Georgia Football: Top 5 potential transfer destinations for Justin Fields
Former five-star QB Justin Fields has reportedly decided to transfer from Georgia Football. Where might the highly touted signal caller end up?
According to a report from USA Today’s Dan Wolken, former five-star QB Justin Fields intends to transfer from Georgia after one year at the school.
Fields spent his freshman season as Jake Fromm‘s backup in Athens, and with the talented sophomore back for at least one more season, and likely two, Fields has decided to explore the transfer market with no intentions of sitting the bench for two more seasons.
Fields appeared in all 13 of Georgia’s games this season, but only saw extended action in blowout wins. He was primarily used as a change-of-pace read-option QB and in the redzone where Kirby Smart and company hoped to utilize his athleticism in a similar role to what Tim Tebow did at Florida early in his career.
Fields attempted just 39 passes over his 13 games with the Bulldogs, completing 27 of them for 328 yards and four touchdowns. He added 266 rushing yards on 42 attempts with four more touchdowns.
Fields’ decision to go to Athens was a bit peculiar from the get go with Fromm entrenched as the starting QB after leading Georgia to an SEC Championship and the playoff as a true freshman, coming agonizingly close to winning the national title as well.
Fromm did nothing in his sophomore season to lose the job, save for some public outcry after his struggles in Baton Rouge led to Georgia’s only regular season loss, but he rebounded from there and looked every bit like one of the nation’s best passers. There wasn’t likely anything Fields could do over the offseason to rip the starting job from Fromm’s grasp, leaving him with little options outside of a transfer if he didn’t want to sit the bench another year or two.
With more and more freshman and sophomore quarterbacks making big impacts, highly touted recruits like Fields aren’t willing to sit the bench and wait their turn like was a long-standing operating procedure for years in college football.
In the 2018 recruiting class, Fields and Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence were 1A and 1B depending on which recruiting service you looked at. Fields seeing Lawrence get the opportunity at Clemson and thriving, leading the Tigers to the playoff undoubtedly spurred his decision for a change of scenery.
With Fields reportedly leaving, the QB room in Athens has gotten remarkably thin. The Bulldogs could be in line to nab a graduate transfer in their own right because they’ll be down to just two scholarship quarterbacks in 2019 with Fromm and incoming four-star prospect John Rhys Plumlee.
Fields will reportedly be petitioning the NCAA for a waiver to make him immediately eligible in 2019. It seems 50/50 at best whether that waiver will be granted, but there will be no shortage of suitors hoping to land Fields in what is shaping up to be a loaded QB transfer class.
Let’s take a look at five possible schools Fields might end up at in 2019: