Georgia quarterback battle: Kirby Smart updates ongoing competition

Georgia football head coach Kirby Smart has yet to formally name the Bulldogs’ starting quarterback for the 2025 season, only acknowleding that redshirt junior Gunner Stockton and redshirt freshman Ryan Puglisi both saw opportunities with the first-team during Spring practice.

Without a definitive answer about the Bulldogs’ quarterback situation, Georgia fans have been eating up every morsel of information Smart has provided about the most important position on the field.

Well, with Smart down in Destin this week alongside his other SEC head coaches for the 2025 SEC Spring Meetings inside the Sandestin Hilton, don’t expect any groundbreaking updates anytime soon.

“I’m excited about both those guys, they’ve both played really well, they’ve both done a great job and they’re both working their tails off,” Smart said Tuesday during the first day of the SEC Spring Meetings. “They’re Georgia football players that love Georgia.”

Stockton enters the 2025 season as the frontrunner just based on experience having made one more career start than Puglisi when he started the Sugar Bowl national quarterfinal against Notre Dame during the 2024 College Football Playoff. Appearing in five games last season, Stockton combined to throw for 440 yards on 70.3-percent passing and one touchdown to one interception. That includes a career-high 234 yards and one touchdown against the Irish. Meanwhile, Puglisi has yet to appear in any games after redshirting in 2024.

Paul Finebaum ‘underwhelmed’ by Gunner Stockton as Georgia’s starting QB in 2025

Georgia moved on from Carson Beck long before its two-year starting quarterback entered the NCAA Transfer Portal and landed at Miami back in January. In fact, from the start of the second half of the 2024 SEC Championship game last December, the Bulldogs were all-in on Gunner Stockton as their QB1.

Of course, not everyone is exactly thrilled by the thought of the redshirt junior quarterback taking over Georgia’s offense in 2025, especially given how Stockton fared in last year’s Sugar Bowl loss to eventualy national runner-up Notre Dame.

SEC Network host Paul Finebaum revealed some serious trepedation about Stockton as UGA’s QB1 during a “Fine/Not Fine” segment Tuesday afternoon on ESPN’s SportsCenter.

“I’d say that’s a big ‘not fine.’ I know the team coalesced around him after the SEC Championship game, but I was underwhelmed by what I saw from Gunner Stockton in the Sugar Bowl loss to Notre Dame,” Finebaum said Tuesday from the Sandestin Hilton at SEC Spring Meetings in Destin, Fla. “Kirby Smart has been steadfast in his support (for Stockton, but) he really doesn’t have another option until next year when the top recruit in the country comes in. So I’m not happy with what I see from the ‘Dawgs.”