Carson Beck says there’s ‘no bad blood’ with Georgia, Kirby Smart
By Jacob Moss
Published:
One of the biggest storylines of the 2025 college football season was the move former Georgia quarterback Carson Beck made from Athens to South Beach after a very tumultuous exit from the Bulldogs’ program.
Beck and the Hurricanes’ run to the National Championship game against the Indiana Hoosiers brought this story to the forefront of the media landscape, with many pundits and analysts commenting on how the gunslinger seemingly regained his love for the sport after a very up-and-down 2024 campaign with the Dawgs.
All of this was brought up once again during Beck’s media appearance at the NFL Draft Combine, where Beck finally cleared the air by stating that there is “no bad blood” between himself and his former head coach, Kirby Smart.
“I’m super grateful for Coach Smart and what he was able to instill in me, and obviously the teams that I was a part of,” Beck said. “The discipline, the structure, the resiliency, the toughness that Coach Smart was able to instill in me personally is something I’ll take on the rest of my life.”
Beck also went on to discuss his departure from Georgia and shed some light on his thought process following his season-ending injury at the tail end of the first half of the 2024 SEC Championship game against Texas.
“I feel like people take that a little bit the wrong way,” Beck said. “When the injury happened, I was still going to go to the NFL. I’d declared for the draft. I was going to go through the process. From that point on, I’m gone. Gunner’s next up.”
Following up on that, Beck further emphasized that at the time of his exit, he believed that the torch had been passed to Stockton and that from then on out, it was his team to lead. He further emphasized that there was never any bad blood between him and anybody at Georgia.
“It was his turn to be the quarterback at the University of Georgia. So, when I decided not go to the NFL, come back, I’m gonna go somewhere else. That’s how it all worked out. There was no bad blood. I’m really not sure where that came from. I love the University of Georgia. I love Coach Smart, Coach Bobo, Coach Monken, all the other coaches I had there.”
A year later, Beck is preparing for the NFL Draft and Stockton is readying for his second season running the show in Athens. He has the Dawgs positioned as the favorite to win another SEC crown, according to Kalshi.
