One-of-a-kind Bennett leaves Georgia in style
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Away from the jubilation, in an office at SoFi Stadium, Kirby Smart found his 10-year-old son, Andrew, weeping. The Georgia football coach thought the boy had gotten injured roughhousing, or perhaps someone hurt his feelings.
“Why are you crying?” the father remembered asking before making a joke. “You’re going to ruin my moment.”
“Stetson is leaving,” Andrew said after Georgia’s 65-7 victory over TCU in the championship game Monday night, expressing disappointment that Bulldogs quarterback Stetson Bennett had played his final college game. “He’s going to go.”
“He's 25 years old!” Smart exclaimed. “He’s got to go.”
You don’t need to be a Georgia fan to feel conflicted about the end of one of the most remarkable, successful and lengthy college football careers any quarterback has ever had. Bennett, a native of Blackshear, Ga., entered college as a walkon in 2017. He was a discarded, undersized player from the same high school class as elite prospect Tua Tagovailoa, who has already been in the NFL for three seasons. Bennett took the scenic route from Georgia to Jones College in Mississippi and back to Georgia. From an extended stay on the bench to a starter who inspired skepticism. From a solid complementary player on a championship team to the unquestioned engine of the new most dominant program in the sport.
Give Bennett his props one last time while he strides away as a back-to-back champion. There will never be another Stetson Bennett. It's quite a thing to say because he is Stetson Bennett IV, and with that kind of family tradition, Stetson
Bennett V seems inevitable. Nevertheless, he is an original. If you were tempted to cast the Bulldogs as just the hottest football factory in this high-revenue, production-line sport, Bennett provided a counter to restore the appeal of amateurism. Sports fans have a nasty habit of turning against excessive winners, but while Bennett had plenty of those haters, he was mostly respected as the 5-foot-11-inch overachiever who grew from forgotten boy to an influential grown-up demonstrating the joy of a young man's game.
On Monday, he saw the curtain close in the most elegant manner possible. And he didn’t just witness it. He performed. He played what Smart considered “the best game of his career” because of his decisionmaking and all-around orchestration of Georgia's emphatic trouncing of TCU.
Bennett completed 18 of 25 passes. He threw for 304 yards and four touchdowns. He rushed for two more scores. He ran to beat a max blitz for a first down, an impressive display of athleticism and instincts.
He changed the offensive line's protection and zipped an NFL-caliber pass for a completion. He did it all before exiting the game — and college football — with 13 minutes and 25 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter. At the time, Georgia led, 52-7. The rest of the game should have been played under confetti.
“When you have a quarterback that can do the protections and check things and know what the defense is doing, yet still beat you with your feet, you've got a highlevel quarterback,” Smart said. “And people have slept on Stetson Bennett for too long. He needs an opportunity to play for a long time at the next level.”