Where did all the quarterbacks go?

If you want to get some idea of the bigger picture behind Georgia’s quarterback situation over the past few seasons, take a look at David Wunderlich’s breakdowns of the classes of four- and five-star recruits over the 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 period who either went to high school in the SEC’s geographic footprint, or signed with an SEC program.

Here’s the list of those kids from Georgia:

• 2012:  Greyson Lambert (4 star)
• 2013:  Brice Ramsey (4 star)
• 2014:  Deshaun Watson (4 star)
• 2015:  Lorenzo Nunez (4 star)

That’s it.  Georgia has two of them currently on its roster, managed a huge whiff in the case of Watson and wasn’t interested in Nunez, because he’s not a pro-style quarterback.  You could say where things are at now result from a combination of bad luck, timing (given that Aaron Murrey was likely staying in Athens for two more seasons, nobody great was going to sign with Georgia in 2012 in any event) and poor evaluation, but some of it’s also a matter of an overall weak talent pool.

Take a look at David’s charts and you see two grand slams over that four-year period in Watson and Winston, a few starters whose careers are fairly undistinguished to this point and the rest who can’t even make that claim.  No wonder it’s been a down period for quarterbacking in the conference.

2016, at least on paper, seems to indicate a change, in that a number of SEC programs signed highly touted quarterbacks.  But development takes time, some kids don’t pan out, etc.  Smart needs a lot more at the position than he has today.  There are hints on the recruiting trail that he’s doing well at building a pipeline at the position over the next couple of classes; part of what helps there is that the state has some good high-school quarterback talent coming through.

The other part was keeping Eason, the non-local talent, in the fold after Bobo and Richt left.  Hopefully that’s the start of something big.

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UPDATE:  David has a follow up piece he posted today.  Of particular note:

There perhaps is no better illustration of the cycle of bad luck the conference has had of late than Georgia of last year. Mark Richt got caught without a quarterback once from 2001-14—remember the Joe Cox year between Matthew Stafford and Murray?—but somehow ended up without one last fall as well. Well, despite the coaching change, UGA signed one of the premier quarterbacks of the ’16 class in Jacob Eason. If he lives up to billing, the Bulldogs will be set at QB no later than 2017.