Justin Fields did not win the Georgia Football starting quarterback job on Saturday, but he did show what all of the hype was about.
Ok, so I’m going to start by acknowledging that Justin Fields is not going to be the starter for UGA this season. Right now, you can already see lots of articles out there talking about how much better Fields was than the incumbent Jake Fromm in Saturday’s G-day. In some ways, that’s true, Fields had a great day and Fromm underwhelmed. There are, however, a few caveats to both of those observations.
Firstly, by all accounts, Fromm has been lights out all spring. He had a bad day at the office and he wasn’t helped by his receivers who dropped quite a few passes. Kirby Smart also didn’t want to use the running game much for Fromm’s check’s at the line of scrimmage were limited. He wasn’t out there playing with the full playbook and that’s a problem for Fromm. One of his main attributes is his intelligence and in a scrimmage like yesterday, he never really got to use them.
Fromm was also going up against the first team defense. While there are some guys on that second unit that I really like, let’s not pretend that they are the same. Yesterday, we were all reminded just how good UGA’s starting defense might be in 2018. There is clearly a drop on the second unit and Fields was able to exploit that.
With all of that being said, there was a lot to like about Fields and his performance yesterday. He came into to program with a lot of hype as one of the top-ranked recruits in UGA history. His first practice scrimmage showed that this is a player to keep your eyes on.