It wasn’t a surprise to see Kirby Smart stand up for Gunner Stockton.
At SEC Spring Meetings, the Georgia coach had a fun back and forth with Paul Finebaum over a SportsCenter segment wherein the ESPN host criticized Stockton’s performance in the Sugar Bowl. Finebaum said that he was underwhelmed by what he saw from Stockton, and when asked to pick between Georgia being “fine or not fine” with him at quarterback in 2025, he went with the latter.
Naturally, Smart caught that segment and let Finebaum know that it would be treated as fuel to the fire.
“I’m excited. Gunner got the message, man,” Smart said with a wry smile (H/T DawgNation). “He got the message. You did your job.”
Sorry about that one, @KirbySmartUGA ??? #FineOrNotFine pic.twitter.com/uyWuEfUKk6
— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) May 27, 2025It’s good that Smart publicly supported his quarterback. It speaks to his longevity and 9-figure contract that he can be a bit more bold in those settings. Any world in which Stockton becomes a star involves him having the full support of his coaching staff, which doesn’t appear to be in doubt based on the comments before the Sugar Bowl, as well as Georgia’s lack of a transfer portal addition at quarterback.
There is, however, a question that looms.
What kind of leash will Stockton have in 2025? And will we ever find out?
That second question is twofold. If we never find out about that leash, one would think that it’s because Stockton became a star and his job security was never in question. The other scenario in which we never get an answer to that question would involve Stockton not having that 6th sense for backside pressure — something that even the talented Arch Manning hasn’t fully mastered yet with his limited reps — and going down with a significant injury. Nobody is sitting here projecting injuries, but we do need to wonder how Smart will react if he feels that his starting quarterback isn’t getting it done.
On the surface, Smart’s previous quarterback leashes might be considered long. After all, he didn’t bench Jake Fromm for Justin Fields in 2018, and his decision to stick with Stetson Bennett IV instead of turning to JT Daniels late in the 2021 season proved to be a championship-defining call. There was also last year when Carson Beck regressed and endured a turnover-prone Year 2 season as a starter, but he never got benched in favor of Stockton. Make of that what you will.
Smart’s loyalty to his quarterbacks has been criticized, and understandably so. But to assume that Stockton’s leash will be the duration of the season would ignore the 2020 season, AKA the only time during the last 8 seasons when Georgia failed to reach the SEC Championship.
D’Wan Mathis basically got a quarter to be Georgia’s starting quarterback. His leash in the 2020 opener came amid weird circumstances — the Daniels injury and the Jamie Newman transfer opt-out were the preamble to the already herky-jerky COVID season — and it didn’t help that he couldn’t do anything against an Arkansas team that was in search of its first SEC win in nearly 3 years. Mathis started the game with a 12-yard pass to John FitzPatrick and a 9-yard pass to George Pickens … and then proceeded to go 3-for-11 for 11 yards with an interception and an early benching.
The rest is history. Bennett battled his own ups and downs in 2020 — an injury and a poor performance in the Cocktail Party paved the way for Daniels to take over for the rest of the season — but he ultimately left Georgia as a legend, while Mathis left Georgia for Temple after 2020, and he ultimately switched to receiver.
Long story short, Smart sensed early on that Mathis wasn’t just working through jitters, and he made the right call. If Smart senses that Stockton isn’t showing any signs of figuring things out, he’ll get an early hook in favor of fellow unproven former blue-chip quarterback Ryan Puglisi, who hasn’t attempted a pass at the college level yet.
Granted, Stockton’s unique sample size is still much different than Mathis’s entering 2020. We saw 6 quarters of meaningful football in which Stockton flashed promise against 2 of the best defenses in the sport. He led the comeback effort against Texas while also throwing one of the more inexcusable late-game interceptions that you’ll ever see. He was also overwhelmed against Notre Dame while delivering one of the more impressive deep-ball throws that you’ll ever see.
GUNNER STOCKTON THROWS A DIME TO ARIAN SMITH ? pic.twitter.com/VUnOdp3EtC
— CFB Kings (@CFBKings) January 2, 2025It’s hard to have a short leash on a guy who can make that type of throw on that stage. Those are the plays that define quarterbacks who wear that uniform.
At the same time, it’s hard to give someone with 1 FBS start a 6-game leash when we know what the Georgia standard is. No quarterback has lost a start in Sanford Stadium in the 2020s. In the last 8 seasons, all but 1 of UGA’s losses came to teams that were ranked No. 16 or better in the AP Top 25.
That lone exception was, of course, the 2019 South Carolina debacle, wherein Year 3 starter Jake Fromm played the worst game of his career. He wasn’t getting benched that day, though it’s worth noting that Bennett was QB2 at the time. Less than a year later, the former walk-on was called on a quarter into the season. By 2020, Bennett was in Year 3 in the program having already served as the Baker Mayfield scout team quarterback in the 2017 Rose Bowl (in case you forgot). That context is significant.
Based on Smart’s history, we can infer a couple of things
One is that Smart values experience. He might not always base quarterback decisions on that — don’t forget that Fromm kept the 2017 job as a true freshman when the elder-Jacob Eason returned from injury — but there’s an understanding that Smart won’t throw experience out in favor of an unknown signal-caller. That goes back to the Fromm vs. Fields dynamic, and even the Bennett vs. Daniels dynamic in the latter half of 2021 reflected that.
Stockton won’t have a 2020 Mathis-like hook, nor will he have 2024 Beck-like grace. It would have to be a disastrous start to see Stockton benched in a September game like at Tennessee and vs. Alabama. That’s not happening unless there’s lackluster showings against Marshall or Austin Peay that precede it.
What’s hard to imagine is a scenario in which Stockton starts off 6-1 or 7-1, and then he gets benched for performance-based reasons. I tend to think that Smart wouldn’t make such a move unless he sensed UGA was in real jeopardy of watching its Playoff hopes disappear if it didn’t get a shot of life at quarterback. And as Beck showed with his struggles last season, perhaps even a slow start like what a 2-loss Georgia endured vs. Tennessee might not warrant a benching. Ultimately, Smart navigated that and won another SEC title.
He did his job by defending Stockton after Finebaum’s criticism. Stockton’s job will be to do more than just get the message.
Georgia won’t be fine with anything less than that.
Kirby Smart defended Gunner Stockton after Paul Finebaum’s criticism, but a bigger question looms with that dynamic Saturday Down South.
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