Georgia Bulldogs head coach Kirby Smart provided an update on where Georgia’s punter competition stands ahead of the Sugar Bowl against Notre Dame.
Smart claims the competition is open, but that freshman punter Drew Miller (zero career punts) is taking most of the reps.
“That’s a day‑to‑day competition, to be honest with you,” said Smart on the punter competition. “We get a lot of guys reps and we’ll decide probably closer to the game as we finalize that, but that’s been, you know, going on since we started back.”
Georgia starting punter Brett Thorson, who was having an outstanding season suffered a serious knee injury in the SEC championship and is out for the season. No other UGA punter has punted all season.
“Drew’s (Miller) been great. He’s done a good job. He’s taken a majority of those reps,” Smart said. “But when the job is open, we let everybody punt. So we got them all out there punting.”
“Gunner (Stockton) can punt, (Ryan) Puglisi can punt. We’ve got some wide receivers that can punt. I’ve had to punt a couple times. So we’ll just keep going until we run out of punters,” continued Smart. We would love to see if Smart actually punted in practice.
We probably won’t know much more about Georgia’s punter competition until Georgia plays Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl at 8:45 p.m. ET on Jan. 1.