By: Kenneth Harrison

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

The Georgia Bulldogs recently played the G-Day Spring game. That is significant because some programs like Nebraska have chosen not to play a spring game.

With the transfer portal some teams say that causes other programs to poach players. That is why the UGA spring game was not televised.

This game featured the Red Team (No. 1 offense/second team defense) against the Black Team (No. 1 Defense/second team offense). The Red Team won 34-17. The announced attendance for the game was 35,003.

The offense had 88 pass attempts and just 44 rushing attempts. Gunner Stockton took every rep with the first-team offense in the first half. Defenders aren’t able to hit the quarterback, while it often plays very vanilla coverage and rarely blitzes.

Projected starting quarterback Gunner Stockton passed for 309 yards, 2 touchdowns, 1 interception and he completed 50% of his pass attempts.

Backup QB Ryan Puglisi had 49 pass attempts. He was inconsistent but he did throw a touchdown pass to Colbie Young on his first chance playing with the starting offense. He did throw an interception that was picked off by Dominick Kelly shortly before halftime.

Third-string quarterback Colter Ginn led a touchdown drive to start the second half. He threw a seven-yard TD to London Humphrey’s.

“Some good and bad for both, but that’s the way spring games go,” Kirby Smart said. “We’ve got to play some loose plays, throw the ball around, got to do some two-minute.

Excited about the guys that got to play. We’ve got a lot of work to do in terms of offseason and getting ourselves where we need to be for next year, but a lot of the mid-years got valuable minutes. I can remember when mid-years kind of went with the threes and fours, and now it seems like more of them are going with the twos.

“That’s just the way of college football right now.”

The defensive backs looked good in this game. Daniel Harris prevented a deep pass to Noah Thomas on the opening drive. He intercepted Stockton in the end zone later in the first quarter.

The leading receiver for the first-team offense was Dillon Bell. He had 5 receptions for 78 yards. He also had a 13-yard rush to showcase how versatile he is. Junior London Humphreys had 4 receptions, 77 yards and 2 touchdowns.

“London’s very smart,” Smart said of Humphreys after the scrimmage. “He doesn’t have a lot of anxiety, he’s very mature, and he’s good for those kids in that (group) because he works really hard.”

Kicker Peyton Woodring made field-goal attempts of 44 and 35 yards. Liam Badger made a 23-yard field goal.

The offensive line was missing Monroe Freeling and Daniel Calhoun, as both recover from injury.

The defensive line is very young and they were in a tough position dealing with 88 pass attempts. They lost a lot of talent to the upcoming 2025 NFL draft so they need to gain more experience.

“We (have) got to get better,” said Smart when asked about all the redshirt freshmen playing on the offensive and defensive lines.

The Bulldogs will open the 2025 season August 30^th at home against Marshall.