A high-profile QB showdown few predicted back in August: Trinidad Chambliss vs. Gunner Stockton

NEW ORLEANS – Trinidad Chambliss and Gunner Stockton weren’t even supposed to be here.

Not with these teams, not in this setting and certainly not players who garnered Heisman Trophy consideration.

And, yet, here they are in the Big Easy preparing to lead their teams against each other in Thursday’s Allstate Sugar Bowl for the right to go to the College Football Playoff semifinals.

“It’s been crazy, honestly,” said Chambliss, who started the season as Ole Miss’ backup quarterback after spending his first four years at Division II Ferris State, where he didn’t see any game action his first two years.

“Sometimes I’ve got to pinch myself and realize, ‘Dude, you’re at Ole Miss. You’re playing in the SEC and now I’m at the Sugar Bowl.’ I never really thought I’d get to this point, to be honest. I did have some doubt at Ferris State if football was really for me. So this is really cool, and I give thanks to God.”

Stockton was a four-star prospect at Rabun County High in the northeastern corner of Georgia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. He was all set to go play at South Carolina as a rising junior in high school and committed to the Gamecocks. But when Will Muschamp was fired as South Carolina’s coach at the end of the 2020 season and offensive coordinator Mike Bobo left to take a job at Auburn soon afterward, Stockton decommitted and eventually signed with Georgia.

“I mean, at the end of the day, you’ve got to go out there and play, and it’s crazy how everybody’s paths are a little different,” said Stockton, a redshirt junior who had started in just one game entering this season. “You follow the path the Lord sets for you, and mine led right where it was supposed to lead.”

Divine intervention or not, Chambliss and Stockton have been mirrors of each other in a lot of ways. They’ve been the centerpieces of their respective offenses with the ability to pass and run. They got their shots as the starter thanks to injuries to other players, and they’ve galvanized their teams with their toughness, team-first mentality and penchant for making clutch plays when their teams have needed it most.

Along the way, each finished in the top 10 of the Heisman Trophy voting this season. Good luck in finding either player anywhere near the Heisman Trophy watch lists back in August.

Arch Manning was there. So were Garrett Nussmeier, LaNorris Sellers and DJ Lagway among SEC quarterbacks. But Chambliss and Stockton?

“I don’t think anyone had that on their bingo card,” Chambliss said. “And if you would have said that about me before the season, I would’ve just laughed at you.”

Nobody’s laughing now, at least not Georgia defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann or Ole Miss head coach/defensive coordinator Pete Golding. They’ve got to figure out how to stop Chambliss and Stockton on New Year’s Day in the Superdome. Between them, they’ve accounted for 58 touchdowns, 6,937 yards of total offense and thrown just eight interceptions in a combined 717 attempts.

The last time they faced off, Stockton passed for 289 yards and four touchdowns and rushed for 59 yards and a touchdown. Chambliss passed for 263 yards and a touchdown and rushed for 42 yards and two touchdowns. Neither player threw an interception, and Georgia didn’t punt a single time in the game. The two teams went up and down the field until the fourth quarter when the Bulldogs got a couple of stops on defense and outlasted the Rebels 43-35.

“That’s the best game Gunner had all season when you look at the numbers, but the last thing Gunner is about is numbers,” Georgia tight end Lawson Luckie said. “It’s his competitive nature. It’s so strong, but his will to win is even stronger. Nobody on this team is surprised at anything he’s done. He took us to the SEC championship last year after Carson (Beck) got hurt and played his tail off against Notre Dame in the playoff even though we didn’t win.

“So his talent wasn’t hidden among us. We see it every day on the practice field and have seen it, just his intensity. We had a two-minute drill the other day in practice, and he’s laying out on the turf for a first down. Nobody else does that. That’s the kind of quarterback you want to play with.”

As fate would have it, Stockton’s first career start came right here in New Orleans a year ago in the Sugar Bowl. Georgia lost 23-10 to Notre Dame. Stockton passed for 234 yards and a touchdown and wasn’t intercepted. But he lost a fumble on a blindside hit just before halftime deep in the Bulldogs’ own territory, leading to a Notre Dame touchdown and 13-3 lead at the half. Georgia never recovered, and even though Stockton had no way to see the defender coming on the play, he blamed himself.

“That wasn’t really his fault, but he takes that on himself … takes it personally,” Georgia offensive coordinator Mike Bobo said. “The thing about him that you love is it’s always, ‘What could I have done better in that situation?’ He never points fingers.”

And he always gets up and plays the next play no matter what.

Late in the SEC championship game a year ago, Stockton after filling in for the injured Beck darted toward the goal line only to be blasted by Texas safety Andrew Mukuba inside the 5. Stockton was knocked backward and his helmet came flying off. He popped up, and one play later, the Bulldogs scored the game-winning touchdown in overtime.

“He’s always trying to get extra yards,” Bobo said. “Early in the year when we had a revolving door at right tackle, he’s taking shots and getting hit in the mouth, but he jumps right back up. Our team believes in Gunner because of who he is. He’s about everybody else. He plays the game to not let his teammates down, and while earlier this year he might have been playing not to make a mistake sometimes, he’s playing freer now and with even more confidence.

“That doesn’t mean he’s going to play perfect, but I think whether something good or something bad happens in the game, he’s going to be able to adjust and play the next play.”

In media interviews, Stockton is almost always smiling, incredibly polite and says something quotable – or anything promoting himself — about as often as he slides or runs out of bounds, which is never.

But he’s aways in game mode, thinking about the game, texting with receiver Zachariah Branch at night about certain coverages and never (ever) thinking about doing something that might get in the way of winning.

Georgia offensive tackle Monroe Freeling joked that he dropped by to check on Stockton before bed check earlier this week.

“We knocked on his door, whatever time it was, and he opens the door and had his retainer in,” Freeling said laughing. “I’m like, ‘This guy’s just an old man.’ ”

Freeling joked that he wasn’t sure if Stockton was wearing his slippers.

“All I know is that he loves the game, and having a quarterback that loves the game and loves the team and loves football the way he does, I’ll do anything for that guy,” Freeling said.

Plus, Freeling knows what version of Stockton he’s going to get on the field – on every play.

“He’s a field general. I mean, when you get to the games, he’s just a completely different person,” Freeling said. “You see probably like 30 to 40 percent of it in practice, but then he gets to the game and flips a switch and he’s a general out there yelling at anybody and everybody.”

While this is Stockton’s fourth year on Georgia’s campus, Chambliss didn’t arrive in Oxford until this past spring after signing with Ole Miss in April during the spring transfer portal window.

The thought coming in was that he would be insurance at quarterback for promising sophomore Austin Simmons, the heir apparent to replace Jaxson Dart. The Rebels knew they needed another quarterback, and offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr. and quarterbacks coach Joe Judge were combing through videos on social media in the spring when they ran across Chambliss’ tape on “X.”

One by one, the other offensive coaches piled into the room to watch Chambliss’ highlights, finally with former Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin being the last and demanding that the Rebels get Chambliss on campus immediately.

It was a whirlwind from there. Chambliss was supposed to go to Temple right after visiting Ole Miss.

“We never let him leave,” Judge joked.

After meeting Chambliss for the first time, it didn’t take Judge long to tell there was something different about the Rebels’ soon-to-be star quarterback. He and his dad both took out legal pads and took notes during the visit and had a list of detailed questions. Money wasn’t one of them, at least not with Judge, who picked up Chambliss and his father at the Memphis airport and had more than an hour to talk before arriving back on Ole Miss’ campus.

“We’d already seen enough tape on him at that point, and he was so professional on his visit and not asking some of the nonsense questions you get sometimes,” Judge said. “I can’t say we knew he would come in and be the starter, but you always want somebody who’s going to come in and push and compete for the job.”

Chambliss said the interest from larger schools once he jumped into the portal was minimal, at least initially. He heard from Western Kentucky, Marshall, Appalachian State, Temple and some other Group of Five schools. Then all of a sudden, he started hearing from BYU, Utah, Tennessee, Arkansas, Florida State and even Ohio State.

“Word must have gotten out that I was at Ole Miss on a visit,” Chambliss said.

The Rebels made sure to lock him down, and even though Chambliss went into the preseason as the backup, it only took a few scrimmages before his teammates figured out he was anything but a typical D-II quarterback.

“He was running with the second team a lot, but he was leading them on a lot of touchdown drives,” Ole Miss running back Kewan Lacy said. “The kinda plays you see him making now, he was making then. He was ballin’ from the time he got here.”

When Simmons suffered an ankle injury the second week against Kentucky, Chambliss got his first start that next game against Arkansas. He passed for 353 yards and accounted for three touchdowns in a 41-35 win, and the starting job was his to keep.

“When we first watched him, it was the twitchiness that he had that jumped out, and you saw that all season,” Weis said. “That’s always something that we love to see in a quarterback, the ability to run the football and the trigger to take off and go and hit a high speed fast, but then also the ability to get the ball out in a hurry too. With the different things that we do, that was unique.”

Chambliss was more of basketball player coming out of high school and thought that might be his future.

“I was a facilitator, a point guard that could do everything, and that’s how I want to play quarterback, get it to my guys in space and see the game a little differently,” Chambliss said. “I feel like that helps with football.”

In fact, Chambliss considered transferring to Division III while he was at Ferris State those first two years and not playing and instead just play basketball.

“I redshirted my freshman year and then medically redshirted in 2022, so I was raw as a football player, not very big and didn’t have the best football IQ,” he said. “But I spent that whole offseason in 2023 in the weight room, constantly watching film and trying to develop as a quarterback.

“It paid off.”

Chambliss has filed a waiver to gain another season of eligibility, and if he wins, he’s not sure where he will play next season. Sources at Ole Miss told On3 they fully expect LSU and Kiffin to make a run at Chambliss, who said Tuesday he hasn’t had any contact with Kiffin. The transfer portal opens Jan. 2.

“I don’t think that’s even allowed right now,” Chambliss said. “I don’t communicate with Coach Kiffin right now.”

Chambliss said his focus is what’s right in front of him, and not just Thursday.

“We don’t just want the Sugar Bowl,” said Chambliss, who led Ferris State to the 2024 Division II national championship. “We want the whole thing, and that would just be a great, great thing to do, give back to the Oxford community.”

Stockton, too, doesn’t want to get into what his future plans are and whether he would consider turning pro. Those inside the Georgia program told On3 they fully expect Stockton to return for another season.

“I haven’t gotten to that point yet. All I’m worried about is Ole Miss,” said Stockton, wearing his vintage smile.

Either way, it’s a quarterback matchup with the kind of stakes few could have seen coming this time a year ago.

“With both of those players and all the hype that gets out there, it shows that it comes down to who plays the best,” said Weis, who will join Kiffin at LSU as offensive coordinator after the playoff. “Those are the two guys that played the best, and I think the biggest thing I see when I watch both of them is that they’re football players more than they’re quarterbacks, just how they play the game.

“Who doesn’t want to play with guys like that?”