Grading Carson Beck’s performance in Georgia’s Week 1 win over Clemson

Kirby Smart led Georgia to back-to-back national championships in 2021 and 2022 with a former JUCO quarterback Stetson Bennett. Bennett became a college football star but was never the NFL prospect or Heisman Trophy contender that Carson Beck is in 2024. 

Georgia’s roster is continually the best in the country, so Beck doesn’t have to be the best player on the field game-to-game, but by the end of his first year as the starter, he was. In Georgia’s Week 1 win over Clemson 34-3, Beck finished with 278 passing yards and two touchdowns while completing 23 of his 33 passes. 

After a slow start and a 6-0 halftime lead, Beck and the Georgia offense came alive, earning the senior quarterback the SEC Offensive Player of the Week. 

"Game manager" has become an overused insult for a quarterback who doesn’t have the talent to be a ceiling raiser for his offense. However, when you’re Carson Beck, leading the best team in the country that has won 40 straight regular season games, sometimes, a game manager is all you have to be. 

In Week 1, Georgia offensive coordinator Mike Bobo didn’t ask Beck to do much against Clemson’s defense, but everything he was asked to do, he executed perfectly. Bobo called a conservative game, likely believing Georgia’s talent would ultimately overwhelm a Clemson roster on the decline, a theory that was proven true. It's also a lot easier to do that when your quarterback doesn’t leave anything on the table. 

Beck’s first throw of over 15 yards downfield came with 6:15 remaining in the second quarter, a 31-yard completion to tight end Lawson Luckie off a hard play-action fake. Beck started the game with a pop-pass, two screens, and a first-down scramble on 3rd-and-10 before even attempting a pass beyond the line of scrimmage. For the game, Beck had a 2.38 time to throw and when he was kept clean, he had the ball out in 2.04 seconds. 

27.8% of Beck’s attempts were screen passes, 38.9% of them utilized play-action, and 10 of his 33 attempts were behind the line of scrimmage. Beck’s average depth of target was just 6.3 yards, the second-lowest of any of his career starts.

Georgia’s veteran quarterback played like one. He did what was asked, let his receivers make plays, like on Colbie Young’s and London Humphreys’ touchdown grabs, and then in the third quarter on a 3rd-and-10 with a 10-point lead, Beck made his best throw of the game. 

Beck got a clean pocket, one of the many advantages of playing for Georgia, and once he saw the underneath defender Khalil Barnes (No. 7) turn his back to run with the vertical route, Beck threw the dig route with excellent anticipation and accuracy for a conversion to Humphreys. An aggressive throw over the middle of the field beyond the sticks on third and long is the stuff that good NFL quarterbacks are made of.

As a thrower, Bobo made the test easy for Beck, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t get an A. However, on the ground, Beck elevated the Bulldog's offense and was more than a game-manager. He only ran twice for 23 yards, but both runs went for first downs and he generated 1.616 EPA per rush the eighth-best of any quarterback in the country in Week 1. 

It's not necessary to be a dual-threat quarterback to operate a modern offense, but you can no longer be a statue either.

Almost every play Beck made was in structure, but his most impressive off-schedule creation, his most underrated ability, was called back for offensive pass interference. The play was designed for Beck to get it out quickly to Delp running across the formation, against the flow of the run-fake, but Clemson sniffed it out, forcing Beck to bail to his right and make something out of nothing. 

If he continues to excel in this facet of the game, that will be the thing that differentiates Beck from the rest of the quarterbacks in the 2025 class. 

Clemson entered the year as a top-15 team, but once Georgia begins its SEC slate, the challenges will be tougher for Beck. In Week 1, it was a warm-up for the potential No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft and his new-look offense without Brock Bowers and Ladd McConkey, but he still showed why he’s in that conversation.