Kirby Smart Would Not Play Stetson Bennett ...
...until he had to. And what do you know? The Kid Can Play.
By Ray Glier
College football does not deserve a college football player like Stetson Bennett. The game has become so venal, led by coaches who continually recruit to replace the player they recruited the year before. The players pitch in with their own brand of extortionate behavior by ducking out on schools when it suits them.
When you think the game has no moral compass, Stetson Bennett, a 5-foot-11½ inch quarterback, jumps on the marquee and we feel better about devoting time to the game, after all.
Kirby Smart, who spent $3.7 million in a recruiting bonanza in 2019, was bailed out by Bennett on Saturday in UGa’s fitful 37-10 win over Arkansas. Bennett was regarded as Georgia’s fourth quarterback in the spring because, well, Smart kept looking at the Height Weight Speed formula he brought with him from coaching at Alabama—along with everything else—and the Georgia coach just couldn’t commit to a 5-11½ quarterback…
…until he had to, which was Saturday.
D’Wan Mathis, who fills the uniform more impressively at 6-foot-6 than the shrimp Bennett, started the opener for No. 4 Georgia and was not good. J.T. Daniels, the heralded transfer from Southern Cal, had not been cleared to play, after all, so he could not come on in relief. You know about Jamie Newman, the transfer from Wake Forest. He quit September 2 citing health concerns after being around eight months.
Smart had no choice but to let Bennett take over in the second quarter. Up until that point, Georgia’s offense was a disaster with penalties and mistakes galore. The UGa offense had been out-scored by its own defense, 2-0. The Dogs were down 7-2 to a team that had lost 19 straight SEC games.
Bennett, a junior, revved up the offense and, with a ferocious defense, UGa avoided what would have been an unsightly loss. He completed 20 of 29 passes for 211 yards.
There seems a lot of disarray with an offense that lost four starters on the offensive line. The play-calling looks troubling, too, but at least the right guy is taking the snaps.
Smart always seemed to be looking for somebody better than Stet Bennett. Just look at it.
Bennett was on the roster when Georgia pulled in Wake Forest’s Newman as a graduate transfer for the 2020 season, which Wake football coaches found suspicious in the execution.
Bennett was on the roster when Smart took a call from USC quarterback J.T. Daniels and Smart said, “C’mon. We need you” and Daniels transferred to UGa for 2020.
Georgia was keeping tabs on Bennett in JUCO in late 2018 telling him they were really thinking about giving him a scholarship while they were begging the 6-foot-6 Mathis to sign.
Smart deserved the calamity that followed. In succession:
Newman quit on Smart on September 2 because of the threat of the virus, Newman said.
Daniels has not been cleared to play, presumably because he can’t do the reps with his repaired knee to pass the last physical.
Mathis melted at Arkansas, not because the stage was too big—there were just 17,000 Covid fans there—but because that’s what first-time starters do in SEC games.
That left Bennett, the Baker Mayfield duplicator. He proceeded to put on an incredible display of decisiveness Saturday. Where you could see Mathis just couldn’t get over the debate in his head whether to run, pass, scramble, or panic, Bennett just tore into the game. He saw the field and seemed to declare play after play, “I’m going there with the ball, I’m running, I’m taking that short pass they give me.”
Here’s an example. On first-and-goal from the Arkansas 7-yard line in the third quarter, Bennett glances left at his slot receiver. The Razorbacks’ middle linebacker fidgets that way. He’s been baited. The play is going right. On the snap, the Bulldogs 6-foot-7 tight end John FitzPatrick, lined up right, posts up 5-foot-10 Arkansas defensive back Jalen Catalon at the goal line and Bennett throws a dart for a touchdown.
Here’s why Bennett should be everyone’s favorite player in red and black.
He came to Georgia in 2017 as walk-on out of Pierce County, 230 miles south of Athens. He red-shirted, and distinguished himself as a Scout Team quarterback. Playing for Georgia was Bennett’s dream and schools that recruit nationally like Alabama, Notre Dame, Ohio State, and Georgia, need those in-state players because it means more to them to play for U. The out-of-state players are thinking about the NFL and the name on the back of the jersey; the in-state kids have been thinking about the name on the front of the jersey since they were 6.
In spring ball, 2018, Bennett expected to be the No. 2 behind Jake Fromm and at least have a competition with highly-recruited freshman Justin Fields. Instead, without a full competition in spring drills, it looked to Bennett like Smart just handed No. 2 to Fields.
Bennett took the hint and decided to transfer to Junior College. Georgia tried at the last minute to keep him with a scholarship, but Bennett accepted his dream was over. He said Saturday he didn’t think he would ever come back to Georgia.
Following a standout JUCO season at Jones College in Ellisville, Miss., it looked like Bennett was all set to go to Louisiana-Lafayette, a place, you know, for 5-foot-11½ inch quarterbacks. Then Fields decided to transfer to Ohio State. There was an opening for Bennett to come back to Georgia.
Steve Buckley, Bennett’s junior college coach at Jones, called me in the third quarter Saturday while Bennett was dicing up the Razorbacks.
I asked Buckley, “Why did Stetson Bennett think Smart was going to give him a shot if he came back to Georgia?”
“I told him he shouldn’t go to Georgia,” Buckley said. “I never told him ‘You can’t play there’, I just told him he was better off going to Louisiana-Lafayette where he could walk right in and start.
“I could just tell from looking in his eyes, he wanted to go to Georgia. It is a special school to him and his family.”
A moment later, on the other end of the line, you could hear Buckley come out of his seat on a Bennett pass.
“You see that throw!” he shouted. It wasn’t a question, it was an hosanna. Bennett had just thrown a pass on a bench route to the sideline, a picture perfect over-the-shoulder so-damn-good-throw-and-catch to set up a touchdown.
“He can make every throw,” Buckley said. “He has football IQ, he’s a competitor, and he knows protections, but he has an arm, too, and he can run, probably a 4.5 40 guy.”
Asked Saturday if he was ever distressed at Smart’s continued recruiting of quarterbacks and being pushed down the depth chart, Bennett said, “a little bit.”
Then he said, “Coach Smart is bringing everybody in here to compete and he’s trying to win a national championship. If those guys coming in here give us the best chance to win a national championship, then that’s what we’re going to do. You just got to compete every day with those guys.”
At halftime of its Tennessee-South Carolina game, the SEC Network showed lengthy highlights of Florida’s win, LSU’s loss, a look-in at Alabama’s romp, a Texas A&M highlight, Auburn’s win, a Tennessee highlight, and then it got around to…Georgia’s win over Arkansas. It was about a 15-second take and Bennett got a mention, a brief one.
ESPN offered up a howler with this tagline on Georgia’s win Saturday:
“Georgia facing QB questions after uneven opener.”
What? Who were the headline writers taking ques from? Kirby Smart?
There should be no quarterback question.
Considering all the skill at Georgia—5-star recruits galore, that $3.7 million recruiting spree, and Smart’s mostly crummy decisions on quarterbacks the last three years— Stetson Bennett’s big day Saturday should have led the news. The offensive line is suddenly a worry, but it is certain the Bulldogs would not get through the October gauntlet of Auburn, Tennessee, and Alabama without Bennett.
Everything Georgia had built—that marauding defense, the receivers, the reputation as a Top 5 team—would be going to waste, if it wasn’t for Bennett. He saved The Best Team Money Could Buy.
So you could go so far as to say that Bennett is now the most important player in college football. Imagine that. A $3.7 million recruiting class saved by a guy who can get to campus from his home on $7 in gas.
All the shame and duplicity around the SEC amid the pandemic, the secrets being kept on Covid-19 infections, players being shielded from media and the public, and Bennett just parachutes in with some sanitizer to give us a nice surprise. Glad to have you, kid.