ATHENS — The tale of Justin Fields at Georgia has been told many times, and it will no doubt come up against during the College Football Playoff Championship Game telecast of Alabama vs. Ohio State on Monday night.
The story always ends up the same way, with Fields transferring to Ohio State and Bulldogs fans lamenting him leaving the program before he could realize his talents in red and black.
Another twist to the story was recently revealed after Coach Kirby Smart was asked on a recent podcast if Fields should have stayed at Georgia.
“That’s a great question,” Smart said, knowing better than anyone that Fields’ decision to leave UGA remains one of the most polarizing moments in recent Georgia sports history.
The Fields that people see now is not the same player who came to Athens as a true freshman, of course, now three years older, wiser, stronger and better.
Indeed, and many don’t know or have forgotten that Jake Fromm led UGA to the brink of a national championship the season before Fields arrived.
Fromm had the benefit of a full season of experience and success running the multi-faceted Pro-Style offense after assuming the job when incumbent Jacob Eason was injured in the 2017 season-opening game.
RELATED: NFL head coach Bruce Arians shares insight into Georgia QB room entering 2018 season
So while Fields was the most talented quarterback at Georgia 2018, he was not yet the best quarterback on the team, and so he did not win the starting job.
Smart champions Fields
Smart never did give up on keeping Fields, despite the false narrative spread that Georgia merely let him go.
RELATED: Smart on Justin Fields: ‘We would like him to stay’
Smart has so much respect for Fields that he allowed him to attend a closed scrimmage last August before Ohio State resumed its football season. It created a dash of consternation among some UGA donors not allowed to attend as well as some players’ families at the time.
RELATED: Fields’ attendance at closed Georgia practice creates a ripple in media reports
By the time the season kicked off, the Bulldogs had enough other quarterback drama that Fields’ practice attendance was a distant memory.
RELATED: No second-guessing from JT Daniels family over quarterback management
“(Fields) is a great kid, his sister plays softball here, he’s a very bight, well-rounded kid,” Smart said on a recent ‘All things Covered’ podcast hosted by his friend, Bryant McFadden. “So many players on the team really loved him.”
The fans and media were high on Fields, too, and the expectations followed him to Georgia.
“With the new recruiting age that we live in, and the hype that follows the No. 1 premier player, he and Trevor (Lawrence) were really the top two players coming out in the country,” Smart said. “and (they) happened to be 30 miles from each other, and a lot of comparisons happened with Justin to Trevor.”
Smart revealed for the first time that Fields felt added pressure to get on the field early because of the success Lawrence was having his true freshman season at Clemson.
RELATED: Trevor Lawrence wins FWAA Freshman of the Year, dices up Alabama
“It was very evident to us early on in the year that as Trevor had success, and began to play, and in the Texas A&M game (second of the season) he got in and played more and more, Justin felt the same way that, ‘Hey, I’m as good as him, and I should get an opportunity to play,’ ” Smart said.
“And at the time, we had Jake Fromm, who was playing pretty well.”
Flashback to Jake Fromm
Fromm was fourth in the nation in passing efficiency through the first six games of the 2018 season, completing 73 percent of his passes with 12 touchdowns and 2 interceptions.
Georgia was ranked No. 2 in the nation and appeared headed back for another shot at the national championship. The Bulldogs were averaging 485 yards per game and 42.1 points per outing despite running clock in the fourth quarter of blowout wins.
How could Smart or any coach have made a quarterback change at that time?
But then came a 36-16 loss to an emerging star at LSU named Joe Burrow in Game 7.
Many wondered if a change could be brewing during the ensuing bye week leading up to the all-important game in Florida against the Gators.
But others, like Kirk Herbstreit and Tim Tebow, did not.
RELATED: Tim Tebow weights in on Georgia quarterbacks situation entering Florida
RELATED: Kirk Herbstreit explains why Georgia should stick from Fromm over Fields
Fromm responded with a 36-17 win over the Gators, 17-of-24 passing for 240 yards, 3 touchdowns and no turnovers.
Georgia lost the SEC Championship Game to Alabama that season, 35-28, but Fromm was 25-of-39 passing for 301 yards with 3 touchdowns and no interceptions against the Tide.
“(Fromm) was playing good football, and went toe-to-toe with Alabama in the SEC Championship game, and we didn’t play real well defensively,” Smart said. “But Jake did a lot of good things. It was really a tough situation to manage because Justin is extremely talented.”
RELATED: Comparing Justin Fields’ freshman year to Tua Tagovailoa at Alabama
Fields was so talented that Smart worked on a fake punt play all year that Fields would run out of a formation that Georgia had never before revealed.
The Bulldogs practiced it over, and over, and over again for the precise situation they found themselves late in the game against Alabama.
Fourth-and-11 at the 50-yard line, game tied 28-28, 3 1/2 minutes left to play.
Fields was late on the snap, and then quick to give up on the throw, scrambling for a 2-yard gain on the change of possession.
“Thought it was there, and it was there today,” Smart said at the time. “We were going to snap the ball quick. We took too long to snap the ball. They didn’t have a guy covered. We had a guy wide open. We took so long to snap it, that they recognized it and got the guy covered late.”
Indeed, long snapper Nick Moore shared that the play had been worked on specifically for the Tide.
RELATED: Georgia players were bought in on fake punt call, it was there
“We’d been practicing that play for two years,” Moore said. “It was designed for Alabama’s punt safe.”
Some still question the call, but those who watch the replay see receiver Mecole Hardman running open, and recognize the bigger issue was the execution.
Fields’ transfer to Ohio State
Fields was so talented that Smart brought him with the team to the Sugar Bowl, even though Fields announced he was entering the transfer portal.
Many felt that Georgia bringing Fields divided the locker room. As Smart noted, Fields was and is immensely popular with all of his Bulldogs’ teammates.
UGA fell flat in a 28-21 loss to Texas, as the distraction of Fields’ pending decision accompanied the team to New Orleans.
RELATED: Jim Chaney says Georgia ‘did right’ with Justin Fields QB situation.
Smart has since changed his policy, not bringing players to bowl games who opt out or on the verge of transferring.
The era of quarterback transfers has indeed arrived, as the past three signal callers to win the Heisman Trophy — Burrow, Kyler Murray and Baker Mayfield — were all transfer quarterbacks.
But as the Georgia offense struggled in 2019, Fields’ career took off with the Buckeyes.
“You can’t say it (transfer) hasn’t benefited him, because he got to go to a really good program, and he got to play right away, and he’s played a lot more football because he chose to go there,” Smart said. “So you can’t say that it was wrong or right, but I would say what you said earlier, the accountability factor and guys sticking it out, sometimes it pays off to do that. Especially at other positions.”
Smart could have used some retention at the receiver position after the 2018 season, for sure.
Many of the national critics who took were aim at Smart for not finding a way to keep Fields did not bother to mention the two key reasons UGA’s pass game fell off in 2019:
• Five of the top six pass catchers from the 2018 team were no longer on the roster.
• Six Georgia receivers on the 2019 team missed playing time on account of injuries.
Smart called it a “merry-go-round” of receivers when explaining why the Bulldogs’ pass game lacked consistency.
Georgia finished “only” 12-2 in 2019 with Fromm under center, ranked No. 4 in the nation.
RELATED: Tim Tebow shares thoughts on Jake Fromm criticism, Justin Fields transfer
Georgia QB transfers, coming and going
The Bulldogs had a quarterback transfer out — and transfer in — in 2020, as well.
When Fromm made the surprise decision to leave after the 2019 season — perhaps exhausted from the constant social media criticisms and comparisons to Fields’ success in Ohio State’s statistical-friendly spread scheme — Smart dipped into the transfer portal.
Jamie Newman was the pick, the Wake Forest QB wanting to play in a more NFL-friendly offensive scheme.
The Covid-19 pandemic intervened, however, forcing Georgia to cancel spring practices. That cost Newman the necessary time to learn the playbook and terminology that arrived with new offensive coordinator Todd Monken.
RELATED: How Jamie Newman went from Heisman hype to opt-out
The Bulldogs dipped into the transfer portal again in May landing JT Daniels, a quarterback who reclassified into the 2018 class after skipping his senior season, and was ranked No. 3 behind Lawrence and Fields.
“Quarterback is unique because there’s only one, you can only have one on the field,” Smart said. “You go to DB, if I’m not the best corner, then I need to go play safety, or I might play nickel, or I might play dime, so many other places to play and grow as a player and develop, where you can be patient.
“Quarterback, it’s hard, because there isn’t but one of them on the field.”
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