Just like old times, a QB named Bennett shines at USC’s Williams-Brice Stadium

Stetson Bennett III waved his left arm along the hash marks of Williams-Brice Stadium.

The sweeping motion, he explained, is the path his father, Buddy, took along the field for his final carry of the 1960 season as an option quarterback at South Carolina.

“It was a 40- or 45-yard touchdown,” Stetson III explained. “That was his final play as a Gamecock.”

Not more than 30 yards from where Stetson III pointed, his son and Buddy’s grandson, Stetson Bennett IV rolled through pregame warmups Saturday ahead of No. 1 Georgia’s 48-7 dismantling of South Carolina.

You’ve heard of this Stetson before. The former walk-on who transferred and spent a year at junior college before landing back in Athens. The signal-caller who, after being buried on the UGA depth chart two years ago, guided the Bulldogs to a national championship in 2021.

It’s this Stetson that, on Saturday, torched a short-handed South Carolina defense for a surgical 284 yards and two touchdowns on the field his grandfather once bowled over Bulldog defenders.

“There could definitely be a 45-yard run from Stetson,” Stetson III prognosticated pregame. “But if he’s running the option, we’ve got some serious problems.”

Road tripping from Florida and Georgia to Columbia

Stetson III is chipper at 10:46 a.m. ahead of kickoff slated for just after noon at Williams-Brice Stadium. How he’s functioning sans a cup of coffee, or something stronger, is impressive.

He’s spent the last week on a bounding road trip of youth sports ranging from high school softball to Southeastern Conference football.

There were the three Pierce County High School softball games he hit to to watch his youngest, Olivia, play centerfield for the Bears. Friday brought a trip down to Chipola College to see Knox, who’s in his first year playing baseball at the powerhouse program west of Tallahassee and north of Panama City Beach.

Then came a quick 218-mile trek back to the family home in Blackshear, Georgia before an early-morning drive up to Columbia to see Stetson IV and younger brother Luke, a walk-on at Georgia, take on South Carolina.

“In the last 24 hours, we’ve had a fair number (of miles),” Stetson III quipped.

Stetson III is nestled into the bleachers six rows above the hedges on the 43-yard line at Williams-Brice Stadium to watch Stetson IV take the field.

Even in a college career that spans six years, Stetson IV had never suited up in Columbia until Saturday. He was injured during the Bulldogs’ 2020 trip. He was torching junior college defenses in Mississippi during the 2018 edition of the rivalry.

Pointing out toward the Gamecock logo painted onto the 50-yard line, Stetson III explains that’s the spot Stetson IV was part of a trio of quarterbacks invited to throw for then-head coach Steve Spurrier in the spring of 2015.

“We had a little traction there and then Coach Spurrier decided to just let it go,” Stetson III told The State earlier this year. “He retired and I was like, ‘Well, boys, back to the drawing board.’ “

Stetson IV looks like a far different quarterback than he was then, or even a year ago. He’s still the swaggy, “I-don’t-care-what-others-think” gunslinger he’s always been, sure. But these days he’s equal parts vindicated as he is a more-efficient update of the much-maligned 2021 version of himself.

Take Saturday’s contest as proof of concept.

He completed 70% of his passes, albeit against a banged-up Gamecocks secondary. He didn’t force a single throw. His ball to the back-left pylon that was snagged by all-world tight end Brock Bowers for a touchdown could’ve been hung in the Louvre.

Those same Georgia fans who decried his ability throughout last year waved their red pom poms vigorously as he guided the Bulldogs to a 38-0 lead midway through the third quarter.

That’s all despite a mid-game vomit that TV cameras caught live.

“He kept saying he felt like he had to throw up,” Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said. “And he did. He’s a competitor. He wouldn’t come out.”

Nice touch with the rushing TD

The past nine months have changed things for the Bennett family. Counting a national championship-winning quarterback among your kin in a football-crazed state like Georgia will do that.

Family friend Moye Howard isn’t surprised to see all the success. He’s been hearing about Stetson IV since he was an eighth-grader playing on the junior varsity team at Pierce County.

“Pierce County was playing Camden County and (my uncle) went over to the game,” Howard recounted. “After that game, he called me he said, ‘Who is that Stetson Bennett kid?’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘That dude right there, I’ve never seen a junior high kid throw the ball like that dude throws the ball.’ ”

Stetson III jokes he’s had his own brushes with stardom of late.

Eating at The Farmhouse in Glennville, Georgia, recently, he stopped in to grab a bite to eat with one of his old fraternity brothers. A man familiar with Stetson’s old college friend stopped by, only to be introduced to the man whose son guided the Bulldogs to their first national title since 1980.

“Your son the quarterback” the man queried, stuttering a touch.

“Yes, sir,” Stetson III replied.

“Sir, you are the second-most important person I’ve ever met,” the man said.

“I said, ‘You need to get out more,’ ” Stetson III recalled through a laugh.

Change as things may, Saturday was an eerie reminder of years past.

Stetson IV faked a third-quarter handoff to running back Daijun Edwards from the South Carolina 11-yard line. Slipping the ball into his hip pocket, Bennett dipped off the left side of the Georgia offensive line.

He promptly juked Gamecocks defensive end Gilber Edmond with a video game-like sidestep before dancing past reserve defensive back B.J. Gibson into the end zone.

Though not quite as long, the final play of Bennett’s day elicited shades of the man who once called the South Carolina backfield home between 1958 and 1960.

That was no ghost, but it may well have been.

“I’m glad I ran one in,” Stetson IV said postgame when asked about playing on the same grounds as his grandfather. “That was pretty cool.”

Georgia didn’t need the option to beat South Carolina on Saturday. For the first time in 62 years, though, a quarterback surnamed Bennett scampered into the end zone at Williams-Brice Stadium.

Perhaps things don’t change that much, after all.