Georgia are prepared for a National Championship Race in 2024

On Dec. 30, the Georgia Bulldogs completed their 2023 college football season by routing the Florida State Seminoles in the Orange Bowl.

Players have been announcing their NFL draft plans and focusing on the upcoming 2024 season since then. And, while there is still time before week one, it is not too early to declare that Georgia will be in a strong position to compete for the National Championship in 2024, thanks to one essential factor. The college football playoff semifinal games were played on Monday night, and the Washington Huskies and Michigan Wolverines were victors, and they will meet for the national title next week.

While both of those teams play quite different styles of football, they do share one trait that many other national championship teams had throughout their respective seasons. Play by a veteran quarterback. Michael Penix is in his sixth season of collegiate football, and JJ McCarthy is in his third, with this year being his second as the Wolverines’ full-time starter. Experienced and older quarterbacks have nearly become a must for a national title run these days, and prior victors back that up.

Stetson Benett led the Bulldogs in his fourth and fifth seasons as a college quarterback in 2021 and 2022. Mac Jones was a redshirt junior when Alabama won the national championship in 2020. Joe Burrow with LSU during his sixth season in college the year before. In fact, since the inception of the college football playoff, only three national championship quarterbacks have been sophomores or freshmen. Tua Tagovailoa, Trevor Lawrence, and Cardale Jones are the three players. But one thing all three quarterbacks had in common was that they began the season as backups to seasoned quarterbacks.

This is when Georgia enters the picture. Carson Beck declared before to the Orange Bowl that he would return for the 2024 college football season, his fifth with the Bulldogs. He started all 14 games for Georgia this past season in his debut year as a starter and is widely regarded as a game veteran at this point. It takes more than a strong quarterback to win a national championship, especially with the expanded playoff in play next year, but it’s likely the most vital piece to a team with national title aspirations, and a longer season emphasizes that. The Bulldogs may have fallen short in 2023, but the early signs are promising.