>The Logan Gray Conundrum

>This has been a ridiculously busy off-season for the Georgia Bulldogs. I unplugged from the world of the internet and the world of twitter to find out that our back-up quarterback Logan Gray is contemplating a transfer. This wouldn’t be that big of a deal but Georgia’s QB depth took a huge hit when Zach Mettenberger was kicked off the team. Last week Aaron Murray was named #1 on the depth and Logan Gray was placed at #2. With Georgia’s current depth incoming freshman Hutson Mason, who won’t enroll until the fall, will be #3 on the depth chart.

According to David Hale at the Bulldogs Blog Gray approached the coaches about a position change to Wide Receiver in January but was convinced to stay at quarterback and compete for the starting position. On Monday Logan met with Mark Richt and is deciding on whether he should continue his career at Georgia or transfer to another school. This leaves us with a bunch of questions. If Logan stays does he stay at back-up QB full time or does he move to Wide Receiver and become the emergency back-up QB? If he stays at QB does the Georgia coaching staff entice him stay by putting him in a D.J. Shockley type role ensuring that he plays in every game? If Logan decides to transfer then who else is going to get reps at QB? I feel for Logan because you know that he’s been working hard to be the best player that he can and has been dreaming about playing for Georgia and playing QB so you know it’s a hard decision for him.

Let’s talk about the best case scenario first. Let’s say Logan stays. If Logan stays is he going to stay solely at QB or do Richt and Bobo go ahead and get him involved in the offense in other ways (such as receiver). If he stays does Richt put in a package (that they talked about doing last year but it never came to fruition) that maxamizes Logan’s skills as an athlete and get him in games for a series or two. Or does Logan solely move to receiver and Hutson Mason becomes the #2 QB with Logan serving as the emergency #3. So many questions. The one thing we know is that we play football in the SEC and the odds of a starting QB, especially a freshman, making it through a season unharmed is not likely.

That brings us to the worst case scenario which is Logan transferring. If Logan transfers then that immediately puts our current depth chart at 1 scholarship QB with Aaron Murray and a second scholarship QB in Hutson Mason coming on board in the fall. In this scenario it’s clear that we need somebody else, possibly more than one person, who can step in and play QB in a pinch. Someone with Hines Ward type versatility. The guy that pops into mind immediately is Brandon Smith because he ran the Wild Dawg position last year a little bit so he could run an option read type offense. It would be really hard for a guy like Smith to do this because he’s just a sophomore and he also has the task of learning new Defensive Coordinator Todd Grantham’s 3-4 defense. Long-term this could make Georgia all that more intriguing for big-time recruits like Christian LeMay and Nick Marshall but short term Aaron Murray is going to be walking around campus in a bubble and have a full time security guard detail so nothing happens to him.

I will note that there is at least one source that is saying that Logan has confirmed he will transfer. It will continue to be a very interesting and now very nerve racking summer for UGA football.