Former Georgia quarterback reflects on debut game vs Mississippi State

Former Georgia Bulldogs quarterback JT Daniels has gone a long way from his days starting as Georgia’s quarterback. Right now, he’s an offensive analyst at West Georgia, but the quarterback has a full circle moment coming up this weekend. His first UGA game was against Mississippi State, and he reflected on that via Online Athens.

He called it, “a pretty eventful night. Any time you come off of 13 months of not playing, it feels weird to step in. Every time you take the field, a lot of things can happen to you when you play football. And the last time you literally played against a live defense, you tore an ACL, there’s definitely something in your mind that plays and can bring with it a certain set of emotions.”

In that game, Daniels, a USC transfer, completed 28 of his 38 passing attempts for 401 yards and four touchdowns, and Georgia won 31-24.

The career of Daniels has been a roller coaster. He went from a five-star recruit signed by USC to a freshman starter in year one. In year two, he transferred to Georgia, but in 2021, he lost the starting job to Stetson Bennett. Then, he would transferred to West Virginia and Rice. Daniels had to medically retire due to concussions after his season at Rice. Now he’s coaching at West Georgia.

“Mississippi State kind of sold out to stop the run,” Daniels said. “It was lucky I had Todd Monken calling it and George (Pickens), Jermaine (Burton), Kearis (Jackson), Darnell (Washington), a lot of guys in the receiving game that stepped up and played really well.”

His debut was also the last time the Mississippi State Bulldogs traveled to Sanford Stadium. They will travel there again to play the Georgia Bulldogs this Saturday at 4:15 p.m. ET.