting cycle into the Arch Manning sweepstakes, which with Manning apparently bound for Texas means the eventual ’23 starter is almost certainly already on campus.

The forecast

Winning a national championship is hard enough; winning two is rare. Only two quarterbacks in the BCS/Playoff era, USC’s Matt Leinart and Alabama’s AJ McCarron, have presided over back-to-back title runs (yes, I’m counting USC’s claim in 2003), and they were both decorated recruits with serious Heisman campaigns and NFL futures. At this point, Bennett falls more into the tradition of Craig Krenzel, Greg McElroy, and Matt Mauck – limited athletes whose moment at the top is permanently associated with one great season and a very specific set of circumstances.

It remains to be seen just how much different Bennett’s circumstances will be this season following the mass exodus of first-round talent. Surely a step back on defense seems like a given; not even an outfit with Georgia’s depth can lose eight starters and the coordinator from the most dominant unit in college football and expect to just pick up right where it left off. Then again, Georgia’s depth and consistency on that side of the ball being what it is, even an inevitable step back from last year still leaves the defense as one of the best in the country. Jalen Carter, Nolan Smith, and Kelee Ringo are stars. At least a couple of the rising cast around them will be soon. They’re going to be good enough to give the Dogs a chance to win every game.

On that note, there’s also the schedule: Who on it is going to put up enough points to put Bennett in a position where he has to play from behind? The best candidate in the regular season may be Tennessee, which managed more points against Georgia (17) than any other regular-season opponent in ’21 and returns both of the players most responsible for it, QB Hendon Hooker and WR Cedric Tillman. Florida’s offense is a wild card based solely on Anthony Richardson making good on his raw potential. Ditto South Carolina following the addition of Spencer Rattler. Everyone else: Good luck scoring half your season average.

Surprises are always on the table, but from here the path back to Atlanta looks as straight as it can be via the same defensely-driven route Georgia has taken to get there in four of the past five seasons. UGA fans know well by now what that looks like. As long as he doesn’t screw things up too badly, the quarterback is mostly incidental along the way. Bennett is obviously a safe bet to get them that far.

Once they reach the destination, though, surviving the postseason still means making plays. Alabama in the SEC Championship, Ohio State in the Playoff: Attacks that can hang 30 in their sleep. Last year, it took a historically great defense two tries to wrestle a banged-up Bama offense into submission enough to give Bennett a chance with a championship on the line. To his eternal credit, he made the best of it. But to do it again, he’s almost certainly going to have to do more to create that opportunity for himself.