Stetson Bennett Has Wild Theory About Why He Replaced JT Daniels As UGA's QB1

For the first four games of the 2021 season, JT Daniels was the starting quarterback of the Georgia Bulldogs.

By the end of the year, he’d been supplanted by Stetson Bennett, who led the Bulldogs to a 10-1 record and national championship win over No. 1-ranked Alabama. But why did Georgia head coach Kirby Smart make a quarterback switch with a 3-0 record and an offense averaging 428 yards of total offense and nearly 40 points per game?

Bennett has a theory.

“What happened, I think — I haven’t talked to Kirby about it — we go to Vandy and we go up 28-0 in the first quarter,” Bennett said during an appearance on the “Unreserved” podcast. “JT is lighting them up. Ladd (McConkey) catches a fade, Brock (Bowers) scores like four times that day. But then JT takes himself out after the first quarter and he never went back in. Like the whole season.

“So I don’t think (Kirby) liked that, that JT kind of tapped out or was like ‘Hey, I’m not doing it.’ And then I played from then on. I don’t really remember having a talk like, ‘Hey, you’re going to be the starter.’ I’m sure we did.”

Daniels completed 9 of 10 passes for 129 yards and two touchdowns in that Vanderbilt game but he didn’t play beyond the first quarter. Bennett replaced him to start the second quarter, completing 11 of 15 passes for 151 yards, one touchdown and one interception. He also ran for 37 yards on five carries.

Daniels transferred to West Virginia the following season where he threw for 2,107 yards, 13 touchdowns and nine interceptions and led the Mountaineers to four wins in 10 appearances before transferring to Rice in 2023.

Conversely, Bennett led Georgia to back-to-back national titles in 2021 and 2022 before being drafted by the Los Angeles Rams in the fourth round of the 2023 draft.