Georgia football has a few starters that they need to replace heading into their College Football Playoff matchup with Notre Dame. The obvious is Carson Beck, but everyone knows Gunner Stockton will be his backup for the Sugar Bowl. But there is another starter who has been ruled out for the season, and that is punter Brett Thorson.
Thorson was also hurt during the SEC Championship game and was immediately ruled out for the rest of the season. While punter may seem like an easy position to replace, in reality this is a really big change just like the quarterback change because special teams has more of an impact on the game than most people give it credit for.
While we got to see Stockton in action in the second half after Beck was injured, Georgia never had to punt the ball after Thorson was hurt, so we don't know who Thorson's replacement will be yet.
Kirby Smart was recently asked how the competition for the new punter is going, and in true fashion he did not share too many specifics.
"Yeah, that's a day-to-day competition, to be honest with you," Smart said via 247sports.com. "I mean, we get a lot of guys reps, the guys that punt, and we'll decide, you know, probably closer to the game as we finalize that, but that's been, you know, going on since we started back."
Kirby Smart does share who the likely candidate is
"Drew's (Miller) been great. He's done a good job. He's taken the majority of those reps, but when the job's open we let everybody punt. So we've got them all out there punting. You know, Gunner can punt, Puglisi can punt. We've got some wide receivers that can punt. I've had to punt a couple times, so we'll just keep going until we run out of punters."
Drew Miller is the most likely candidate to take over in Thorson's absense as he was listed as the second string punter heading into the SEC Championship game. And according to Smart, it sounds like Miller has done a great job in practice so far.
Georgia sending out the punt team is usually a sign for us fans at home to get a head start on any bathroom breaks or drink refills before the real action starts again, but you may not want to do that during the Sugar Bowl. Miller was a highly ranked punter out of high school, but seeing real snaps for the first time in college is an intimidating thing for any player, especially when it's occurring in the College Football Playoff.
So be sure to pay close attention to the first few punts from Georgia, because it will be the first live snaps of Miller's career.