Ryan Montgomery’s Georgia football story added its freshman chapter last fall. It unfolded as he hoped it would.
“I came here to be developed,” he said at the Sugar Bowl. “That’s why I came to Georgia. It is such a prestigious program. The culture here is just different. I love being here in the facility. There’s really nowhere else I’d rather be.”
“I love the guys in the room. My teammates. I’d do anything for them. It has just been an awesome opportunity. I’ve just been excited to learn, continue and grow.”
Montgomery redshirted this year while serving as the No. 3 QB behind Gunner Stockton and Ryan Puglisi. He played in the Charlotte game and completed his only pass attempt for 12 yards.
“This place is amazing,” Montgomery said. “It is such a great opportunity to be here and I couldn’t be happier.”
Montgomery, who was the nation’s No. 12 QB coming out of high school, didn’t require a lot of NIL to induce him to Athens. He was the one who actually pitched UGA about being a Dawg.
“I love the story of how he basically recruited Georgia,” Montgomery’s high school coach, Stefan Adams, said. “It is a sign of strong faith, trusting your gut and letting things unfold the right way.”
When Montgomery chose Georgia, he wasn’t worried about playing in his first or second year.
“This is a place where I wanted to be,” Montgomery said. “I just wanted to come here. Practice against the best. Develop. It is going to take time. I’ve seen steady improvements in my game since I’ve been here. It’s been a great opportunity thus far and I’m excited to just continue to be here and learn and grow.”
The Ryan Montgomery backstory predicted this
When Montgomery committed, he said he’d be calling UGA his home “for the next three to five years.” That was a nod to the slow-cook cycle Georgia turns to with its starting quarterbacks.
Gunner Stockton arrived in 2022 and didn’t start until the 2025 season. Carson Beck arrived in 2020 and didn’t start until 2023.
“You look at the past couple quarterbacks,” Montgomery said. “It takes time for them to get on the field and I understood that when I committed here. I came here to be developed and I have no plans on leaving or anything like that.”
“I want to be here. I mean I just want to continue to grow and learn and obviously having the coaching staff that we have here, why would I leave? There’s nowhere else for me to go. I can learn as much as I can from coach [Mike] Bobo and [offensive analyst] coach [Brandon] Streeter. Coach Smart. The guys in the quarterback room I mean, we’re all really close. I know we’re competing but we’re all great friends and really close and we love to see each other succeed. It has been an awesome opportunity.”
Stetson Bennett arrived in 2017, took a junior college detour and didn’t start until 2020. He didn’t become the clear “QB1″ until 2021.
While those stories unfolded, Georgia signed 5-star QB in Brock Vandagriff. He never started for the Dawgs. Georgia signed transfer JT Daniels, a former 5-star, but he eventually lost the job to Bennett.
Stockton was the QB signee in 2022.
The Bulldogs didn’t sign a QB in 2023 in order to prime their room for an elite QB in 2024. The Bulldogs saw 5-star Dylan Raiola leave the class at the 11th-hour, but longtime commit Ryan Puglisi stayed the course.
The Bulldogs signed Montgomery in 2025 but saw another 5-star courtship crash out in 2026 when Jared Curtis flipped to Vanderbilt. That story, coupled with Raiola’s flip, added to Georgia’s hardships with 5-star QBs during Smart’s tenure.
The stories of Jacob Eason and Justin Fields, both 5-star talents who lasted only one season, add to the chorus. That said, the program has still won more games and more national championships than anyone else in college football this decade.
If there’s only one takeaway to extrapolate here, it would be that QBs who put roots down in Athens tend to thrive. Those who constantly need convincing and re-recruited to be Dawgs do not.
Montgomery, Puglisi and Stockton have that in common.
Georgia looked at Julian Lewis and Matt Zollars in the 2025 class before locking things down with Montgomery. Montgomery basically told them he wanted to be at Georgia above everywhere else and that wasn’t changing.
But if he wasn’t their guy, he would need to know so he could move on to Florida or South Carolina. Montgomery detailed those moments with DawgNation below.
Georgia offensive coordinator Mike Bobo said at the Sugar Bowl that the staff is honest with its QB targets. They share the names of the other offers with the top prospects. Sometimes, there is a hierarchy they will take commitments from, and they share that with the top group.
“Sometimes the first one to commit gets it,” Bobo said. “With Ryan, we said there’s a certain order we are going in, but we love you. Love everything about you and he came to a spring practice with his Dad and a family friend and basically said, ‘I want to be here and around everything this program is about. I want to be pushed. I want every day to demand that I’m at my best,’ and I didn’t say ‘Okay, we are taking you’ at that point, but that stuck with me about this kid that basically wanted this life.”
“It is hard. It is hard every day, but he wanted this life to come be a Georgia quarterback. He had it set in his mind that ‘I can get to where I want to go’ by coming to the University of Georgia and that right there impressed all of us.”
He was limited last spring due to an August 2024 knee injury that cost him all but one series of his senior high school season. Montgomery has only gotten better. He’s continued to impress with what he’s shown UGA on the practice field so far.
Georgia signed an additional QB for Bobo’s room in Bryson Beaver. Beaver was a 2026 recruit just like Curtis. He signed with Oregon but opted for the portal after starter Dante Moore returned for 2026 and Raiola also transferred to the Ducks.
That shouldn’t be seen as a slight to anything Montgomery has done. It bears repeating that UGA had planned all along to take a 2026 QB with Curtis.
Have you seen this week’s “Before the Hedges” weekly recruiting special on YouTube?
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