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Georgia knows the key to unlocking a more consistent Gunner Stockton in 2026
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Georgia knows the key to unlocking a more consistent Gunner Stockton in 2026
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Stockton has proven to be amazing in the short yard passes and runs and we can certainly make it to the playoffs again next year with him doing that… but he will go undrafted and be another Aaron Murray that breaks stats for Georgia but has no future. He is an amazing 4 star QB but everything changes if he can reliably hit those long shots and that's going to be more difficult without some of our experienced WR stars like Branch.
Just as Georgia learned in the Richt-era that you can't run if the opposing team knows that you are going to run and not pass, Stockton needs to have that reliable long bomb to open up more of the shorter game.
I. for one, am grateful that Gunner Stockton is our offensive leader and quarterback!!
Go Dawgs!
The thing that GS needs to improve the most is movement within the pocket and throwing the ball accurately on the run. I don't know whether those things can be taught or are instinctive, but that will take him to the next level as a QB and the team to the next level offensively.
I think you meant to use the word "Unleash"....not "unlock". Lol.…i don't think Stockton has been locked up, at all.
Inconsistencies arising from protection issues, blocked passes and dropped balls will all be resolved before Stockton takes the field. THAT will "unlock & unleash" a more consistent offense & quarterback.
Stockton is playing elite football. He just needs to get everybody around him, to play elite, along with him. Raise everybody else's game, in other words.
That's his next step, in development....imo.
Go Dawgs!
@kirkhilles Aaron Murray - who put up 13,000 career passing yards and 121 career TDs despite being pounded behind Richt's OLs that were nowhere near as good as what UGA has had for the past 9 years and having nowhere near as good a defense - is a much better QB than any who ever started a game for Kirby Smart. Murray's problem with the NFL is that he played in the wrong era, back when you still had to be a pocket passer who could consistently hit vertical routes like Brady and the Mannings. In today's NFL where the rules changes allow you to run what was once considered college offenses - seriously a bunch of Mike Leach style air raid guys are now NFL OCs and HCs - meaning Baker Mayfield is able to take two different teams to the playoffs, Lamar Jackson is a 2 time NFL MVP and 5'8" Kyler Murray is a viable NFL QB, Murray is a 12 year NFL player and in the right situation - like Mayfield in Tampa - he is a starter and regular playoff QB.
Not picking on Mayfield. But the guy did walk on to Kliff Klingsbury's air raid program at Texas Tech. (Klingsbury was later hired as head coach for the Arizona Cardinals and ran pretty much the same offense there). And he ran a modified air raid at Oklahoma. Had he entered the NFL at the same time that Murray did, he doesn't have a chance. He is a career backup at best, and considering his maturity issues a lot of franchises wouldn't have even wanted him as a backup. By contrast, Murray in his prime would have been a better QB for the current Bucs system than Mayfield is now.
As Gunner and the offense goes then so goes the Dawgs…we've all heard it before - better reads, more accurate vertical passing, and a more balanced offense. I'm proud of how Stockton has improved, but there is more work to be done.
@kirkhilles…it's not just the longer throws and explosive plays that we have lacked, it is the medium/intermediate passing game that we have mostly missed. I keep going back to that first Ole Miss game we won last season. 89 yards of passing completions to Luckie and Delp. 510 yards of total offense. 8 different receivers. IMO, that was our best offensive performance all year, and the variety of that offense kept the Ole Miss defense off-balanced. Where did that go?
QB play is not the only position that needs to "rise up". Our WR's and TE's need to learn how to get open. I am not sold on our OL giving him time, so someone has to be open on every play. We lived last year on late game heroics, but this will eventually be our undoing. Time will tell….
There’s Always room for improvement for the whole team. Gunner is not excluded. Theres one thing Im extremely confident of. And that’s no one will work any harder than Gunner to improve. I Believe he Can and I Believe he Will. He’s his own biggest critic.
I also Believe Gunner played while injured Allot. The only injury that I remember being reported was the oblique injury. As I understand it a very painful injury.
I remember in one game can’t remember which the camera crew showed him putting on his pads and Wow !! He had some very u g l y bruises !! I honestly don’t know how he even got up at all from some of the hits he took. Less alone that jumping back up like he’s characteristic of doing.
Yes he made mistakes. But this Dawgs fan is very proud of Gunner and his achievements as first year starter. Now take that and build on it for a Better year !! I’m proud of the 2025 Dawgs Team as a whole. We lost some great players in the usual turn over. But we Still have some great players and I Believe we gained some will be great players as well.
Coaches and Players bust their butts in the off season and come back barking loud and proud !! Another new year with new opportunities !! Go Dawgs !!
The championship game exposed Carson Beck folks. Turns out all that stuff about his improved game and character growth was a sham. He just had a 1200 yard RB to hand off to (and without injuries and personal problems it would have been 1400 yards) and 1200 yard WR to throw it to.
Does that mean that Beck is a fraud? Of course not. It just means that championship teams are supposed to have future NFL prospects running and catching the ball. This is something that everyone in Athens freely acknowledged … until Kirby Smart became UGA's head coach. Now instead everyone blames Mike Bobo for failing to turn Oscar Delp and London Humphreys into Brock Bowers and Ladd McConkey. That Bowers and McConkey are putting up better numbers against NFL competition than they ever did in Monken's offense at UGA and that Monken was just let go as OC by his NFL team after his loaded offense won 1 playoff game in 3 seasons and even had a losing record this year … doesn't register.
I am going to mention this again: the Ohio State team that won the 2024 national title had 3 future NFL starters at WR and 2 future NFL starters at RB. Put Carson Beck on that Ohio State team and they not only win the national title but go undefeated. Put Will Howard in Athens in 2024 to throw to Arian Smith and Dom Lovett and hand off to a couple of guys who rush for 600 yards at barely 5 yards per carry and where there is no true LT for a pro style offense to boot and Howard has no chance. How do we know this? Because Howard was a 6th round pick. Beck meanwhile will go in the 3rd round at worst and with a great predraft process at the bottom of the 1st round.
So good grief: enough with bashing the QBs and coordinators. Instead, list the QBs that would win a national title with Talyn Taylor, London Humphryes, Sacovie White-Helton and Lawson Luckie catching the ball plus Nate Frazier and Chauncey Bowens running it. Frazier, who is no D'Andre Swift, let alone James Cook or Nick Chubb, is the sole UGA player who had 45 yards per game in offense in 2025. Frazier, Bowens and Georgia Tech import Canion are the only ones who had more than 15 yards per game. And if the 2025 recruits have the potential to do so much more in 2026 why didn't they play more in 2025?
Everyone in Athens knows that UGA can't win a title without pass rushers, big play linebackers and great defensive backs. So why do UGA fans blame the QB and coordinator for the shortcomings on offense when UGA goes multiple year stretches without more than one big time guy running or catching the ball, and sometimes not even that? This despite such guys playing for 3-4 years! Bowers was a dominant player in 2021, 2022 and 2023. Swift: 2017, 2018 and 2019.
I spent all of 2025 saying that if UGA goes anywhere in the playoff it will be groundbreaking because it will show that it is possible to win big time football games without the threat of a vertical or deep intermediate passing game. At the time the response was to challenge my lack of UGA fandom. Instead of, you know, asking why UGA can't have a vertical or deep intermediate passing game like every other contender. It sure beats trying to create a new way to win on offense doesn't it? Instead UGA only proved in 2025 that if it were possible to win titles with below average talent catching and running the ball, everyone would do it. (Yes, Nate Frazier may be a good RB as a junior. But he was a 60 ypg guy, average, as a sophomore and not even that good as a freshman. )
Look, Julian Sayin had future 1st round pick WR Carnell Tate, future 1st round pick WR Jeremiah Smith, 1000 yard rusher Bo Jackson and still didn't win a playoff game this year. If Gunner Stockton doesn't win a playoff game either what sense will it make to blame Stockton? Yes, talk about that 5 TD game against Texas. Texas wasn't that good, OK? They weren't competitive against Georgia or Ohio State, lost by 2 scores to 4-8 Florida and needed to beat up on their old Big 12 foes Oklahoma (also 3 losses) and Texas A&M to save their season. Texas didn't play Oregon, Indiana, Ole Miss, Miami, Alabama or anyone else who actually won a playoff game in 2025. Because if they had they would have lost those games too. Texas barely got by Vanderbilt 34-31. At home. Meaning that of their 3 wins against ranked teams in 2025, 2 were home, a third at a "neutral site" in their home state and all were against rebuilding programs with recently hired coaches. If Indiana beat Oregon, an actually good team, 56-22, what do you think they would have done to Texas?
Maybe UGA needs better at QB and OC than Carlson and Bobo. Fine. But they are still going to need much better players at WR and RB regardless of who the QB and OC are. Maybe if UGA had a fanbase and media to actually pressure the head coach the way that the fanbase and media do at programs like LSU, Bama, Ohio State (Day needed to win the 2025 to save his job), Michigan etc. Smart would have started prioritizing future NFL talent at WR and RB by now instead of getting guys with average or worse numbers from middling programs from the portal (an approach that has landed UGA far more Trevor Etiennes and RaRa Thomases than Zachariah Branches).
Doesn’t need to be told that he’s the greatest. He doesn’t flinch if you get on him. He doesn’t, if you say something positive or praise him, he doesn’t get too high. He just goes to work.
I think what CMB is not saying is…And then there was Carson Beck…if he’s not saying I am. Great sportsmanship at the end of that CFP finale by the way CB. So glad to have Gunner representing the face of our program. Now get to work son. We need just another level of improvement out of you and we’ll be in great shape.
Biggest area of improvement is obviously deep passes. Gunter ranked second to last in the SEC in air yards per attempt and dead last in playoff teams.
He turned down a lot of deep passes too early to either check down or take off running. The question is why. Specifically, how much of it was Kirby/Bobo constantly telling him “just be safe and don’t mess up”?
Holy shht. I went to use a dictionary and every single word was gone. Found em…
@randomsportsfan…another interesting take. I do agree that our mediocre WR room may not be enough. Yes, I wish we had NFL-caliber RBs, but you do with what you have. I agree that we simply do not have the offensive playmakers like Ohio State and Indiana had on their Natty winning teams.
Do we need to keep going back to what Pollack said several years ago…Georgia has a bunch of very good players, but not a lot of great players?
I just have to hope the Dawgs can do with what they have.
And if not Stockton, who would you pick as the Dawg's QB in place of him that could do better with the talent we have going into '26?
We need Gunner to open up the passing plays. This upcoming season looks promising. We hate Nate Frazier, big year he’s looking at a first round grade. We have plenty of TEs, need to utilize them more often. Few unproven WRs but I think London could have 600-700 yards type. If we can get 500 from T. Taylor, that would be a win. IMO - if we can get the new OL coach to improve our play, we can achieve all of these above.
a lot of what happened to Gunner was the play calling from the OC and HC. Yes Gunner can improve but I hope the OC takes a long look at the plays called last season and try to change up his routine. Go Dawgs