ATHENS — Kirby Smart understands why Brock Vandagriff ended up transferring out of the Georgia program.
Only one player really can play quarterback, and Georgia has Carson Beck. He’s one of the top players in the country, and he elected to return to Georgia for a fifth season after a strong first season as a starter.
Vandagriff had waited three years for a chance to start. He already had earned his degree from Georgia. And so with Beck returning, Vandagriff found a home in Kentucky, where he has started the first two games of the season.
“I’d say the quarterback position, there comes a point in time when if you haven’t played, you’re running out of time to play,” Smart said. “So I don’t know what you want a kid to do, wait out his whole career and not play, I mean, he did graduate. He became a better player.
“He certainly feels that he had a great experience at Georgia and two national championship rings. So I think that that’s a positive more than it is any kind of negative.”
Vandagriff came to Georgia with tons of hype. He was a 5-star quarterback in the 2021 recruiting cycle, playing for nearby Prince Avenue Christian School. He was the No. 23 overall prospect in the class and the No. 2 player in the state.
For most, 5-star quarterbacks are seen as program-changing recruits. With NIL, schools in this day and age are willing to be top dollar for the best high school quarterback prospects in the country.
But as Georgia has learned, those recruits don’t always deliver. Every quarterback that was a 5-star recruit in the On3 Industry Rankings that Georgia has signed finished his college career elsewhere.
Jacob Eason was the first 5-star quarterback Smart landed, signing him back in 2016. Eason started 13 games in his Georgia career, all but one coming as a freshman in 2016, Smart’s first season in Athens.
Eason got hurt in the opening half of the 2017 season and in stepped freshman Jake Fromm. Eason never regained the starting job and transferred to Washington at the end of the 2017 season. He was taken in the fourth round of the 2020 NFL draft. Ironically, he was drafted before Fromm in that same draft.
For what it’s worth, Fromm wasn’t some unheralded recruit. Rivals had him as a 5-star prospect, and he finished the 2017 cycle as the No. 48 overall prospect. Not a 5-star player, but not a bologna sandwich either.
Smart didn’t wait long to bring in his next 5-star quarterback, as he signed Justin Fields in the 2018 signing class. Georgia played Fields sporadically as a freshman, but like Eason before him, Fields could not beat out Fromm for the starting position.
Fields announced he would enter the transfer portal following Georgia’s loss to Alabama in the SEC Championship game. He ended up at Ohio State, where he was a two-year starter for the Buckeyes. He led Ohio State to back-to-back playoff appearances before being taken in the first round of the 2021 NFL draft.
While Fields was leading Ohio State to an appearance in the national championship game, Georgia was rotating between D’Wan Mathis, Stetson Bennett and JT Daniels as starting quarterbacks during the 2020 season. Not surprisingly, that season is last in which Georgia lost a regular season game.
Daniels had a 5-star ranking coming out of high school, as he was the No. 14 overall player in the 2018 recruiting class. He ended up transferring to Georgia prior to the 2020 season.
Unlike Eason and Fields, Daniels actually started for Georgia. He went 7-0 in those games, sprinkled across the 2020 and 2021 seasons. But like Eason, injuries forced him from the starting lineup. Bennett stepped in, and Smart rode the former walk-on and junior college transfer to a national championship.
Daniels transferred after the 2021 season, ending up at West Virginia. He spent one season there before finishing out his career at Rice.
Vandagriff was teammates with Daniels during that 2021 season. Had Daniels stayed healthy, maybe Vandagriff takes over for him to start the 2022 season. But Bennett returned and Beck had a stranglehold on the backup quarterback job.
Saturday will be the first time Smart faces a quarterback he used to coach. With Georgia sustaining heavy portal losses on an annual basis — the Bulldogs have had 20-plus scholarship players depart the program in each of the past two offseasons — it likely won’t be the last.
And while Georgia hasn’t been able to make it work with a 5-star quarterback, it’s hard to argue about what Georgia has gotten out of the quarterback position. Fromm won the SEC as a freshman. Bennett won back-to-back national championships and was a Heisman Trophy finalist.
Beck could well be the best quarterback in the country and the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NFL draft. It’s nearly impossible to argue against Smart’s decision to go with the more experienced Beck over the toolsy Vandagriff.
Just because Eason, Fields, Daniels and Vandagriff didn’t work out at Georgia does not mean that Smart will stop recruiting 5-star quarterbacks. Georgia holds a commitment from 2026 quarterback prospect Jared Curtis, who is the No. 9 overall player in the cycle.
So much of the quarterback position comes down to timing. That’s a big reason why Fields and Vandagriff ended up elsewhere. There’s also health, with injuries impacting Eason and Daniels’ careers. Fromm never got hurt and Beck has been able to stay healthy to this point in his career.
Not every 5-star quarterback ends up panning out. In Vandagriff’s 2021 signing class, all six 5-star quarterbacks ended up transferring during their college careers.
Vandagriff began his career hoping to start for Georgia. Smart brought him to Georgia with the idea that he could one day do so. It didn’t work out like all envisioned but that hasn’t slowed Georgia from becoming a dominant program.
“You know, a lot of respect for Brock, his dad, his family,” Smart said. What Brock did for this university was awesome. He was a wonderful teammate and just a great kid. Always put the team first and would do anything to help the team and really helped our culture while he was here.
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