Georgia quarterback JT Daniels enters transfer portal

Georgia quarterback JT Daniels has entered his name into the transfer portal, as confirmed by Matt Zenitz of On3 Sports. This marks Daniels’ second time in the transfer portal after coming to UGA via USC.

Daniel’s decision to enter the transfer portal shouldn’t come as a surprise. He began the 2021 season as the clear-cut starter for Georgia and led the Bulldogs to a win over No. 3 Clemson in the season-opener. However, a run on injuries — an oblique injury in Week 2 (UAB) and a lat muscle strain in Week 5 (Arkansas) — sent Daniels to the sideline. Stetson Bennett got the starts in his place and never looked back, helping Kirby Smart and company win the program’s first National Championship since 1980 with a 33-18 win over Alabama last week in Indianapolis.

It hasn’t been an easy road for the former five-star in college. Daniels reclassified to the 2018 signing class after originally being in the 2019 group as the No. 1 overall player. Even with the move up a year, he remained one of the top ranked recruits, coming in at No. 17 overall and No. 3 for quarterbacks according to the On3 Consensus. The two guys above him at his position — Trevor Lawrence and Justin Fields — both were taken in the first round of the 2021 NFL Draft this past spring.

Meanwhile, Daniels started every game in which he played as a freshman at USC before suffered a season-ending knee injury in the opener to his second year at the helm. That led to a transfer as the Trojans’ quarterback situation seemed settled with Kedon Slovis as the guy entering 2020. He landed at Georgia in late May of that offseason still rehabing his injury, and didn’t see the field until November. However, once he did, things went smoothly.

Daniels threw for 401 yards on 28-of-38 passing with four touchdowns, including strikes from 48 and 40 yards out, in his debut against Mississippi State. He followed that up with 299 yards and two more touchdowns two weeks later versus Missouri and capped off his season with 392 yards, including a long completion of 55 yards, in Georgia’s Peach Bowl victory over a top-10 Cincinnati team. Overall, he threw for 80 completions on 119 attempts, 1,231 yards and 10 touchdowns in just four games.

The 2021 season wasn’t bad either. Despite not the strongest of offensive performances, Daniels helped guide Georgia to the win over Clemson in Charlotte to kick things off. After he missed the UAB game with injury, he returned to throw for 303 yards and three touchdowns against South Carolina. Then, in just one quarter of action versus Vanderbilt — exiting with the Bulldogs ahead 35-0 — Daniels completed nine of 10 passes for 129 yards and two scores. However, he missed the next four games, played in just three more over the course of the rest of the season and served as the backup during the College Football Playoff run to the National Championship.

According to reports, Daniels plans to remain enrolled at Georgia through the end of the spring semester in order to graduate, thus making his transfer process easier. He would immediately be eligible to play with two years of eligibility remaining.

As for what it means to the rest of the Georgia quarterback room, the Bulldogs are currently left with four scholarship quarterbacks — Stetson Bennett, Carson Beck, Brock Vandagriff and Gunner Stockton. Bennett started 12 games for Georgia in 2021, however left the door open on his intentions for 2022 when asked about it following the National Championship Game. He has one year of eligibility left. Meanwhile, Beck, a former four-star, is considered to be a potential target for the transfer portal which would leave Vandagriff and Stockton, both former top-100 players and top-10 quarterbacks in their respective signing classes according to the On3 Consensus, to battle for the backup job this spring should Bennett choose to return.

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