The surprise candidate to win the Georgia football quarterback job

Could Georgia football have a surprise starting quarterback for Week 1?

What if JT Daniels isn’t ready to be Georgia football’s starting quarterback Week 1 in 2020?

With Jamie Newman opting out of his redshirt senior season to enter the 2021 NFL Draft, one would think the redshirt sophomore Daniels would be the next man up to start for the Dawgs on fall Saturdays. However, Daniels is working his way back from a torn ACL suffered back in Week 1 last year when he was the former starter of the USC Trojans. Will someone else start for Georgia?

Who could Georgia football’s surprising starting quarterback for Week 1 be?

Though it is a tough blow for the Georgia Bulldogs to lose Newman to the NFL Draft without him ever taking a snap for them, Kirby Smart‘s team does have plenty of talent remaining in its quarterback room. If fully healthy, Daniels would be ready to go Week 1 on the road vs. the Arkansas Razorbacks on Sept. 26. However, Georgia can beat the Hogs even if he doesn’t play.

It might be a road date for the Dawgs and they may be at a quarterbacking disadvantage with Florida Gators graduate transfer Feleipe Franks as the Hogs’ new starter. However, this will be former Georgia offensive line coach Sam Pittman’s first game as a Power 5 head coach. He may get it right in Fayetteville, but it would take a biblical miracle for the Hogs to stun the Dawgs.

So with Newman out of the picture and Daniels still working his way back from a torn ACL, we may very well be looking at either Stetson Bennett IV or even D’Wan Mathis starting Week 1 for Georgia at Arkansas. Bennett served as Jake Fromm’s primary backup last year and played some after briefly going to the junior college route before coming back to Athens on scholarship in 2019.

While Bennett may get his first, and possibly only, career start for the Dawgs at Arkansas, the guy to keep an eye on here is Mathis. Though Smart knows he’ll be getting a serviceable Greyson Lambert or Hutson Mason-type of quarterback in Bennett for a game or two, Mathis has been apparently lighting it up in practice. At 6-foot-6, the former four-star recruit may get his chance.

Interestingly enough, the pro-style quarterback Mathis compared favorably to coming out of Belleville, Michigan was the former Florida starter Franks. It was never a talent issue for Franks in Gainesville, but more of a lack of maturity that hindered his success. Like Daniels, a season-ending injury ended his time at his first Power 5 school before inevitably transferring. What if it is Mathis?

The weirdest thing in all of this is the one coach in the SEC who might know how to devise a gameplan against Mathis as a starter would be Pittman, as he was on Smart’s staff before becoming the Main Hog in Fayetteville this past offseason. He’s seen Mathis work in practice and knows what his strengths and limitations are. However, Mathis and Georgia run a new offense.

No longer is it Mike Bobo, Brian Schottenheimer, Jim Chaney or James Coley run first to open up the pass sort of approaches. Though the Dawgs will still run the ball because they’re the Dawgs and that’s what the do, we may see more modern passing concepts in Athens under Todd Monken than we have, arguably ever. Apparently, Mathis is flourishing in this new system in place at UGA.

If Daniels can’t go Week 1 vs. the Hogs, it may be Mathis over Bennett who gets the starting nod.

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