kirby smart georgia football

ATHENS — The Georgia quarterback position ultimately comes down to one thing: Trust.

Kirby Smart expounded on that very thing while conducting his rounds of interviews at SEC Media Days last week in Nashville, from the ballroom stage to the SEC Network side sets and then Radio Row.

“Decision making,” Smart said, asked on Atlanta’s 680 A.M. what he needs to see to determine his starting quarterback. “Good decisions, smart with the ball and what you do on third down.”

Rising fourth-year QB Carson Beck would seem to be in the drivers’ seat to win the job, as he has a great deal more game action experience than Brock Vandagriff or Gunner Stockton, and he received the opening first-team reps in the spring game.

But Smart was clear that Beck has not yet done enough to be named the starter, to the extent UGA did not make him an option to vote on for the preseason All-SEC team.

Earlier this offseason after a scrimmage Smart went into detail about just how much goes into the QB position at Georgia, and the amount of processing that needs to take place.

“We’re a quarterback-driven offense, so can you process the information?” Smart said, addressing the media at a press conference following Scrimmage One on Saturday.

“That means get the signal, get people lined up then see what the defense is in and figure out are we in the right situation? (And then) which of these three choices that Coach (Mike) Bobo is giving me am I going to utilize on this play?

“And then the play happens. There might be a mistake or a breakdown, and you not go full metal jacket and have catastrophe mode and put us in a bad situation.”

It’s not just a matter of which QB is most talented or has the highest ceiling; Smart has shown in the past he wants the QB with the highest floor.

Smart has said he’s going to expose his talented, but relatively inexperienced quarterbacks, to situations this fall in practices that will test their processing skills.

“People think, well how does he do on 7-on-7, what did he do on first-and-10 when he threw that play-action bomb, what run check did he make?” Smart said.

“That stuff is pretty common, and pretty universal, but what’s not is how did he function on third down when the bullets start flying and there’s pressure and things are changing the most difficult down in football is third down and that’s where the quarterbacks separate themselves.”

Indeed, and while Smart said there’s no substitution for game reps, a talented Georgia defensive will test Bobo’s offense in August.

“So through three weeks of fall camp, we’ll evaluate based on who does 2-minute well,” Smart said, “and who does third down well, and who leads the team.”

It won’t look easy like the Spring G-Day Game — it will be designed to be difficult.

“We’ll know when they go against the defense and they’ve got 10 third downs in a row and we’re blitzing the hell out of them,” Smart told ESPN.

“We’ll find out then because they’ve got to go against competition.”