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Georgia’s game this season against Vanderbilt comes sandwiched between two 2025 College Football Playoff participants. Before facing the Commodores, the Bulldogs take on Oklahoma. The week after, Georgia travels to Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
In between, the Bulldogs take on a Vanderbilt team that went 10-2 last season and just missed the College Football Playoff.
Vanderbilt’s accomplishments in 2025 aren’t the reason that Georgia fans will have this game circled, though. That would be the presence of freshman quarterback Jared Curtis.
To most of the college football world, Curtis is known as one of the top incoming freshmen. He was the No. 14 ranked newcomer in the sport by ESPN and the No. 4 overall player in the 247Sports Composite rankings for the 2026 recruiting cycle.
“Curtis arrives at Vanderbilt with the type of expectations rarely seen in the program, giving the Commodores a potential long-term centerpiece at quarterback after the Diego Pavia era,” ESPN’s Billy Tucker wrote. “He steps into a position of major importance as Vanderbilt looks to remain competitive in the SEC moving forward and establish stability at quarterback.”
Georgia partisans know Curtis much differently. He’s viewed as the quarterback who committed to Georgia twice during the recruiting process, only to flip to Vanderbilt the week the early signing period began.
Curtis had a very loud recruitment, frustrating fans at the end when he flipped to Georgia. The Bulldogs eventually replaced Curtis with Bryson Beaver, a 2026 quarterback recruit who signed initially with Oregon but transferred to Georgia after the Ducks added quarterback Dylan Raiola.
Georgia fans will be all too quick to point out what happened to Raiola in his career as a point of caution. Raiola was a 5-star quarterback in the 2024 recruiting cycle and committed to the Bulldogs. But just before National Signing Day, he flipped to Nebraska in part so he could start as a true freshman.
That didn’t work out for Raiola as the Cornhuskers struggled in his two years as a starting quarterback. He suffered a season-ending injury last season and will now be a backup quarterback this season.
Like Raiola at Nebraska, Curtis will have a lot on his shoulders this coming season. Vanderbilt has to replace a number of significant contributors from last season, led by Paiva. Per ESPN’s returning production metric, the Commodores rank last in the conference in terms of returning production.
Under Kirby Smart and Clark Lea, Georgia-Vanderbilt games have gotten ugly before. The Bulldogs won 62-0 in 2021 and 55-0 the following year. Both of those games came after the Georgia-Vanderbilt game at the end of the 2020 season was called off. That game was supposed to be Georgia’s senior day.
These two teams last met during the 2023 season. That game was far more competitive, with Georgia winning 37-20. The most memorable moment came when star tight end Brock Bowers suffered an ankle injury that would sideline him for the next two games. Bowers was never the same player after that injury.
Georgia fans will likely want something similar to what happened in 2021 and 2022. But in the event that Curtis is Vanderbilt’s starting quarterback that day, don’t expect Smart to run up the score. He doesn’t operate that way, especially in the age of the transfer portal.
Relationships matter to Smart. It’s part of the reason Georgia landed the commitment of Curtis in the first place. And as we saw with Raiola, Curtis could enter the transfer portal at some point during his college career.
As for this season’s game, the Georgia game will be the biggest of his life to that point. Vanderbilt travels to Auburn the week before facing Georgia, so he’ll at least have a taste of what it’s like to play in an SEC road game.
Auburn will be led by a first-year head coach in Alex Golesh and is somewhat of an unknown. Georgia is one of the most stable teams in the sport, having made the College Football Playoff in four of the previous five seasons.
As for the Bulldogs, Georgia will be coming off a physical game against Oklahoma and have a game looming the next week against Alabama.
Vanderbilt was a top-25 team a year ago and can’t be overlooked. Because of the presence of Curtis, you can bet Georgia and its fans, will have the Vanderbilt game circled on Oct. 3.
