Gunner Stockton Analysis

Zach Smith · 2026-08-31T23:44:43+00:00

Gunner Stockton scrambled more than any quarterback I've studied this offseason, by a mile. He also graded twenty-three points better against the blitz than without it. Georgia's quarterback is a college baller and I mean that as a compliment. By Zach Smith Third and four against Ole Miss. Georgia runs a levels concept, the one some people call shallow. Two-high coverage with a bracket up top, man underneath, and nobody comes open. Stockton sees the Red Sea part in front of him. Puts his foot in the ground, takes four yards, dives for the sticks. That's it. That's the whole player, and it's the thing that shows up 53 times on his season file. Nobody in this series runs like this Fifty-three scrambles in 2025. The rest of the field: Arch Manning 32. Chambliss 24. Dante Moore 22. Mensah 21. Josh Hoover 19. Julian Sayin 11. CJ Carr 9. Stockton has twenty-one more than the next guy, and twenty-eight of them came under pressure. He also threw zero interceptions on the year when pressured. When the pocket goes bad, he leaves and he doesn't panic. That's the baller nature I kept talking about on the broadcast and it isn't a feeling. It's a column, and it's the exact thing I've been begging Julian Sayin to do for three months. Watch what it buys him. There's a play late where Ole Miss has everything covered with depth, so Stockton takes off and gets four. Second and six instead of second and ten. He keeps his offense on schedule. I don't think I saw a third and long all game. That's what JT Barrett was good at, and it's a real skill nobody puts in a highlight package. Blitz him and he beats you Now the split that made me sit up. Not blitzed: a 63.6 offensive grade, 66.4% completions, six touchdowns to four picks. Blitzed: an 86.8 offensive grade, 88.1 passing, 74.2% completions, 8.0 a throw, and eighteen touchdowns to one interception. A 131.5 passer rating. Eighteen of his twenty-four touchdowns came against extra rushers. Teams brought it on 41.9% of his dropbacks and he made them pay every single time. That's a twenty-three point swing. Josh Hoover had the second-best blitz profile in this series at an eleven-point gap and Stockton doubled it. The tape shows you why. Ole Miss brings an all-out blitz, and Stockton has a swing route to the field with a lead blocker and exactly one defender over there. Watch how fast he gets rid of it. He knows they brought six, he knows he's got numbers, and it's gone before the rush arrives. Huge play. He understands the math and he doesn't hesitate. So quit blitzing this kid. Play him straight and make him beat you down the field, because that's where he isn't as good. Georgia never let him throw it past the sticks His average depth of target was 7.3 yards. Lowest of anybody I've studied. CJ Carr was at 10.6, Arch at 9.7, Mensah at 9.4. And 31.1% of his throws came behind the line of scrimmage, on 120 attempts. Highest rate in the group and it isn't close. That's a screen and quick game offense with a run game mauling people, and it worked. Georgia ran it down Ole Miss's throat all afternoon and Pete Golding got a head coaching job with that defense on tape, which is its own kind of crazy. But it means we did not get a full look at him. He completed 97.5% behind the line and 81.7% short. Where he lives is fine. What he does past twenty is the question. The driven ball is the problem Twenty-plus yards: a 77.5 passing grade. That's the lowest deep grade of any quarterback in this series by a wide margin. Dante Moore was at 98.5, Sayin 97.3, Chambliss 95.7, and everybody else sat above 89. Some of it isn't him. His receivers dropped six of the fifty-three deep balls he threw, a 26.1% drop rate, which is absurd. But five turnover-worthy plays on those fifty-three throws is his. And I saw exactly why. He misses driven intermediate balls high. Twice on that Ole Miss tape. The first is a seam against a rock-and-roll disguise. Georgia identifies it, the safety rolls down, and the honey hole opens up right where it's supposed to. He sails it. The second is about a thirty-yard driven ball with real heat on it and it's over the receiver's head. When a ball sails high on a driven intermediate throw, it lands in a deep safety's stomach. That's the pick that ends games. He has to get on top of those. He's got the arm for them, though, and I underrated it going in. He throws a corner route on a flea flicker from the left hash to the right sideline, drops it in a bucket, and by the time you account for the angle that's a fifty-yard throw with drive on it. Off a thirty-yard driven dig later in the game his whip is legitimately good. Where he's actually best is ten to nineteen: an 88.2 grade, 66.7%, eight touchdowns. That's the money window and it's his best area. Seventeen batted balls, and I know why He had seventeen balls batted at the line last year. Most of any quarterback I've charted this offseason, ahead of Chambliss at fifteen and Arch at ten. I flagged this off the film without knowing the number. He isn't the tallest quarterback in the world, and when your tackles are six-six it's hard to see, which is exactly why Georgia gets him out of the pocket so often on nakeds and bootlegs. Watch how many of his best throws come with his feet moving. Find the throwing lane. Step up into the window instead of throwing over the top of a wall. That's the most under-coached thing at the position and seventeen of them is a lot. He's a general, with one bad habit The processing is good and it's the most encouraging part of him. There's a play action check down concept where he gets to his fourth read. One, two, three, four, and it's fast. That tempo helps your offensive line more than anything a coordinator can draw up. He also feels voids as well as anybody in this series. On a first and goal fake, the whole defense collapses inside on the tight end and he feels the swing route come open behind it and flips it out for a walk-in touchdown. Nobody told him to do that. The bad habit is the flip side. He gets through progressions a little too fast. Against quarters, running spread with a double dig, he flies through one, two, three and takes the check down while a fifteen-yard dig is coming wide open. Clean pocket. Nobody near him. Take the dig. Don't skip the read. That's real yardage left on the field and it happened more than once. The other one that cost points is the two-point conversion. Number seven gets in the end zone, turns around, and he's open. Throw it right now. Right there. Stockton hesitates, and Georgia is down nine instead of seven. I picked one of his good games, and I should say so Fair is fair, since I called myself out for picking Chambliss's worst tape. The Ole Miss regular season game graded an 84.5 offense and a 90.3 passing, twenty-six of thirty-one for 289 with four touchdowns and no picks. That's his best passing grade of the season and his second-best game overall. So this is Stockton near his ceiling, not his average. His average across the year is an 81.1 offensive grade with 69.7% completions, 2,906 yards, twenty-four touchdowns and five interceptions. And it swung. He put up an 84.8 at Mississippi State and an 80.2 against Texas. He also put up a 39.1 at Georgia Tech, eleven of twenty-one for seventy yards, and a 62.7 when Ole Miss got him a second time in the bowl. One thing that travels regardless: he does not give the ball away. Twelve turnover-worthy plays all season, a 2.4% rate, second-best in this whole series behind Sayin's 1.4%. Five picks in 386 throws. He also isn't explosive. Fourteen big-time throws at a 3.3% clip is the lowest rate of anybody I've studied. He's careful and efficient. He's not going to drop twenty-five bombs on you. B plus, and what he actually is I gave that tape a B plus and I'll stand on it for that game, with a caveat: his season grade is an 81.1, which is behind Carr at 85.1 and Mensah at 84.1, and I gave both of those guys the same or less. Judge him on the year and he's a B. What I actually think he is, and I mean this as a compliment: He's white Trinidad Chambliss. Same profile. A gamer who extends plays, keeps you on schedule with his legs, doesn't turn it over, feels the field better than he throws it, and has a mechanical issue putting balls where big men can reach them. He's tough. He'll lower his shoulder on a zone read for fourteen. He runs a quarterback sneak better than anybody I watched and I didn't know you could enjoy watching a sneak until this tape. He answers mistakes: he blows a zone read that should have been a give, gets tackled for a loss, and on the very next snap drops a forty-yard dot on Dillon Bell to take the air out of the building. Do I think he's an NFL guy? Not right now. He's not going in the first round and I'd be lying if I told you otherwise. Do I think he can be one of the most impactful quarterbacks in college football on a loaded Georgia team? Absolutely, and the blitz number is why. Clean up the driven ball, quit skipping reads, and find a lane so seventeen becomes seven. He's a baller. That'll do just fine in Athens.