ATHENS – Living in Bogart and having a son who plays quarterback at Kentucky is a tough proposition, and we’re not just talking about having all those barking Bulldogs as neighbors.
For Greg Vandagriff and his wife, Kelly, it means getting to Lexington, Kentucky, from wherever the Prince Avenue Christian Wolverines are playing every night Friday night. If you’re at all familiar with that Class A football powerhouse that Vandagriff coaches, you know that could be from almost anywhere. Prince Avenue Christian already has played games in Athens and Atlanta and has a game scheduled to be played in South Carolina on Sept. 20.
This past weekend, though, the Vandagriffs were blessed with a reprieve. The Wolverines had a bye. So, the parents of Brock Vandagriff were able to spend almost the whole weekend in Lexington for their son’s long-anticipated debut as a starting quarterback in an SEC game.
It didn’t go as planned.
A horrible effort by the Wildcats was exacerbated by a poor personal performance from Brock Vandagriff, and Kentucky lost big to South Carolina. The junior quarterback had only 30 yards on 3-of-10 passing, threw an interception, was sacked four times and finished with minus-28 yards rushing in the shockingly lopsided 31-6 defeat.
Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
Good thing dad and mom were there.
“Well, what we don’t know is how much was effort and how much was ability that hurt them on the offensive line,” Greg Vandagriff said of the difficult day for Kentucky. “I think it was a little bit of a perfect storm where they read their headlines a little bit and felt a little better about themselves after playing well against Southern Miss and South Carolina looked bad against Old Dominion. They felt they were a little better than they were and thought South Carolina was worse than they really are.”
The Wildcats’ loss and Brock Vandagriff’s struggles in it took much of the air out of the balloon that has been hovering high all year over Georgia’s much-anticipated week three matchup against Kentucky in Lexington. Vandagriff and linebacker Jamon “Pop” Dumas-Johnson each played with for the Bulldogs with great distinction the past three years before deciding to enter the NCAA transfer portal and take their talents to Bluegrass country.
The narrative about whether Georgia should have fought to keep them or simply showed the players the door has played well the past eight months on “The Paul Finebaum Show” and SEC Network. But now the Gamecocks’ rout coupled with the Bulldogs’ early domination has chased away ESPN’s “College GameDay,” which was set to use Lexington as this weekend’s backdrop, and sent the betting line soaring. Georgia now is posted as a 24.5-favorite and “GameDay” will originate from Columbia, South Carolina.
Greg Vandagriff, a high-achieving coach himself, does not necessarily see all that as a negative. Sure, he would have preferred for his son to have played marvelously and the Wildcats to have won. But while all around the Big Blue Nation is spinning doom and gloom, Vandagriff’s father sees some hidden blessings where others see only burning embers.
Credit: Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason.Getz@ajc.com
The storyline of Vandagriff and Dumas-Johnson having earned national championship rings while playing for the Bulldogs and now facing them in Lexington at Kroger Field always was going to dominate the landscape surrounding Saturday’s game. But thanks to the whipping Kentucky took from South Carolina, Brock and Pop’s reunion with their old teammates no longer is foremost on their minds.
Heading into this weekend’s clash, they’re fully focused on blocking, tackling and other football tenets.
“That’s a benefit most people probably don’t think about,” Greg Vandagriff said. “They’re so busy fixing themselves, they don’t have the time to think about whether his roommate Chaz Chambliss is barreling down on him or they’re going to get to run into Cash Jones and say something. Brock’s not worried about talking to those guys. He’ll know everybody on the field, but right now, he’s just thinking about going out there and doing the best he can against the No. 1 team in the country.”
Brock Vandagriff was taking his father’s advice to heart. Interviewed after the Wildcats’ practice in Lexington on Wednesday night, he seemed to avoid saying even “Georgia” or “Bulldogs.” Instead he referred to them as “a good team coming up here to Lexington.”
“At the end of the day, it’s the same game, the same rules, all that kind of stuff,” Vandagriff said. “It’s going to be a great team against a good team, and we’re looking forward to the matchup.”
As far coming off a bad game and facing the nation’s No. 1 team in the next, Vandagriff is not intimidated.
“Being how I am and knowing what our offense’s identity is, we’re welcoming the challenge,” Vandagriff said. “Obviously I wish the outcome was different last Saturday, but at the end of the day, we’re going to have 12 games. That’s 12 guarantees to go out there and play on Saturdays. Whoever it is we play, we’re just going to make sure we do our due diligence that week and hopefully go out there and execute.”
Great memories in Athens for Vandagriff, Dumas-Johnson
No matter what happens in Saturday night’s game, it’s not going to change how one side feels about the other. Both Vandagriff and Dumas-Johnson have called the past three years in Athens being the best of their lives. While some of that has to do with the success they had playing for the Bulldogs, most of it doesn’t.
For Vandagriff, that surrounds the good times he had with his three Georgia roommates. They were tight end Brock Bowers, outside linebacker Chambliss and running back Jones.
The competitions that foursome waged in and around the house they shared are the stuff of legend.
“We called it the ‘Bs’ and the ‘Cs,’ Brock and Brock vs. me and Cash,” Chambliss shared this week. “We always competed. We’d write it up and count it down. If we fished, we’d compete. We would play pool and compete, golf, anything you can think of. (Vandagriff’s) the ultimate competitor, both Brocks are. So, anything we’d do, there was always a competition between us.”
According to Brock Vandagriff, the “Bs” won.
“The final tally, the Bs got the best of the Cs,” Vandagriff said after the Wildcats’ practice Wednesday in Lexington. “It was cornhole, pool, pingpong, we had fishing tournaments, everything. Me and Bowers were out there to win.”
Credit: Chip Towers
Credit: Chip Towers
Of, course, every day on UGA’s Woodruff Practice Fields was a competition as well. Especially for Vandagriff, who signed with Georgia as a 5-star-rated prospect out of Prince Avenue Christian. Vandagriff helped the Wolverines win back-to-back state championships.
At first, he shocked the local community when he committed to Oklahoma and former coach Lincoln Riley. But later Vandagriff would rethink his decision and commit to the Bulldogs.
After he signed in the Class of 2021, the thinking was that it would be only a matter of time before the 6-foot-3, 217-pound Vandagriff would be leading the Georgia offense.
Of course, that never happened. Vandagriff played in only 13 of the Bulldogs’ 44 games over three seasons, with all of his appearances coming in a mop-up role.
“It’s one of those things where you can’t predict the future,” Greg Vandagriff said of his son’s fate at Georgia. “Nobody saw Stetson Bennett becoming a two-year starter; we couldn’t either. He made his decision based on what the room looked like at the time.”
Several quarterbacks came and went while Vandagriff was matriculating at Georgia. But one that was there when Vandagriff arrived and remained after he left was Carson Beck. Beck beat out Vandagriff for the starting job last year and broke several passing records as a 14-game starter.
When Beck decided to return for his fifth season at Georgia, Vandagriff’s name already was in the transfer portal.
There’s not a soul in the Butts-Mehre football complex that begrudges him for that.
“What Brock did for this university was awesome,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said. “He was a wonderful teammate and just a great kid. He always put the team first and would do anything to help the team, and really helped our culture while he was here. So, I have a lot of appreciation for what he did.”
Vandagriff and Beck, who competed so intensely the past three years, remain close friends.
“I’ll probably give him a little text this week,” Beck said. “Obviously I’m rooting for him. He’s a great friend of mine. Maybe not so much (Saturday).”
Why Brock Vandagriff picked Kentucky
Vandagriff also graduated from UGA before he left. He earned a degree in communication studies in only three years. At Kentucky, he has two seasons of eligibility remaining to pursue a graduate degree in community and leadership development.
Understandably, Vandagriff was a hot commodity in the transfer portal, as most quarterbacks are. Greg Vandagriff said his son was approached by “four or five SEC teams” but quickly settled on Kentucky.
“Kentucky was appealing,” Greg Vandagriff said. “It checked all the boxes; we liked (coach Mark) Stoops. Coordinators come and go and that was one of those things you can’t control. Then you just make a decision and hope it works out in your favor.”
The Wildcats are hoping so, too. With the exception of his performance in the last game, they’ve liked everything they’ve seen with Vandagriff.
“When you did see him in there (at Georgia), you see the way he operated,” Stoops said. “You know the system that he comes from is a complicated, very good system. He’s been asked to do a lot and, when he came in, it was just very smooth, very good, very clean. Again, he’s one play away from playing in some of their most important games of the year. So, I think that tells you that he’s a pretty good player.”
Kentucky fans were thinking they got a steal after the first game. In a 31-0 win over Southern Miss, Vandagriff completed 66.7% of his passes for 169 yards and three touchdowns. He also ran the zone-read play to perfection and ran for 35 yards on five carries.
Then came the South Carolina game, and doubt has crept in. But not for Stoops.
The Wildcats’ 12th-year coach indicated they might eliminate some of Vandagriff’s decision-making responsibilities when it comes to running the zone-read play and perhaps in the passing game as well. Above all, everybody knows Kentucky has to protect better.
In the loss Saturday, Vandagriff dropped back to pass 15 times. He was pressured on nine of those and sacked four times.
“I think he’ll be fine,” Stoops said. “We have to play good around him. He has to have some time, and we have to have a good plan for him. He’s playing a great defense and Brock is a tough, resilient guy. But we have to play well around him.”
As usual, Georgia will be coming into Saturday’s game with one of the nation’s stronger defenses. The good news for Vandagriff is he knows the Bulldogs well. That bad news, though, is they also know him well.
“It’ll be exciting to play him,” Georgia sophomore defensive back Joenel Aguero said. “I went up against him a lot last year, running with the (second string) and everything. So, it’ll be exciting to play him and reunite. We’ll see how everything goes.”
The whole Vandagriff family had hoped to be at Saturday’s game. For them, that is never a small undertaking.
Vandagriff’s youngest sister, Audrey, who plays softball at the University of Alabama, will be there. But his other sister, Anna Greer (better known as “AG”), is a sophomore volleyball player at Eastern Kentucky. Though Eastern Kentucky is located only 30 miles from Lexington, she will be playing a match with her team at Central Michigan.
Who knows when all the Vandagriffs will be together. Minus one, though, Saturday’s Georgia-Kentucky game at Kroger Field will a family reunion for one little family from Bogart.
“We’re locked in no matter how tough it’s going to be,” Greg Vandagriff said. “We try to get to every game we can. There are always dynamics we have to handle, like how we’re gonna get there and whether to drive or fly and things like that. It’s always something, but we’re always gonna find a way to be there.”
