Carson Beck discusses his growth as backup quarterback at Georgia

Georgia is riding high in spring football, having won back-to-back national titles and recruited well enough to reasonably expect to compete for a third, even with a new starting quarterback in 2023.

Replacing Stetson Bennett certainly won’t be easy, but the Bulldogs have some options.

One of them is fourth-year quarterback Carson Beck, who was the preferred backup to Bennett last season at Georgia. He’s feeling confident this spring.

“Obviously a big part of that is reps and experience and getting into games,” Beck said. “Last year was really big for me, obviously Stetson had a great year and went out on top, which was awesome. But he did really well in certain games, we got up big, I got to get some experience in a few of those games.”

It’ll be tough to match the production Bennett put together in 2022, when he took a massive leap forward.

Bennett finished fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting after going 310-of-454 passing for 4,127 yards with 27 touchdowns and seven interceptions. He also added 205 yards and 10 touchdowns rushing.

For Beck, he feels his biggest edge is having played some.

“I guess the biggest thing I would say is just having the experience and continuing to grow on that with further reps and the more practice that we get,” he said.

As the Georgia backup quarterback in 2022, Beck finished 26-of-35 passing for 310 yards with four touchdowns and no interceptions. He also added 43 yards rushing.

Beck said he’s been able to learn from Bennett, though he also noted he tries his best to learn from just about every quarterback he’s run across.

“I think every quarterback that’s ever come through this room I’ve been able to learn from,” Beck said. “That goes for even the guys that are in here. Everyone is so different at the quarterback position and it’s such a unique position because there’s no one body frame, one body type or one way that you’re supposed to play quarterback. There’s so many different things and different aspects to being a quarterback. So I’d say I’ve taken little bits and pieces from every quarterback that’s walked through this room.”

Beck is a former highly regarded recruit.

He was ranked as a four-star prospect and the No. 224 overall recruit in the nation in the 2020 class by the On3 Industry Rankings. He was the No. 16 quarterback in his class and the No. 34 player from the state of Florida, hailing from Jacksonville (Fla.) Mandarin.