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Former 3-star Austin Kirksey will transfer from Nevada to walk-on at UGA
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Former 3-star Austin Kirksey will transfer from Nevada to walk-on at UGA
Former Walton High QB Austin Kirksey was rated as a 3-star QB in the 2019 class. He signed with Nevada, but now plans to return home to bolster the QB room at UGA.
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Welcome to the UGA Austin Kirksey! Georgia is the perfect home for solid student athletes of your integrity and character.
This is great news indeed! Welcome home Austin.
Welcome home!
Very good news. Looks like the set the Dawgs run.....also, he has some wheels on him.
Welcome!
Dude seems to have nice touch on the ball and a pair of wheels for feet to be called a Pro-sty;e passer. Welcome aboard, Austin - it is great to be a DAWG!!!
Forgive me for not getting overly excited about this. He's leaving behind a full scholarship to become a preferred walk-on at UGA (don't we already have at least one if not two of those at QB) where he will challenge who, Stetson Bennett for backup time (because if UGA thought he could be a starter he'd be getting a scholarship). I know it's spilled milk, but I would love, love, LOVE to get the back story on why we pushed away John Rhys Plumlee. That kid was ALL DAWG when a lot of kids were hemming and hawing about coming to Athens and then, like a week before signing day, we start talking to him about a blue shirt. and making him pay his own way for the first semester with no guarantee of a scholarship after that. So he takes his marbles and goes to Ole Miss where he has a great chance to be SEC Newcomer (formerly, freshman) of the year. But why? Did CKS get nervous that a true freshman would be Jake's primary backup and as a result, we pushed Plumlee away to go and get Bennett? Or does CKS believe Mathis (pre-brain surgery, of course) have a bigger upside than Plumlee? We UGA coaches really bothered that Plumlee appears to be making good on his plan to play college baseball, too? Whatever it is, it's turning out fowl. With Plumlee back there, I'm feeling like we could have been OK at QB next year, whether Jake stays or goes. Now, it's a crap shoot. Wish I knew why.
I'd like to see the other 58 QB's that look better than him.
Wish we could have gotten John Rhys Plumlee last year when we had the opportunity. He would have given our offense a much needed spark.
The issues with Plumlee:
First, blame Justin Fields. His transfer led UGA to panic slightly and extend an offer to Mathis (and bring back Stetson) so as to have enough people to play QB in the spring. Plumlee was never going to enroll early because of his baseball season commitments. Note that the blueshirt talk began right around the time of early December and the SEC Championship game. It has to be assumed that Kirby knew at that point that Fields was at least entertaining the idea of transferring pretty seriously and that Kirby saw his numbers were going to be off in the spring.
Second, there were no other scholarships available at that time. Sure, Kirby might have been able to count on some attrition somewhere along the way -- a Brenton Cox transfer, for example -- but he couldn't guarantee Plumlee a scholarship until 2020.
No one could foresee Mathis needing brain surgery in the summer -- at least that I'm aware of, no one does scholarship medical tests for brain lesions. Further, Mathis was actually a higher ranked player recruiting-wise.
You can always go back and read Jeff Sentell's articles on this if you need a refresher:
Thank you for that clear and detailed explanation @Dawgfan1995 . I remembered that Jeff Sentell had written extensively about this but couldn't remember all of his details. so thank you. A couple of things from his stories stood out, though, that give me pause about UGA's plan about this and what they knew even as far back as fall, about the Fields situation and how they planned to handle Plumlee. Follow me, if you will, on two points.
First, in one of Sentell's articles, Plumlee said the UGA staff told him that there was an injury to a player and so they had to use a 2019 scholarship for someone else that they didn't initially plan to. I'm trying to figure out who or what they injury was and who would have gotten a scholarship that wasn't initially recruited. Mathis wasn't signed by then so not him. So who was the "injured" Dawg that they had to use Plumlee's scholarship to replace on the roster? That's first question.
Second question makes me pause even more. One of the stipulations for being able to "blueshirt" a player is that the coaches can't make any in-home visits to him and he can't make any official visits to campus. So I wonder, in this case, why Plumlee never received either a home visit or got to take an official to visit, either of which would have forced UGA's hand on the matter. Plumlee said he didn't even know what a "blueshirt" was until CKS told him about the situation in December so I wonder if UGA coaches, in the back of their minds, were figuring this might be an approach they wanted to take with him all along, especially since they knew they couldn't get him on campus for spring practice? Just seems odd to me that you wouldn't visit him or have him on campus for an official visit at all during the fall unless you had some sort of inkling he might have to blueshirt. And I think CKS did have an inkling. I believe he probably knew Fields was halfway out the door long before the official announcement after the Sugar Bowl and he needed a backup for spring practice. But with Plumlee unwilling to come to school early, UGA was sort of in a bind. Looks like Ole Miss took advantage of that and swooped in on him. Good for them. Of course, if we had known about Mathis all along, as you said, we could have just given Plumlee his scholarship and everybody's happy now. I do hope Mathis can return healthy and show some of the reasons why he was originally an Ohio State signee.
Oh well, at least now I kind of know (or recall) how it all went down. Sort of a shame. I don't know that Plumlee's going to win any SEC championships or anything at Ole Miss, but he's an exciting player that I think would have looked good in red and black. Go Dawgs!
Hoping Jake comes back. SEC is a big bad jungle
Stetson Bennett is on scholarship..
With Fromm leaving, and basically unknown quantities in Mathis, Bennett and Beck, they need to find a graduate transfer for next year. I hope they target D’Eriq King.
Welcome Home!