Georgia Tech Football Spring Game Players to Watch: The Quarterbacks
Over the course of the next week, we’ll be highlighting one player to watch each day as Georgia Tech is set to play their spring game on April 26th.
The Georgia Tech spring game is just one week away and that means it’s time to start heading into prep-mode for the game. Today, we start our “players to watch” series for the game as we’ll highlight players over the next seven days to watch in the game.
First up in the series is not a single player but instead the entire Georgia Tech quarterbacks room. This may be cheating as it’s just not one player but this year, the quarterback competition is a little more important than in year’s past. Yesterday, we discussed if Georgia Tech should look at Penn State transfer Tommy Stevens as a potential stop-gap option in the Jackets transition from the triple-option to a pro-style offense but that may depend on the current quarterback’s performance next Friday.
#7 Lucas Johnson:
Currently, the odds on favorite to be the starter next season, Johnson is the best passer on the roster as of right now for the Jackets. While he doesn’t have the mobility of the others, he has the arm strength and accuracy that they don’t have. That being said, Johnson is coming off a serious leg injury from last fall, so it will be interesting to see how much he plays on Friday and how much he’s limited from the injury.
#8 Tobias Oliver:
Oliver was expected to be the third-string quarterback last year but Johnson’s injury in fall camp bumped him up into the backup role. That being said, Oliver has had the opportunity to compete for the starting job this spring. We’ll probably see a good amount of Tobias in the spring game on Friday and while we know what he can do with his feet, his abilities when throwing the ball will be highly scrutinized next Friday. Additionally, the coaching staff has been working Oliver out at nickel back recently per reports coming out of spring practices including from the AJC.
#14 James Graham:
Graham was a four-star athlete coming out of Fitzgerald, Georgia as part of the 2018 recruiting class and has a great deal of athleticism. Graham’s time at Tech so far has been a whirlwind as he’s spent time both at quarterback and receiver last season. Additionally, he was suspended for the Jackets bowl game against Minnesota last season due to academic issues, those issues, however, have been dealt with, it appears. Either way, Graham has had a chance to compete but overall still probably needs another year to develop as a quarterback. He’s still at this point probably more of an athlete than a quarterback. There’s a lot of potential there for Graham if he could put it all together down the road.
Right now, these are the three scholarship quarterbacks on the Jackets roster for 2019. The Jackets also have walk-on quarterback Ryan Lantz on the roster but he probably remains a longshot from having a chance to win the job. The Jackets, of course, will add two new quarterbacks to the fray this summer in, incoming freshman Demetrius Knight and Jordan Yates. Yates, who stock skyrocketed in the tail end of his senior season is expected to make some noise in the competition when he enrolls on campus this summer.
Additionally, as pointed out above, the Yellow Jackets could look into a few graduate transfer options if they wish to do so as more quarterbacks will enter the transfer portal in the upcoming weeks in all likelihood.
But before any of that happens, Friday’s spring game is just around the corner and the quarterback competition will be under the most scrutiny of any competition.