Georgia and Carson Beck missing Brock Bowers and Ladd McConkey more than anticipated

Last season, Georgia tight end Brock Bowers missed four games and wide receiver Ladd McConkey missed five. Even with extended absences from his two favorite receivers, first-year starting quarterback Carson Beck threw for 3,941 yards and 24 touchdowns with just six interceptions. Beck returned to Athens as the presumptive top quarterback prospect for the 2025 NFL Draft and a 2024 Heisman Trophy favorite, but he returned without Bowers and McConkey, which appears to be a bigger deal than anyone realized. 

Bowers became the No. 13 overall pick in the 2024 NFL draft, going to the Las Vegas Raiders, and McConkey had to wait until Round 2 to head to Los Angeles as the 34th overall pick of the Chargers. Now, both are flourishing in the league as rookies, and Beck is struggling with his new group of pass catchers through No. 5 Georgia’s 3-1 start. 

In Week 5, Beck had the worst performance of his season-plus as Georgia’s starting QB, turning the ball over four times in a 41-34 loss to Alabama. After going down 28-0, Beck led a furious second-half comeback and finished 27/50 passing for 439 yards with three touchdowns, but three interceptions and a lost fumble. 

Beck was awful in the first half, that would have been the case regardless of who was playing receiver, but he wasn’t at fault for his first turnover, which led Alabama to a 21-0 lead. 

Beck sensed pressure and changed the play pre-snap. Oscar Delp and the left side of the Georgia offensive line are clearly blocking for a screen pass to Arian Smith, but in a raucous Bryant-Denny Stadium, Smith may not have heard the call. That came after he dropped a pass on the first drive of the game, which was one of Beck’s best throws of the night and would have been an excellent response to the Crimson Tide’s opening drive TD. 

Smith finished with a team-high six catches for 132 yards and a touchdown, and wide receiver Dillon Bell added 100 yards and a score on five grabs, but Georgia’s receivers had four drops in the game and in the absence of McConkey, who finished his final season in Athens with 30 catches for 478 yards and two touchdowns, no true No. 1 has emerged. 

It’s not just the wide receivers who have failed to step up and thrive with the additional target share vacated by McConkey. Junior tight end Oscar Delp appeared to be Bowers’ heir-apparent, in the four games without Bowers, then a 6-foot-5 245-pound sophomore, Delp racked up nine catches for 111 yards and a touchdown, but through four games this season, he has just three grabs for 25 yards. 

Lawson Luckie has emerged as Georgia’s best tight end while Delp ranks 18th of the 19 Bulldogs to be targetted this season in yards per route run at an abysmal 0.37, and among the 203 tight ends in the country with at least five targets, Delp ranks 194th. Bowers averaged 2.65 yards per route run in 2023 and caught 56 passes for 717 yards and six touchdowns. 

McConkey and Bowers weren’t the only two productive pass-catchers that Georgia lost this offseason. Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint also left for professional football and Rara Thomas was dismissed from the team after an offseason arrest. McConkey, Bowers, Rosemy-Jacksaint, and Thomas were four of Beck’s five leading receivers and accounted for 49.4% of Georgia’s receiving yards. 

It’s not even just that Beck doesn’t have Bowers and McConkey, it’s that he no longer has access to the areas of the field where they dominated. Bowers, the country’s best tight end, and McConkey, who frequented the slot, were excellent over the middle on the field. 

In 2023, 20.3% of Beck’s throws were over the short middle of the field and 16.3% targetted the intermediate middle (from 10-19 yards downfield and between the numbers). Beck has always thrown with elite anticipation between the numbers and last season was hyper-efficient, particularly to the intermediate-middle. 

He’s lost the ability to attack the interior of the opposing secondary and the absence of Bowers and McConkey is the biggest reason. A third of Bowers’ targets came in that area in 2023 and he caught eight of 11 passes for 177 yards and two touchdowns and for what it’s worth, he posted a 99.5 PFF receiving grade. McConkey also feasted in that part of the field with seven catches on nine targets for 183 yards and a score. 

Right now, the Georgia passing game is a question of the chicken or the egg. Was Beck’s stellar season in 2023 a product of his excellent playmakers and reliable run game, so we spent the offseason overrating him and now he’s getting exposed? Or, is Beck still one of the best quarterbacks in the country, but his lack of talented pass-catchers this year is holding him back? 

The answer is probably somewhere in the middle, and either way, it leaves Kirby Smart with the same problem, and likely without a viable solution. Smart and his staff added Colbie Young from Miami and London Humphreys from Vanderbilt in the transfer portal this offseason in hopes of offsetting the talent exodus, but Young hasn’t been much more than a big-bodied red zone threat, and Humphreys has made only two catches on the season and missed Week 5 with mononucleosis. 

Jalen Milroe outplayed Carson Beck on Saturday night, and the former’s mobility was a huge reason why. Milroe ran for 117 yards and two touchdowns, but he was much more efficient through the air, completing 27 of his 33 attempts for 374 yards and two touchdowns with one interception. 

Georgia wasn’t the only team that lost receiving talent, Alabama saw Jermaine Burton leave for the NFL and Isaiah Bond transfer to Texas, but Kalen DeBoer with a little help from Nick Saban, did a much better job replenishing his group of playmakers to elevate his Heisman-conteding quarterback. Germie Bernard followed DeBoer from Washington and Ryan Williams, a Saban recruit that DeBoer held on to, is a true freshman phenom with 16 catches for 462 yards and five touchdowns at just 17 years old. 

With the game on the line, Beck and Milroe both decided to trust one of their new receivers to win a one-on-one ball, Milroe’s did and did a lot with it, Georgia’s didn’t and that was the difference. 

Maybe Carson Beck isn’t the No. 1 pick next spring, maybe he never should have been, but without dynamic pass-catchers, we’re not seeing the best version of Georgia’s fifth-year quarterback, not even close.