Georgia’s quarterback spotlight still belongs to Gunner Stockton, but the more intriguing battle right now sits one step behind him.
Stockton is entering his second season as the starter, and the job ahead of him is clear: build on a 2025 campaign in which he completed nearly 70% of his passes, threw for 2,894 yards and accounted for 34 total touchdowns. But while Stockton works through another summer as the face of the offense, redshirt sophomore Ryan Puglisi and redshirt freshman Ryan Montgomery are fighting to settle the backup spot - a role that could matter immediately if the Bulldogs need someone ready on a moment’s notice.
That competition is why Georgia’s second scrimmage carries extra weight. There’s still no firm answer on which Ryan will sit second on the depth chart when September arrives, and Kirby Smart says both have made progress.
"I'm pleased with both their growth as well as Bryson [Beaver] has done a good job for a guy that's new and then Buddha [ Hezekiah Millender ] as well," Smart said. "They've all gotten good work.
They've got quality reps. Gunner's probably taken fewer this year than he did last year.
He still takes substantially more than most, but he's been able to kind of delegate some of those reps out to other guys, which has helped us develop them."
The depth behind Stockton is still thin on game experience. Puglisi backed him up last season and played in seven games, but he has only 27 career pass attempts. Montgomery has even less on his résumé, having appeared in the Charlotte game last November and thrown just one pass.
Millender and Beaver are also in the mix and hoping to see the field in a Georgia uniform this fall. Even so, the general sense around camp is that Puglisi and Montgomery remain ahead for now because of what they’ve already done in the system.
Wide receiver Sacovie White-Helton has seen enough to like what’s happening behind center.
"I don't know what the roles that Coach Bobo put in their mind are, but they've stepped up definitely," White-Helton said. "They've taken a lot more reps, and they're just having fun.
At the end of the day, you just want to play football. And when you're a kid, you decide to play football and have fun.
I think now it's to them that they're getting older, it's just about having fun.
"You're going to make mistakes. We all accept the fact that we're going to fail at some point.
But if you learn from it and not stay there, then that's the best growth you're going to get. So they have accepted that and taken on that role."
Georgia’s first scrimmage didn’t produce many big plays, and Smart pointed to the weather as part of the reason. He said the humidity and moisture in the air last Saturday made life difficult for the quarterbacks.
Still, Smart believes dealing with that kind of adversity can pay off later.
"It's good to be able to overcome some of those hurdles that you get. Sometimes you grow from those, and you get to rub their nose in it and you get better from it," Smart said.
Stockton will draw the headlines once the season opens, but the real camp storyline is the backup race. For now, Puglisi and Montgomery are the quarterbacks worth tracking.
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