The 10 greatest quarterbacks in Georgia football history

After deciding to come back for his final year at Georgia, Carson Beck is entering the 2024 season as the best quarterback in college football. He’s coming off a season in which he threw for nearly 4,000 yards and 24 touchdowns under offensive coordinator and former Georgia QB Mike Bobo, but where does he rank all-time in program history, and how high can he climb? 

Georgia has produced a No. 1 overall pick at quarterback before, and two different QBs have won the National Championship for the Bulldogs, but no Georgia passer has ever won the Heisman Trophy. Beck could be the first. With a truly great season, Beck could check off all three. 

So, let’s see where Kirby Smart’s quarterback sits after one season as the starter and who he has to jump over to become the greatest quarterback in Georgia football history. 

After backing up David Greene for his first three seasons in Athens, Shockley finally got a shot in 2005 with the Bulldogs ranked just outside the top 10 of the preseason AP Poll. Shockley led the team to a 9-2 regular season record before knocking off No. 3 LSU in an SEC Championship rout, 34-14. Shockley only completed six of 12 passes against the Tigers for 112 yards and two scores with seven rushes for 10 yards and another touchdown. 

Georgia eventually fell to West Virginia in the Sugar Bowl, 38-35 and Shockley finished the year with 2,588 passing yards and 24 touchdowns to just five interceptions. He was a seventh-round pick of the Atlanta Falcons in the 2006 NFL Draft. 

It’s helpful to have Herschel Walker in the backfield, but Georgia still wouldn’t have won the 1980 National Championship without the efforts of Buck Belue. He finished the year with 1,314 passing yards while completing 49.4% of his passes with 11 touchdowns to nine interceptions. They were pedestrian numbers, even for the 80s, but Belue came through in some of the biggest moments. 

The most memorable play of Belue’s career was a 93-yard touchdown pass to Lindsay Scott to knock off Florida and preserve the undefeated season. Belue finished his career with 3,864 passing yards and 32 touchdowns to 32 interceptions. 

Even with just one season as Georgia’s starting quarterback, Carson Beck is already No. 8 on this list and honestly, he could be a lot higher. If it wasn’t for a narrow 29-21 loss to Alabama in the SEC Championship Game, Beck may have led the Bulldogs to their third straight national title and with his remarkable season through the air, could even be No. 1 on this list. 

Beck thrives in Mike Bobo’s play-action-heavy scheme and with a longer season because of the 12-team College Football Playoff, he could easily surpass 4,000 yards through the air in 2024 and could pass his predecessor on the program’s all-time passing yardage list. 

In both 1993 and 1994 under Ray Goff, Eric Zeier led the SEC in completions, passing yards, and total yards per play. In 1994 at 7.6 yards per play, Zeier led the entire NCAA. Yet, over those two years, Georgia went a combined 11-10-1 with no bowl game appearances. 

Zeier did take the Bulldogs to bowl games in 1991 and 1992, his first two years as the starting quarterback in Athens, even winning 10 games and the Citrus Bowl in 1992, but Georgia was far from the heights of the Vince Dooley era and a lot of Zeier’s big statistical seasons were disappointing ones for the program. 

At the time, Zeier became the all-time leading passer in Georgia history, finishing with 11,153 yards and 67 touchdowns, but he has since been passed by David Greene and Aaron Murray. 

Fran Tarkenton is better known for his NFL career, a Pro Football Hall of Famer, Tarkenton won the 1975 MVP and was a nine-time Pro Bowler. Yet, at Georgia, Tarkenton still excelled, leading the Bulldogs to a 10-1 season in 1959 and an Orange Bowl victory. It was Wallace Butts’s final bowl game victory of his career. 

Then, in 1960, his senior season, Tarkenton led the SEC in passing yards, throwing for 1,189 with seven touchdowns to 12 interceptions. In the early ‘60s, football just wasn’t about the forward pass, so despite those numbers sounding putrid, they were borderline prolific for his time. Tarkenton became a third-round pick in the 1961 NFL Draft. 

Matthew Stafford was the No. 1 quarterback in the 2006 recruiting class and as a five-star, he was hailed as the player who would finally get the Dawgs back to the top of the college football world. However, while Stafford played well enough to become the No. 1 overall pick in the 2009 NFL Draft, he never got Georgia into the national championship conversation. 

Stafford’s best season came as a junior when he was a preseason Heisman Trophy favorite and Georgia entered the year as the No. 1 team in the country. His team finished 10-3 with losses to Alabama, Florida, and Georgia Tech, but Stafford threw for 3,459 yards, the most in the SEC, and a then-program record 25 touchdowns. 

Stafford’s production never matched his physical gifts, really until he found his way to LA and won Super Bowl LVI with the Rams. 

Over his four-year career at Georgia, after redshirting in 2000, Greene amassed 11,528 passing yards, 72 passing touchdowns, and 42 career victories, which at the time was an NCAA record. Greene led the Dawgs to the SEC title in 2002 and another trip to the conference title game in 2003. 

While 2003 was Greene’s most prolific passing season, throwing for 3,307 yards, he only finished with 13 touchdown passes to 11 interceptions and he led the team to an 11-3 record. In 2002, as a redshirt sophomore, the big left-handed quarterback led Georgia to 13-1 with a Sugar Bowl victory, with a November 2, loss to Florida costing Greene’s team a shot at the national championship. 

In his second year after taking over his alma mater, Kirby Smart hitched his wagon to freshman Jake Fromm as his starting quarterback over former five-star Jacob Eason and stuck with Fromm in 2018 over five-star freshman Justin Fields who eventually left for Ohio State. 

It’s fair to criticize Smart for keeping Fields on the bench, but it’s hard to criticize Fromm, who in his three seasons as the starting quarterback went a combined 36-7 and led the Bulldogs to the 2017 College Football Playoff and National Championship Game, eventually falling to Alabama and Tua Tagovailoa in overtime. 

Fromm is Georgia’s No. 5 all-time passer with 8,224 passing yards and 78 touchdowns to 18 interceptions. He was never dynamic, but he helped usher in a new era of Georgia football and led one of the most talented 

Aaron Murray is Georgia’s all-time leading passer and it’s not particularly close. A four-year starter for the Dawgs, Murray eclipsed 3,000 yards through the air each season and his career low for passing touchdowns was 24 in his freshman year. Murray’s best year came in 2012 when he led the Dawgs to a 12-2 record with 3,893 passing yards and 36 touchdowns. 

In 2012, Murray led the SEC in passing yards and despite throwing for 265 yards and a touchdown in the SEC Championship Game against Alabama, Georgia fell 32-28 and missed out on a chance to play for the national title. 

Murray’s program records in passing yardage and touchdowns will likely never be touched, yet, his team’s never reached the heights of the No. 1 QB on Georgia’s all-time list. 

Stetson Bennett’s journey to becoming a two-time national champion at Georgia is storybook stuff. 

The 5-foot-11 former two-star recruit eventually unseated JT Daniels, a former five-star, and led the most talented roster in program history to not one, but two titles. In 2021, Bennett was more of a game manager, only throwing for 2,862 yards, but in 2022, Bennett threw for 4,128 yards and 27 touchdowns.