Quarterback play is crucial to winning games in the SEC. Therefore, stopping quarterbacks on defense is a must for Georgia football.
2016 wasn’t exactly a stellar year for quarterbacks in the SEC. For a conference that has seen the likes of Cam Newton, Tim Tebow, Johnny Manziel, Aaron Murray, Matthew Stafford, Connor Shaw, and A.J. McCarron the last decade, last season really was one of the weakest in recent memory in terms of quality of SEC quarterbacks.
While a few like Austin Allen of Arkansas and Nick Fitzgerald of Mississippi State had good seasons, Jalen Hurts of Alabama was the only QB who had a good enough season to generate any legitimate Heisman talk.
That should change in 2017. With some first-year signal callers and a few upperclassmen like Allen and Drew Locke returning, 2017 will feature a much stronger crop of QB’s in the SEC. The only way we will play Bama is if we meet them in the SEC championship. So there will be no Jalen Hurts on this list.
For now, we are just going to look at the guys we know we’ll have to deal with during the regular season. Here’s the three quarterbacks I believe will challenge Georgia football’s pass defense the most this year.