By: Colin Lacy

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

The matchup between the Florida Gators and the Georgia Bulldogs has been full of outstanding games, Hall of Fame players and oddities all the same, but virtually every year, the game has seen a matchup of great quarterbacks.

Names like Rick Casares in the early days to Steve Spurrier, Buck Belue, Aaron Murray stood out in this Jacksonville based event.

This year’s rendition of the rivalry will see Georgia’s Gunner Stockton square off with DJ Lagway for the Gators. Both are relatively familiar within their respective fanbases, but let’s dive into the two signal callers.

Florida’s DJ Lagway will be going into his 15^th career start and carries a 9-5 record as a starter. 2025 has been a slow start with the only FBS win of the year coming against Mississippi State.

Much of the “slow start” was because of missing much of the spring and fall camp with injuries.

Lagway was a highly heralded recruit coming out of Willis High School in Texas. His high school career was capped off with being named the National Gatorade Player of the Year and finished with 8,392 passing yards and 100 touchdowns (58 coming in his senior year).

Last season, he began the season as QB2 but was thrown into the fire after Graham Mertz went down with injury early in the season. Lagway would finish with 1,900 passing yards with 12 TDs and 9 picks thrown.

The freshman Gator racked in the FWAA and ESPN Freshman All American honors.

There were high hopes entering the season, but the 2025 campaign has been an up-and-down affair.

The lows came in the matchup with the Bayou Bengals when he threw 5 interceptions against LSU on September 13^th.

However, since then, in the last four games, Lagway has only thrown 3 picks since. The previous three games before the bye week were arguably the most consistent of Lagway’s career.

The Sophomore slinger threw for 280 yards in the win against Mississippi State while connecting on 20 of 34 passes and neared the 300-yard mark against the 9 Texas Longhorns when DJ went 21-28 through the air with 298 yards and a pair of touchdowns.

Lagway has unreal talent and may be coming into his own finally in his Florida career.

On the flip side Georgia has been breaking in a first year starting quarterback, but a familiar name for Bulldog fans. Gunner Stockton took over the full time QB1 role as a redshirt-junior after serving as the backup to Carson Beck the last two seasons in Athens after redshirting in 2022.

Stockton comes from the athletic family and a “coach’s kid.”  Gunner’s dad, Rob, was a Georgia Southern Hall of Fame safety from 1992-1995 and had a huge impact on the development of Gunner (to the point that Gunner wears “14” because that was what his dad wore in the Blue and White with the Eagles.

Stockton’s mom was also a collegiate athlete playing for Erskine women’s basketball in the 90’s in Due West, SC. Stockton (similar to Lagway) was thrust into the fire last season, but on a much larger scale.

Stockton had to come in to finish the first half and play the entirety of the 2^nd half of the SEC Championship game against Texas last season when Carson Beck wind down with an injury.

The hard-nosed Stockton set a career high passing in his first true road game of his career when he connected for 304 yards against the Tennessee Volunteers in week 3 of the year.

So far, Stockton is completing 70 percent of his passes and has already eclipsed 1,500 yards through the air to go along with averaging 5.7 yards per carry on the ground this year.

While both are still relatively new in the starting role of QB1, both QBs have shown glimpses at least of greatness.

Stockton has been more consistent throughout the season, but Lagway could quiet the naysayers that want to bring up the 5-interception game with a big showing in Jacksonville.