Jared Curtis has turned Georgia’s homecoming game into something much bigger than a routine SEC date.
The five-star quarterback, who once committed to Georgia and later flipped to Vanderbilt, is now set to make his first career start for the Commodores this Saturday against NC State, according to Clark Lea. That puts him on a direct collision course with Georgia in Athens on Oct. 3, when the Bulldogs host Vanderbilt in their annual homecoming game.
For Georgia fans, the storyline writes itself. Curtis twice committed to UGA and twice backed away from it.
The first time, he said he had moved too quickly and wanted to keep weighing his options, including Georgia. He eventually circled back and pledged to the Bulldogs again before reopening things later in the process.
By the middle of the 2025 season, Vanderbilt had entered the picture in a bigger way, and Curtis made multiple visits to Nashville, several of them quietly. Then, just days before signing day in December, he flipped to Vanderbilt.
Now he’s positioned to walk into Athens with a chance to make the matchup far more intriguing than it looked when the schedule came out.
Curtis wasn’t named Vanderbilt’s starter out of fall camp, but the move to him now appears to be the direction the Commodores are heading for the rest of the season. If that holds, Georgia will get its shot at the quarterback who got away.
That possibility got more real after Vanderbilt’s first two games of the year. The Commodores are 2-0, but wins over Austin Peay and Delaware did not exactly arrive with much style. A major reason was the play of Blaze Berlowitz, who opened the season as the starter but was replaced by Curtis in both games.
Curtis got his biggest look in the second game and made the most of it. Against Delaware, he completed 14 of 22 passes for 210 yards and a touchdown, while also running for two scores. It came against Delaware, so there’s plenty of reason to keep the evaluation in perspective, but he still flashed the traits that made him a five-star recruit in the first place.
Saturday will give him his first start, and it comes at home against NC State. After that, Vanderbilt heads to Auburn for its SEC opener before making the trip to Athens in week five. By then, Georgia will have a better read on just how dangerous Curtis can be against stronger competition.
Even so, the setup is already clear: Georgia gets homecoming, and Vanderbilt may bring the quarterback the Bulldogs have been waiting to see again. The game is set for Oct. 3, though a kickoff time has not been announced.
In Other News...
Georgia's Athens Spotlight Is Suddenly In Doubt For A Game Fans Circled
Since 2016, Athens has become a regular stop for ESPNs College GameDay, with the show visiting six times for Georgia home games and often turning a Bulldogs Saturday into a campus-wide event. The 2026 schedule had already put one game in particular on the radar: Georgias home matchup with Oklahoma, a meeting that looked like an early candidate for the kind of national spotlight Athens has come to expect.
Oklahomas loss to Michigan has made that GameDay trip less certain, at least for now, because the game may not carry quite the same pull on the national stage. Even so, Georgia is still positioned to stay in the conversation elsewhere on the schedule, with road games at Alabama and Ole Miss later in the season offering other chances for the Bulldogs to land in the shows sights. [Read more 🡒]
Georgia Drawn Into Arkansas Scheduling Debate Before SEC Clash
Arkansas is staring at one of the tougher turns on its schedule with No. 2 Georgia coming in after a lopsided loss to Utah, and the attention around the game has extended well beyond the matchup itself. The Razorbacks are dealing with difficult travel and an early kickoff, and athletic director Hunter Yurachek went public with his frustration, framing the issue as a player welfare concern as the SEC calendar starts to pile up.
Kirby Smart has acknowledged the realities that come with travel and scheduling in this league, while commissioner Greg Sankey said Arkansas concerns were passed along even though the kickoff time did not change. For Georgia, it adds one more layer to a game already carrying plenty of weight, with the Bulldogs trying to handle the spotlight while the conversation around the SEC weekend keeps circling back to how the league sets these early starts. [Read more 🡒]
Kirby Smart Faces A Dangerous Georgia Problem Before SEC Road Opener
Georgia heads into its first SEC road test of the season at Arkansas with a familiar challenge for Kirby Smart: making sure the Bulldogs are locked in on the opponent in front of them, not the more glamorous game waiting down the line. After opening 2-0, the timing of this trip makes discipline and focus even more important, especially with Oklahoma looming on the schedule and plenty of outside attention ready to drift that direction.
Smart has repeatedly stressed the need to avoid complacency in SEC road games, where a team can get exposed quickly if it loses its edge. For Georgia, this one is as much about handling the moment as it is about the matchup itself, and the Bulldogs will need to show the same urgency they have preached if they want to leave Arkansas with the kind of performance that keeps the bigger picture intact. [Read more 🡒]