‘Yes sir,’ Georgia QB Brock Vandagriff knows how to handle tough coaching

ATHENS — Brock Vandagriff learned a long time ago how to handle tough coaching, and he noted earlier this week that it’s a good thing.

Vandagriff is locked in a competition with Carson Beck for the Georgia football quarterback starting job, splitting first-team reps this spring.

Coach Kirby Smart has indicated there’s no set timeline, and the competition might even run into next season.

Vandagriff and Beck are both learning from new offensive coordinator Mike Bobo, a former UGA quarterback and former coordinator under previous head coach Mark Richt.

“Coach Bobo, he’s pretty intense,” Vandagriff said, echoing the sentiments of former Georgia players who played quarterback at UGA under new offensive coordinator Mike Bobo when he served under Richt.

“On the first day he came in the quarterback room and said, ‘I’m going to coach y’all hard, and I hope y’all are open to that.’ Heck, he didn’t really give us a choice.

“He said, ‘I’m going to coach y’all hard, and that’s the way it’s going to go.’ We all said, ‘Yes sir,’ and I think it’s been really good. He has a reason for everything he does. His meetings go well.”

Former Georgia QB Hutson Mason shared how exciting it was to play for Bobo.

“You see those fiery Kirby Smart pregame speeches out there, and that was Bobo 10 years ago,” Mason said. “Ask any former player, it was just that the stuff never got leaked.”

Vandagriff shared how important the QB meetings are for him, as he indicated it’s typically one of the most appropriate times to give feedback.

“You have to take coaching,” Vandagriff explained, asked the best advice he received from his father, Prince Avenue Christian state championship coach Greg Vandagriff.

“Where were practices where I’d be running around the practice field at Prince Avenue for the last 30 minutes of practice after doing something wrong,” Vandagriff explained. It was because I talked back or said something.”

The lesson learned, Vandagriff said, was “just making sure I look my coach dead in the eyes and say ‘Yes sir’ whether you like it or not.”

Indeed, former Georgia quarterback Jake Fromm once said the head coach is always right even when he’s not.

Vandagriff said he has applied that concept at Georgia.

“If you have the explanation and they were wrong, you can tell them in the meeting room,” Vandagriff said. “They don’t want to hear it on the field is the biggest thing that my dad taught me.

“It’s helped me because — knock on wood — I haven’t had anything happen like that because I’ve been able to take coaching and just say ‘Yes sir’ on the field and maybe go back in the meetings and ask about it.”

WATCH: Carson Beck controlling competitive fire in Georgia QB derby