Kirby Smart calls out Stetson Bennett heading into year two as starter

Georgia Bulldogs quarterback Stetson Bennett led the program to their first national championship in over 40 years and still decided to come back for another season. Hoping to get another ring with head coach Kirby Smart, Bennett will enter spring practice as the starting quarterback for the first time in his career.

Smart recently discussed what the decision-making process was like for Bennett while returning, with the head coach saying there wasn’t much to it. He also said there are a few things the coaching staff is challenging the quarterback to do, thanks to some newly found high standards.

“We had a couple conversations in passing,” Smart said. “He reached out and said he really wanted to come back and wanted to continue to get better. There wasn’t a lot there, there weren’t a lot of questions or anything. It was more, he feels like he’s grown as a quarterback, he knows — we showed a lot of confidence in Stetson if you didn’t notice and he answered that with the way he played.

“I think he would be the first to tell you he can still grow and get better. You know, we have high expectations for Stetson but we also have high standards of what we expect Stetson to do in terms of leading our offense, in terms of going to class and doing the right thing. We’re still challenging him to do those things.”

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Bennett ultimately came back to improve his game before making a decision on his next step in the football world. Smart talked about some of the things the former walk-on needs to improve upon and says thanks to getting some of the premier reps in practice, has a real opportunity to do so this spring.

“Make those decisions, right?,” Smart said. “We were late over the middle a couple of times late in the season and he would be the first to say he didn’t play perfect. He made some really good plays for us with his feet, his legs, his decision making but you just want to take out some of the bonehead throws, some of the bonehead mistakes that he’s made from time to time.

“It’s easy for him to say he hasn’t had an opportunity to correct those mistakes because the guy was taking threes at this time last year. He was taking reps as a three of sparingly and wasn’t getting a lot of reps. He got a lot of work, fast, and he’s still showing progress. He’s done some really nice things this spring but that should be expected for a guy with his experience level.”

Bennett finished fifth in the SEC last season in passing yards, sitting behind some quarterbacks in pass-heavy offenses. However, where could have made up for it with completion percentage, Bennett just ranked inside of the top 10, coming in at No. 9. There is no doubt he has areas to improve upon in the passing game, even if Georgia is more likely to have a run-heavy offensive scheme.

After a little bit of praise for Bennett, Smart decided to call out the quarterback when talking about the leadership aspect. He said a recent practice over the weekend did not meet up to expectations and tried to find a reason as to why. When not being able to come up with a conclusion, Smart said quarterbacks need to lead in those types of scenarios.

“I think he can grow,” said Smart. “He took a lot of the one reps from whatever point it was last year moving forward. In terms of leadership, we’re still working on that. We’re not where we need to be in terms of leadership, guys challenging guys. I thought it was really good on Saturday in terms of leadership and then things got a little tough out there today.

“Whether you call it Tuesday, two days off. I can’t say it was hot, it felt mighty good to me but we didn’t have the level of practice I would expect. You would think whether it’s the quarterback, the receiver, whoever the leaders are, they’re going to stand up and push the guys and we probably didn’t get what we wanted out of that today. I was disappointed in practice.”

Bennett will have a few more weeks of spring practice to grow into the type of leader Smart wants him to be. It’s new territory for the Bulldogs, just coming off a national championship. Since Smart was hired, the focus has mainly been on getting the first one under the head coach. The mentality has completely changed now, wanting to get the next one. Bennett’s leadership will help determine whether or not they have a shot at achieving the goal.