UnderdogMindset

Walk-on to consecutive national championships

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Stetson Bennett
The University of Alabama / CC BY 3.0
Posted: Jan 25, 2023 Updated: Mar 15, 2023
CFB Height Persistence

Walk-ons in college football usually play a minor role for teams due to the abundance of star recruits. As a result, they get fewer perks, sometimes even sharing a locker with another. So imagine how hard it would be to walk on at one of the best teams, let alone at the quarterback position. Yet, Stetson Bennett achieved that plus much more when he led Georgia to back-to-back national championships.

Even after he scored 40 touchdowns as a senior, Stetson was a two-star prospect out of high school and only received one Division I scholarship offer from Middle Tennessee State, primarily due to his height being nonideal at 5'9.5. Nevertheless, he managed to walk on to the Georgia Bulldogs in his first year in 2017. However, Bennett transferred to Jones County Junior College the following year after Georgia signed five-star QB Justin Fields. In 2019, he moved back to Georgia to be Jake Fromm's backup after Fields left for Ohio State.

In 2020, Stetson began as the backup to D'Wan Mathis before winning the starting spot and eventually losing it to JT Daniels. In the subsequent year, Stetson was again the backup before Daniels got injured. He dominated with five touchdowns in that first game and never lost the starting spot again. His record was 12-0 in the 2021 regular season, but the team lost in the SEC Championship game against Alabama.

Despite that setback and chatter that he should lose his job, he helped the Bulldogs to win the 2022 College Football National Championship weeks later. One year later, he also helped Georgia win the 2023 National Championship while breaking the regular season passing record with his 4,127 yards.

Quotes

If my mom said it, it would hurt my feelings, But these guys—the Twitter guys, or whatever they are—I don’t pay two cents to ’em. But it is weird, though. They’re like, fans of the team, and some of them are wishing I get hurt or something. I’m like, ‘Good Lord, I’m glad I’m not in your family, because you sound like a miserable person.'

Stetson Bennett

He's like Rudy with more talent -- a lot more talent, It takes a special person. It takes a special belief. You have to kind of work through all the logic that says, 'You're not that. Go play for Georgia State, not Georgia.' He had this belief and saw things and felt things that no one else did.

Angelo Pizzo
References

  • Stetson Bennett rewrote Georgia's script and became a legend

    On Monday night, about 11 miles from Hollywood, Bennett put the finishing touches on a storied college career that not even Pizzo could have written. The former walk-on, who left Georgia for a year to play at a junior college then came back when the team needed him, led the No. 1 Bulldogs to a 65-7 victory over No. 3 TCU in the College Football Playoff National Championship presented by AT&T at SoFi Stadium.

  • Doubt Stetson Bennett at Your Own Risk

    There are people freshly doubting Stetson Bennett, and let me tell you that this comes as a revelation to the Georgia quarterback. What a shock. Like, this has never happened before—other than at every single step of his college journey, starting the day he reported to the locker room in Athens.