Georgia football: Kirby Smart hints JT Daniels could steal Stetson Bennett’s job soon

JT Daniels may end up taking Stetson Bennett IV’s job away for Georgia football.

Georgia football may see JT Daniels win the starting job over Stetson Bennett IV here soon.

Georgia Bulldogs head coach Kirby Smart appeared in the first hour of The Paul Finebaum Show on Monday afternoon. While he reaffirmed the show’s host that Bennett is the Georgia starting quarterback, other signal-callers were able to get some reps in their bye week ahead of the Kentucky Wildcats game on Saturday. Is Daniels’ insertion into the starting lineup an inevitability?

Stetson Bennett could be in danger of losing his job

For the first four games of their 2020 college football season, Georgia has had to rely on its former fourth-string quarterback and last year’s backup to Jake Fromm in Bennett. With Jamie Newman opting out, Daniels still recovering from last year’s torn ACL with the USC Trojans and D’Wan Mathis not all that far removed from brain surgery, Bennett has emerged as the Dawgs’ starter.

While Bennett has outperformed expectations so far, he did not look great in the second half of Georgia’s loss to the Alabama Crimson Tide. Though Georgia was expected to lose in Tuscaloosa anyway, how the Dawgs play in two weeks vs. the arch-rival Florida Gators down in Jacksonville will decide their season. That is easily the hardest game left on Georgia’s regular-season slate.

Though Bennett is certainly capable of leading the Dawgs to victory over an inconsistent Kentucky team, how sure are we he can give Georgia what it needs to beat Kyle Trask and the Gators at TIAA Bank Field? That game essentially clinches an SEC East division title and the right to lose to Alabama in the 2020 SEC Championship in Atlanta. Does Georgia even get there with Bennett?

That’s an interesting conundrum because we really don’t know. If Daniels is healthy enough to play at some point this season, Smart needs to play the guy. I mean, he did transfer from USC to Georgia to have an opportunity to play some ball for a national championship contender. Unlike Bennett, Daniels was a blue-chip prospect coming out of high school. His talent will win out.

Here’s the truth from one of the hearts beating for Dawg Nation. If Smart wants to start Bennett vs. Kentucky, we can live with that, so long as the Dawgs don’t get upset in Lexington. That’d be awful. However, we won’t be able to sleep at night if the Dawgs lose to Florida with the better quarterback holding a clipboard on the sidelines. It’s not a winnable situation for Bennett in Duval.

By Smart saying other guys are getting reps, it signifies the quarterback competition is still on. Smart has a bad tendency to stick with the perceived hot hand, despite having more talent and upside on the bench. It defined the three-year run with Fromm under center. Again, Fromm was a great college quarterback, but Jacob Eason and Justin Fields were the more talented players.

After what we saw in Tuscaloosa, Georgia does not need to win the SEC over Alabama for Smart to remain in favor with Dawg Nation. Sometimes, the other team is just better than yours. But what absolutely cannot happen is knowingly starting players who aren’t as good as their backups. Though Fromm over Fields was a different circumstance, Bennett over Daniels is emphatically not.

If Bennett starts over Daniels in Jacksonville, Smart will face major criticism after a likely defeat.

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