Carson Beck: 'After that Alabama game, I knew I was coming back'

After Georgia fell short in last year’s SEC Championship against Alabama, one of the big questions was Carson Beck’s future. The Bulldogs quarterback impressed in his first season as the starter and was eligible for the NFL Draft, which featured plenty of depth at the position.

Beck announced his decision to return to Georgia in mid-December. But he made the call much earlier than that.

Georgia entered the SEC Championship with an undefeated record – and on a 29-game winning streak. That came to an end that Saturday night in Atlanta as Alabama punched its ticket to the College Football Playoff and Georgia waited to learn its fate. But it was afterward, more than two weeks before he announced it, Beck made his decision.

"After that Alabama game, I knew that I was coming back."@GeorgiaFootball QB Carson Beck tells @KrisBudden, @DustyDvoracek & @FozzyWhitt why the decision was easy to return to the Bulldogs!#SECMediaDays | #GoDawgs pic.twitter.com/rdywZWWCsY

— College Sports on SiriusXM (@SXMCollege) July 16, 2024

“Maybe I made it seem difficult from the outside in, but for me, it was very easy,” Beck said on SiriusXM College at SEC Media Days. “After that Alabama game, I knew that I was coming back.

“I didn’t tell anybody that. I’ve said that a few times now after the fact.”

Beck went on to put together another huge performance in the Orange Bowl against a depleted Florida State team to cap off his impressive season. All told, he completed 72.4% of his passes for 3,941 yards and 24 touchdowns after taking over for Stetson Bennett, and he enters 2024 as a Heisman Trophy favorite and potential No. 1 draft pick.

But the moments after that 27-24 loss were what helped Beck decide to come back to Athens. He remembered the feeling of losing his first game as a starter and seeing that winning streak end. He saw unfinished business – and that’s fueling him as he tries to take Georgia back to the promised land.

“I remember after the game, we had to go do media,” Beck said. “I was out of it. Obviously, I was very down. Really, have never felt like that, had that emotion in my life because that was my first loss as a starter. We hadn’t lost in two years, almost. … But it just wasn’t something that I was used to, and it was very difficult.

“I was the last one out of the locker room because I had to do media, and I walked out, and they let my mom and sister down onto the field, which usually they don’t do. They wanted me to be able to say bye to them. I walked out on the field, it’s literally just us. There’s a few equipment people out there cleaning up the field. We walk out there, I look at the score – 24, 27 – hug them. … There was a lot of emotion in that.”

As he stood on the field at Mercedes-Benz Stadium with his family, Carson Beck knew he couldn’t leave Georgia on that note. That made his decision an easy one.

“In that moment, I was like, ‘I’m coming back. There’s no way I’m not,'” Beck said. “It was not difficult at all.”