Georgia football: 30 greatest players of the Mark Richt era

• SEC Champion (2002)
• SEC Championship Game MVP (2002)
• First-Team All-SEC (2002)
• 2x Second-Team All-SEC (2003-04)

It was only a matter of time before this guy made the list. David Greene is one of the finest quarterbacks to play his Saturdays in Athens. The southpaw from Snellville comes in at No. 3 of the greatest former Dawgs to have played for Mark Richt.

Greene initially committed to Georgia out of South Gwinnett High School in 2000 to play for then head coach Jim Donnan. While he would be redshirted in his lone season under Donnan in 2000, Greene would become the starting quarterback under Richt during his first four seasons leading the team.

Though he wasn’t the most athletic or had the strongest left arm, all Greene seemed to do in Georgia uniform was win. He was a massive reason for the Dawgs’ swift turnaround under Richt. While he starred under center for four years, Greene is best remembered in Athens for two things: quarterbacking the team to an SEC Championship in 2002 and “Hobnail Boot”.

In terms of the greatest plays in Georgia football history, “Hobnail Boot” easily cracks the top-five. It’s not quite No. 1, as that would be “Run, Lindsay, Run”, but Larry Munson’s call of “Hobnail Boot” gives Dawg Nation chills over 17 years later.

At the time, Tennessee was the preeminent team in the SEC East. Former Florida head coach Steve Spurrier was about to leave the SEC for the Washington Redskins gig. Tennessee was only a few years removed from the glory years under Phillip Fulmer with Peyton Manning at quarterback. Simply put, winning in Knoxville at Neyland Stadium in the early 2000s was close to impossible.

Greene would orchestrate arguably the greatest drive in Georgia football history after giving up a late score where the Vols took back the lead. Being able to beat Tennessee on their own turf on a fullback pass to Vernon Haynes was incredible. It was Richt’s first signature win and one of Munson’s greatest calls. “We just stepped on their face with a hobnail boot and broke their nose!” Chills ever single time.

From that moment on, Richt had full faith in his starting quarterback Greene. Yes, he would play D.J. Shockley in some spurts, but it was Greene who guided the Dawgs back to national relevancy in the early 2000s. In four seasons with the Dawgs, Greene completed 59.0 percent of his passes for 11,528 yards, 72 touchdowns and 32 interceptions.

After his final game in 2004, Greene exhausted his eligibility by setting an NCAA record for most wins by a collegiate starting quarterback with 42, besting Manning. While he would be a fifth-round pick by the Seattle Seahawks in the 2005 NFL Draft, Greene never played a snap in a regular season during his four-year NFL career. Regardless, Greene is firmly on the Mount Rushmore of Georgia quarterbacks, and certainly that during the Richt era in Athens.