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Podcast: Georgia Bulldogs Football podcast : HBTFDAWGSCAST Episode: The Brutal Truth About Gunner Stockton No Georgia Football Fan Wants to Hear.mp3 Transcript: Who are the contenders? Who are the pretenders? Who can we take for granted that are going to show up and compete for a college football playoff national championship? Who are the frontrunners in the SEC? George is there, and everybody's just like, well, if Gunnar Stockton takes that next step, he has to improve. He's the reason Georgia did not win the title last year. See, that's the easy answer. But the thing about life is it's not just the easy answer. It's not easy. There's nothing about it that's easy. And anything that's worth having isn't easy and shouldn't be. Just like this story. There's a brutal truth about Gunnar Stockton that we're going to talk about tonight. When you look at the 2026 season, everybody wants to put it on his shoulders. The weight of the world is on the second year starting quarterback for the University of Georgia. And we're going to talk about that and a lot more in this edition of the How About That Dogs Cast. To me, it feels like everybody wants to take that easy answer this year in the offseason. We're in the season now where people are talking about what is this next year going to be? Who are the contenders? Who are the pretenders? Who can we take for granted that are going to show up and compete for a college football playoff championship? Who are the frontrunners in the SEC? Georgia's there and everybody's just like, well, if Gunnar Stockton takes that next step, he has to improve. He's the reason Georgia did not win the title last year. See, that's the easy answer. But the thing about life is it's not easy. There's nothing about it that's easy. And anything that's worth having isn't easy and shouldn't be. Just like this is the reason that we're going to talk about it. It's like this story. I mean, you can see it. It's a Georgia reign. They've won three out of the last four SEC championships. They may end up being, I heard somebody say it today, the all time forever SEC champion. If the conference game goes away, if the dog's gone to win it this year, that would be three in a row and it would be the only the 13 to ever accomplish that feat. Florida did it. Alabama's done it and Georgia will have done it at that point. But I don't think you can say that Georgia are the favorites to win the conference going into the year. I think that's probably Texas. So, so much is expected of Georgia. And yet, the answer is so simple about how to make it happen. But people just sort of assume that that's how it's going to go. It feels like it's all on Gunnar Stockton. But again, that's the easy solution. There's way more to it than that. So tonight we're going to take a look at what that might be. I mean, yes, Gunnar Stockton had a great year last year in season one through for almost 3000 yards, accounted for a bucket load of touchdowns, finished as a finalist for the Heisman Trophy. I think it was sixth in the voting. Anyway, you want to cut it. The young man had a very successful season. And as I have said, repeated, especially here recently. Georgia's games that they did not win last year, none of that fell directly at the feet of number 14. This young man is living out a lifelong dream to be the quarterback at the University of Georgia. Nobody wants to succeed for Georgia more than Gunnar Stockton. And we see that in the off season, he addressed or is attempting to address the things that people pointed out where his weaknesses last year. His delivery was a little long. His footwork could be better. He needs to expand his vision of the field and push the ball down the field more often and give his guys an opportunity to make plays. All of that's great. But see again, here's Gunnar Stockton being the focal point of what Georgia has to do. I know there's talk out there. Well, who's going to catch it? I know that there's talk out there. Man, Georgia can't rush the passer. There are other points that people want to point to as deficiencies for this squad. But inevitably, whether he's underrated, disrespected, taken for granted, however you want to frame it, Gunnar Stockton's going to be in that conversation right there for Georgia, inevitably. But the thing is, he is not alone. But he's carrying the weight of not just his own performance, not just the fact that if he raises his level of performance, that's the thing that's going to go win the national title for Georgia. That's the thing that's going to make them three time consecutive SEC champions only if Gunnar gets it right. It's not just that. Here's the brutal truth. He's carrying more than that. What? What am I talking about? This. Kirby Smart. The rumblings are out there. Now, people have yet to bail on Kirby. No one in the right mind is going to tell you that he's not one of the best coaches in college football. But there are people out there who are eager to find somebody else to point to and say, yeah, man, they're better or they're every bit is good. That second one may be the case. But they point to the fact that Kirby Smart hasn't won a national title since 2022 and hasn't won a playoff game in the college football playoffs since 2022. And they want to say, oh, scrap people. It's over. Well, who is the guy that gets the most credit and the most blame on the field for how a team performs? Gunnar Stockton is the quarterback. So Gunnar Stockton is carrying the weight of Kirby Smart along with him. If Kirby's going to get back to the mountaintop this year, who's going to leave him there? Gunnar Stockton. That's all Gunnar's ever wanted to do was go win for Georgia. That's all Kirby Smart wants is to represent Georgia and win for Georgia. So, yeah, they're in that boat together. So Gunnar's stealing the weight of his own performance. He's feeling the weight of not wanting to let down the man who took a chance on him, who recruited him, who said, yeah, come to Georgia, I'm giving you the reins. That's the kind of guy Gunnar is. He doesn't want to let him down. He doesn't want to let the fans down. So that's a lot of weight the young man's carrying, but there's more. Kirby Smart has repeatedly said that Mike Bobo is the guy that's going to lead Georgia back to the promised land. He has repeatedly said there's nobody else out there that I want. There's nobody better at what we're trying to do than what Mike Bobo allows us to do. Well, what does that mean for Gunnar Stockton? Well, it means that Gunnar Stockton is tied at the hip to Mike Bobo. Now, that's just not Kirby Smart's doings. That actually started before Kirby. Well, you know, they had a relationship prior to the recruitment of Gunnar Stockton to Georgia. Bobo and Gunnar did. Their families were familiar. Bobo had actually recruited him to come to the University of South Carolina, but then when Mike Bobo decided to come to Georgia because Kirby Smart wanted him there, Gunnar Stockton said, I think I'm going to follow Mike Bobo to Georgia. So Bobo is the reason Gunnar's here. So absolutely they are tied at the hip. But what's more than that? And you all know where I'm going here. There is no bigger dead horse to beat than Mike Bobo. He is the catch all for every Georgia Bulldog fan complaint out there. One way or another, people can blame it on Mike Bobo. The defense didn't play well. Well, it's well because Bobo's offense didn't do anything. You see what I mean? You pick it. They're going to blame Mike for it. Now, I'm not defending Mike. This is just the reality. I'm just laying that out for you here. I'll leave it to Kirby Smart and Mike Bobo to defend Mike Bobo. It's not my job. But I want you to understand that Gunnar had committed to Mike Bobo, followed him to Georgia. So now, every time he goes on the field, you mean to tell me, given everything that we know about Gunnar Stockton, that he doesn't look at his relationship with Mike Bobo and say, man, I really, really want to go win it. I want to win it for me. I want to win it for Georgia. I want to win it for Kirby. I want to win it for Mike. Because they took a chance on me. That is the reality. The young man's living with here heading into 2026. But I think we can actually pull back from that a little bit. If we start to look at the truth of what Gunnar Stockton has done at the University of Georgia and begin to assess whether or not he can actually get it done this year, whether or not he's the guy, because the brutal truth is he's not just carrying the weight of his own game. He's carrying the weight of his own weight. The University, the state, and all the people we just mentioned, not to mention as teammates. There's a lot riding on this for the young man and other people around the country, people who know ball, like friend of the show, Chris Marlar, they look at Gunnar Stockton outside the bubble with the emotion that I just spoke about detached from it all. They look at it in terms of what has he actually done. When you do that, the picture about being Gunnar and Kirby and Mike, it all starts to become a little bit clearer because Gunnar Stockton is playing exactly the way that Kirby wants him to play. He's playing the way that Mike wants him to play given the marching orders that Kirby has handed Mike. So he is doing his best to implement the offense, the Kirby Smart offense that needs to be run. So when guys like Marlar look at it, he just handed out his preseason quarterback rankings for 2026 and he put Gunnar at the third best quarterback in the league. And he tells us why. Pick your adjective, underrated, overlooked, and or disrespected. Gunnar Stockton is the most version of that quarterback in the SEC and maybe the entire country. All Stockton did was win in his first year as a Full-time starter. He had the sixth best QBR in the country at 85,000. He finished the season with 34 touchdowns and just five interceptions. He gets a lot of hate because he only averaged 206.7 passing yards per game and had the second lowest average depth of target rate of any SEC signal caller. Now that was in part because 40% of his passes last season were at or behind the line of scrimmage. He was also the second in the league and turned over worthy playwright. So what does that mean at the end there? They had Zachariah Branch last year. And ask the NFL scouts the way Zachariah Branch was the most effective, the way he will be the most effective in the NFL, the way he became a record setter at the University of Georgia, is to get him the ball quickly and let him work in space. Maybe use him as a bit of a gadget. He's not a guy that's going to run the 20-yard dig or the nine rail route down the sideline. That's not who he is. Georgia knew that. They utilized him that way. He set records. Georgia won a championship and now Branch is on to the NFL with a promising future because Georgia used him in the way he's most effective. So yeah, 40% of Gunnar's balls were out of behind the line of scrimmage because he was getting the ball to that dude in the way that the offense demanded that he get it to him. I hate it when people want to throw that up and say, yeah, he can't throw the ball down the field or he's not looking. When you have a weapon like Zachariah Branch and you fully understand the evaluation on him and understand what makes him go as a player and how he's most effective, you're an idiot if you don't do that. So it's crazy that people would bash the offense or Gunnar's Stockton because they did what everything says you should do with your most electric player. It boggles the mind sometimes how the brain of a fan works, but we're all fans. And with that in mind, I want to remind us all that this is the same Gunnar Stockton that when the money was on the line was absolutely clutch. Think back to Tennessee. They don't win that game without Gunnar Stockton. Think back to Ole Miss and Athens. They don't win that game without Gunnar Stockton. When it was on the table, when it was decision time, Gunnar Stockton was clutch for the doors of Bulldogs in 2025. There's no other way to put it. If you look at what he did in the fourth quarter, which is money time, all he did was complete 83.6, 84% of his passes, had zero interceptions and put the ball in the end zone seven times. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. When the game's on the line and you've got numbers like that, it's worthy of respect and it's worthy of note. I've said it again and again. The reason Georgia did not win last year was not 14. And the fact that people don't want to give him credit for being able to do what he did and what he was being asked to do seems a little disingenuous to me. For my money, Gunnar's that dude. Gunnar can do everything that Georgia needs him to do to be successful here in 2026. He can throw it if you need him to. He's got wide receivers in the barn that we're going to find out about. He's got pass catchers on the team that we know about. And when the balls in his hands, all he wants to do is go make a play. We've seen him deliver in the most pressure situations possible in the SEC. Fourth down, fourth quarter game on the line on the road at Rocky Top, one of the loudest environments in all of college football. Dart touchdown. And the moxie they led that team with all day. The way he led Georgia against Ole Miss between the hedges. The way they took down Texas again behind Gunnar Stockton's performance. It speaks for itself. So you honestly have to ask why? Why is this man being so disrespected overlooked? I don't have an answer for that. Maybe because people take Georgia for granted too much. But the truth is the weight of the world is on his shoulders here heading into 2026. The good news is he doesn't have to do it alone. I'll tell you some other good news. And that is the fact that how about them dogs plus exists. So if you can't get enough of the channel, if you love what we do over here, if you want an opportunity to win premium, surprise giveaways. Come on over to how about them dogs plus to check it out because I think it's a good thing and it's only getting better. The good news about Gunnar Stockton at the University of Georgia heading into 2026 is that he plays for Kirby Smart. What do I mean? I mean that Kirby Smart is not someone who looks at football as a one man game. They are not the kind of program that's going to have a throw it to me guy. Right? They're not the kind of program that has a running back that's going to tote it 40 times a game. They count on playing winning complimentary football. Dead solid special teams. Dominant defense and a punishing ball control offense that dictates how defenses play them. That's the guy that Kirby Smart is playing for. That kind of guy is exactly the kind of guy that Gunnar Stockton wants to play for. And that's why I'm very confident saying that he can do everything Kirby's asking him to do. Play action throw the ball down the field? Yes, we've seen it. Beat him with your feet when you have to. We've seen it. But as I mentioned, it's not all on Gunnar. He has to have help and he will because Kirby Smart builds a team around a quarterback if that's what he's going to ask him to do. And he gets guys like Juan Gaston and Darnell Glover to come and block for him. And then he's like, oh, by the way, we've got you a running back that's one of the best in the country. And he's just the head of what is a deep and talented running back room. So you can turn around and hand the ball off. You don't have to do it all on your own. We're going to get that play action game working. We're going to control the football. We're going to open up that middle with a tight end so you can put the ball on them. Just don't turn it over. And when you have to throw the ball down the field, let me go get five star receivers and put them on the field for you and let's see what can happen. So talent Taylor, he's going to have his opportunity to step up this year, Craig Dandridge. So Kobe White helped in London Humphreys, Isaiah Canyon. There are plenty of players out there. We're going to find out who the go-to guys are going to be. We don't know yet, but they're out there and Gunnar's going to figure out who it is. The staff is going to figure out who they have to get the football to. And they will. So an offense, it's not like Gunnar has to throw it for 400 yards or run it for 100 or put his body on the line any more than the game demands. He's got guys to help him. And he's got guys on the other side. Raelan Wilson, back as a leader and a five-star talent at middle linebacker for the Georgia Bulldog defense, they're going to help Gunnar Stockton be successful this year. Elijah Griffin coming into his own, potentially an all-conference, maybe an all-American caliber player this year. I'd want that dude lining up with me if I'm Gunnar. I would feel good about knowing that he's over there on the other side of the field. Then you got guys like I was wrong and sit out there. I mean maybe the best corner in all of college football. Quite possibly the very first corner taken in next year's NFL Draft. That is some talent. If Gunnar's looking over there at practice and he's like look at all these dudes. Man I'm glad they're on my side. And that's because Gunnar plays for Kirby Smart and Kirby Smart recruits players to help his quarterback, not just on the offensive side of the ball, but on the defensive side of the ball because they play complimentary football. Gunnar knew this. That's why he wanted to come to Athens in the first place. That and the fact that he grew up a Georgia Bulldog through and through. So with all these guys that are there to help Gunnar get it done. With Kirby Smart and the coaching staff that he's built. It is absolutely possible for Georgia to get back to the SEC Championship game and potentially win it. Maybe for the third time in a row making history in the process and potentially becoming the forever champion of the SEC. Having won the final three SEC Championship games that were played. What an amazing feat that would be. Kind of boggles my mind when I think about it actually. There are other programs that have been successful in the game. Alabama, Florida. But to go out that way that's quite a heater for Kirby Smart and the dogs. And they're going to be tested. And there's a lot of pressure on Gunnar Stockton and the dogs to get it done. But the opportunity is there. Gunnar can do everything that Kirby and Mike Bobo need him to do to lead Georgia not only back to the SEC, but into the CFP and potentially to the National Championship game. The opportunity is there. All Gunnar has to do is walk through the door and season. The real truth about Gunnar Stockton, even though it feels like all the pressure in the world is on his shoulders. Heading into the 2026 season. The real truth is he doesn't have to do it alone. And that's the cause of Kirby Smart and the superstructure that he's built in that. You put all those things together. Have a little bit of luck on the injury front. But things break your way at the end of the year where you're playing your best football when you jump into the tournament. And these dogs are going to be just as dangerous as anybody else in the country. When it comes to chasing down that college football playoff national title that seemingly has become so elusive for the SEC. Good all. Tell them how about them. The dogs. That's what I told them. Show notes: The Brutal Truth About Gunner Stockton No Georgia Football Fan Wants to Hear. In this episode I dive into the brutal truth about the Georgia Bulldogs quarterback and the immense expectations for the Georgia Bulldogs football team in the 2026 season. We're doing a deep football analysis of his performance as we explore what it means for the coaches that believe in him and overall success in college football. ⏱ TIMECODES ⏱ 0:00 THE EASY ANSWER 2:12 GUNNER WAS A GUNNER 4:25 THE WEIGHT OF KIRBY SMART 6:00 THE WEIGHT OF MIKE BOBO 9:00 CERTIFIED BALL KNOWERS KNOW 12:24 GUNNER IS CLUTCH 15:33 THE GOOD NEWS 20:55 REMEMBER ... 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Any alteration of this video, or use outside of this specific YouTube channel requires a contracted agreement and license fee. For any questions, please contact randy@hbtfdawgscast.comFor any questions, please contact randy@hbtfdawgscast.com 🔴 Copyright Disclaimer: Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowance is made for fair use for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, scholarship, and research. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. Any other use of this video or any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of this video without the expressed consent of Randy Powers, Rikins Creative, and/or A Damn Beast Media is prohibited. Any alteration of this video, or use outside of this specific YouTube channel requires a contracted agreement and license fee. For any questions, please contact randy@hbtfdawgscast.com