Georgia QB Joe Tereshinski

**Razz** · 07-31-06, 12:45 AM

The word is that Joe T3 already lost the job.

**bigboydan** · 07-31-06, 12:34 PM

i think your right razz. the Georgia QB position is very scarry right now, and i'm not sure either one of these kids can fill Shockley's shoes.

**pags11** · 08-01-06, 12:33 AM

this kid is not very good...cost me a cover (pushed) with Georgia +4 against Florida...he just can't read a D and pass very well...he may start the first couple of games, but they'll play a younger guy for sure...

**onlooker** · 08-04-06, 02:45 AM

Blue Ribbon Yearbook.

If Georgia fans were hoping touted freshman recruit Matthew Stafford (6-3, 225) would leave spring practice with the starting quarterback job in his grasp, well, that didn't quite happen. But Stafford didn't lose the job either.

Senior Joe Tereshinski III (6-3, 217), by virtue of his experience and knowledge of the offense, has a tenuous hold on No. 1, but Stafford -- who was throwing passes in high school just a few months before -- showed enough in the spring to suggest the battle will be rejoined in August. And regardless of who earns the mantle of starting quarterback, both players are likely to see action in the Bulldogs' opener against Western Kentucky.

"It may roll into a little of the season before we make a decision," Richt said in the spring.

Actually, Richt and his staff have a couple of decisions to make. It appears likely Tereshinski and Stafford will take most of the snaps, but sophomore Blake Barnes (6-3, 219) and redshirt freshman Joe Cox (6-1, 200) won't go away quietly, even though Barnes broke his thumb in the spring and Cox, star of the scout team a year ago, suffered through a four-interception spring game. Even after Georgia decides on a starter, competition for the backup job could be just as fierce.

"We'll keep on letting this work itself out through the summer," offensive coordinator Neil Callaway said. "Then we'll evaluate. I wouldn't want to put a time frame on when we're going to make a decision. We'll have to narrow it down, obviously. I would think two weeks, maybe a week before that first game, we'll know how things shake out."

Tereshinski did all the right things in the spring, though he wasn't sharp in the G-Day game, completing just 2-of-7 passes for 45 yards and two interceptions.

"Joe is having a great spring," Richt said after a late March practice. "Leadership-wise. Just knowing what to do. Making the throws that ought to be thrown."

That was to be expected, considering Tereshinski first set foot on campus in 2002, when he enrolled early and was able to take part in Music City Bowl practice. But it wasn't the best time to be a quarterback at Georgia, considering four-year starter David Greene had a stranglehold on the job, and D.J. Shockley, who could have started for probably 85 percent of the other Division I-A schools in the country, was his backup.

Just to get on the field, Tereshinski -- a third-generation Bulldog whose grandfather and father played on SEC championship Georgia teams -- served in a variety of special teams capacities, including long snapper.

A year ago, with Greene having departed and Shockley ascending to the No. 1 job, Tereshinski stepped up to No. 2 and was called upon when Shockley injured his left knee against Arkansas. He passed for 93 yards in that game, won by Georgia 23-20, and was thrown into a tough situation a week later when the Bulldogs met Florida in their annual skirmish in Jacksonville. Georgia lost, 14-10, but Tereshinksi, who started his first career game, did what he could, completing 8-of-21 passes for 100 yards and scoring the Bulldogs' only touchdown on a 9-yard pass from Thomas Brown.

Shockley was back in the lineup when Georgia played again, two weeks later against Auburn, but Tereshinksi's brief time as a starter gives him that much more experience than Stafford, Barnes and Cox.

Now comes that age-old question: Does experience trump talent, or vice versa? Georgia's going to find out, because Stafford, from Highland Park High School in Dallas, is talented. He's the most highly decorated recruit at Georgia since Herschel Walker.

Stafford's high school stats were off-the-charts good. As a senior, he completed 209-of-322 passes for 4,018 yards and 38 touchdowns in leading Highland Park to its first Class AAAA championship since 1957. Stafford was a Parade All-American and ranked the No. 1 quarterback in the country by Rivals.com and No. 2 by ESPN and Scout.com.

How did Georgia reach into the Lonestar State and take Stafford away from the national champion University of Texas, which was Stafford's second choice? It all had to do with Richt.

"I was a big fan of Florida State [where Richt was an assistant for 15 years] for the longest time because both of my parents went there," Stafford told the Athens [Ga.] Banner-Herald. "He was calling the plays over there for a long time and I really liked how he called plays since I can remember. Meeting him and finding out what kind of person he was pretty much did it."

"More than any other coach that recruited him, and there were a ton of them, Mark Richt wanted to get to know Matthew as a person -- no one else did," Stafford's father John told the Athens newspaper. "Everybody talked about his talent and talked about what he could do and winning national championships and all of that. I really believe Mark, not just with Matthew, but all of his players, wants to get to know his players."

Richt is equally enamored of Stafford.

"When I'm looking for a quarterback, the first thing I look for is the ability to throw the football," Richt said on national signing day last February. "That's something that most people take as a given, but it's something you've got to have. From the film I saw on Matthew, he makes every throw you can ask a guy to make."

That arm was on display in the spring game. Stafford completed just 5-of-12 passes for 102 yards, but on his first throw he hooked up with Mikey Henderson on a 64-yard scoring play that turned out to be the game's only touchdown pass. Stafford was the only Georgia quarterback not to throw an interception.

"I was just trying to relax and have fun and play the game like I know how to," Stafford said. "I think I did pretty well."

The same couldn't be said for Cox, who completed 12-of-21 passes for 162 yards in the G-Day game, most among Georgia quarterbacks. Unfortunately, Cox also completed four passes to the opposition, two of which were returned for touchdowns. Richt said he wasn't concerned because he knows Cox, also a former Parade All-American, has talent.

So does Barnes, who in 2003 was rated the No. 5 quarterback in the country by recruiting analyst Max Emfinger. A year ago he played in three games, completing 2-of-3 passes for 9 yards. He was denied a chance to show what he could do in the G-Day game when he banged his right thumb on a defender's helmet while following through on a pass attempt in an April 3 scrimmage.