Making bold predictions about Georgia football that stick the landing isn’t child’s play.
You can’t willy-nilly predict, say, that a Bulldog will be headed to New York as a Heisman Trophy finalist like I did last year with Carson Beck since it’s happened just once since 1992. That was in 2022 when Stetson Bennett added that honor to his walk-on-makes-it-big story.
Predicting which Georgia player will lead the team in tackles isn’t easy. Inside linebacker CJ Allen would seem to be the best bet, but safety KJ Bolden could surpass him.
Who will be the leading receiver? Southern Cal transfer Zachariah Branch may be the easy answer, but it could be Texas A&M transfer Noah Thomas or senior Dillon Bell?
Here’s some bold predictions we are ready to make.
Gunner Stockton is QB1 all year
You have to go back to 2021 to find the last season when Georgia made a quarterback change other than after Beck’s season-ending elbow injury in the SEC Championship game. It won’t happen this season either, barring injury. Gunner Stockton will start the season opener and the Bulldogs will ride the redshirt junior the entire season.
That doesn’t mean that Ryan Puglisi and Ryan Montgomery aren’t capable backups, but if coaches stuck with Beck through his interception issues last season, it shows they prefer to work through rough patches than to bench a player.
Big returns for Zachariah Branch
USC transfer Zachariah Branch returned both a kickoff and punt return for a touchdown in 2023 with the Trojans but his opportunities on kickoff returns decreased last season and his average on punt returns went from a nation-leading 20.8 yard average to 5.7.
Branch will have Georgia’s top punt return average since Mecole Hardman’s 20.1 in 2008 and multiple punt return touchdowns for the first time for a Bulldog since Isaiah McKenzie in 2015.
Sanford Stadium home winning streak will be snapped
All good things must come to an end.
If Georgia can get through this home schedule unscathed, it could be another special season.
Georgia enters the season with a 31-game home winning streak, but Alabama, Ole Miss and Texas are on the slate. The Crimson Tide and Rebels beat Georgia last year and the Longhorns are preseason No. 1.
College GameDay could come to Athens for both the Alabama and Texas games.
Lee Corso is retiring so he won’t be in town to put on a mascot’s head and pick a winner.
My pick for which team will beat Georgia? Stay tuned. That’s for another piece later this week.
Allow extra time, Georgia Bulldogs fans, to get through security
President Donald Trump will visit Sanford Stadium for the Sept. 27 Alabama game, the third Bulldogs-Crimson Tide game he’s attended after the national championship game in the 2017 season in Atlanta and the game in Tuscaloosa in 2024.
He will appear with Lt. Gov., Burt Jones, the former Georgia walk-on, who he has endorsed for governor in 2026.
Democrats will run a Jon Ossoff anti-Mike Collins message for the U.S. Senate race on an airplane above the stadium but won’t take a shot at candidate Derek Dooley, whose late father Vince Dooley is Bulldog royalty.
Reminder to Bulldog fans. This isn’t a done deal or anything, but if we are making bold predictions, this one seems feasible.
Nate Frazier rushes for most yards for a Georgia back since….
2019. That’s when D’Andre Swift had 1,218 yards. Frazier had 671 last season on 133 carries. No Georgia back has even hit 900 since Swift.
Kirby Smart and Mike Bobo have put an emphasis on improving a pedestrian run game from 2024. A softer nonconference schedule should allow for a chance to pile up the yards and getting most of the toughest opponents at home means Georgia is less likely to have to dig out of a big hole early.
Georgia has had a different leading rusher each of the last four seasons with Zamir White in 2021, Kenny McIntosh in 2022, Daijun Edwards in 2023 and Frazier in 2024.