Kirby Smart confident in Stetson Bennett as starter for Georgia this fall
Stetson Bennett‘s story has been told a million times. Make it a million and one after SEC Media Days when Georgia head coach Kirby Smart expressed his confidence in the sixth-year super-senior starting quarterback for the Bulldogs.
“Stetson Bennett, we all know his story. If you guys ever wanted to do a documentary, this guy has been through it, when you look at what he’s done,” Smart said in his opening remarks.
“Stetson is one of the least respected good players there is in this country,” he later added. “Guess what, we get to see it every day. The kid is a tremendous athlete, he’s got good arm strength. People keep doubting him, and that’s fine with me.”
Least respected good players. That sure is an interesting way to describe your starting quarterback. However, Smart shared some of his and his staff’s thinking behind why he was the starter.
“He gives us the best chance to win the next game, and as long as he was the best one to win the next game, he was going to be the one out there,” Smart said. “You know, there was thought among the staff that he was the best guy at the beginning of the season. There were opinions that felt that way; it was not a consensus. So, ultimately, I had to make a decision on who starts, and we had a lot of sentiment in the room that he was the best guy preseason camp, first game, second game, but I say a lot — there was the guys that didn’t feel that way.”
“That’s what you have in a quarterback situation,” he continued. “You want to go with the guy that gives you the best chance to win the game. We weren’t trying to win just those games at that time — we were trying to win every game. So you have to be able to look outside of who we have to play and who we have to beat, who gives us the best chance to do that. And we ultimately felt like it was Stetson that gave us the best chance to do that.”
Bennett spent a good portion of his season in 2021 looking over his shoulder. There was JT Daniels, a former five-star who had taken the Georgia offense to seemingly new heights in his brief time as the starter, on the sideline waiting to get back from injury. But even after Daniels was cleared to play, Smart stuck with Bennett and the rest was history.
Now in 2022, Bennett is the guy. Smart said so on Wednesday, and there’s no feeling of being stared down from behind for Stetson.
“There was a lot of that narrative last year, but that’s gone,” Bennett said. “Just like every other quarterback who’s here, every other football player that’s here. We’re worried about getting ready for this year.”
“I think now he has a little more – what’s the right word – support because he is the guy,” Smart added. “It’s hard for players around you to have conviction you’re the guy if you’re not the starter. He wasn’t the starter at this time last year, at this time two years ago. He started intermittently throughout two years ago, then once he won the job, I think he’s created a little bit of momentum with our players, our skill players, because there’s not a doubt there. They understand he knows the system. He can get them the ball. He can throw the ball vertically down the field, deep comebacks, he can scramble and make a play with his feet. I think they value that. That’s given him a little bit more credibility, which credibility to me is earned, right? He earned that by the way he played at the end of the year and most of the season. He continues to do that the way he leads out there on seven-on-sevens, practices and things.”
