Carson Beck is not headed to the 2025 NFL Draft after being pinned as the potential No. 1 overall pick ahead of the season. Rather, he is headed to Miami to spend a year as the Hurricanes starting quarterback.
That’s something no one in the nation can honestly claim that they drew up, and in a way, it is totally understandable.
Beck will take over a promising team that has emerged as a consistent contender in the Mario Cristobal era, and Cam Ward has shown just how much transferring to the program can cause a prospect’s draft stock to skyrocket.
That’s perfectly illustrated by the fact that the former journeyman signal-caller is likely going to be the first quarterback and one of the first three prospects regardless of position to come off of the board.
So, there’s plenty of incentive for Beck, or any quarterback for that matter, to want to take advantage of that. But, there’s more to the story. And, weirdly enough, you need not to look any further than the case of Gunner Stockton to see that.
How exactly does Stockton factor into this? It’s more simple than it seems.
Georgia fans were calling for Beck to be sent to the bench toward the end of the season and into the postseason because of the lack of success the passing game was having.
Georgia had one of its worst supporting casts it has had in recent history during the 2024 season. Head coach Kirby Smart even noted that the team had subpar depth in a way he has not exactly seen in his time at Georgia so far.
“There is not a position that we have enough depth at,” Smart said when he met with the media during the season. “I mean, like I repeatedly say, we have less depth than we’ve ever had before. So we evaluate the transfer portal on who fits our culture more than we do who fits our talent level.”
There’s a difference between Stockton and Beck — Stockton is not nearly as developed as Beck is as a pure passer or a mental processor. The gap is a country mile wide, and that much was greatly exposed in Georgia’s 23-10 loss to Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl.
Stockton made a multitude of “rookie mistakes” that can be expected with any quarterback who does not have adequate in-game reps. That much is not Stockton’s fault and can only be remedied with time.
It’s safe to say many Georgia fans were lamenting not having Beck in the game for the Sugar Bowl and were taking back a lot of what they had previously said.
However, there is no denying the statement that Stockton made a statement and injected life in a way it seemed like Beck could not when the Bulldogs got the 22-19 win over the Texas Longhorns in the conference championship.
The secret sauce Stockton has is that he has a level of mobility and escapability that Beck does not possess.
While Beck does have that to some degree, it is nowhere close to what Stockton has.
Even though Beck is the better overall quarterback prospect by and large, he will never reach his full potential as a pocket passer first and foremost with a receiving corps that had the worst drop rate in all of college football.
There are things Stockton can generate with his legs as a playmaker that Beck is not capable of, which is why he looked so good in that SEC Championship Game victory over Texas when Beck got injured.
It will be interesting to see what happens for both parties with Stockton looking to be Georgia’s next version of Stetson Bennett and Beck entering an entirely new environment, but there should be no question that Beck did what he had to do to reach his full potential.
And perhaps there’s no other explanation that Georgia failing him in its pass-catchers drove him to have no other choice but than to make this move.
