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The Rashada Saga moves to UGA

Most Gators fans never want to hear the name Jaden Rashada again. After an NIL snafu that resulted in Florida letting him out of his national letter of intent and a commitment to Arizona State, it seemed like his interaction with the Gators was over.

But now, news comes that Rashada is transferring from Arizona State to the hated Georgia Bulldogs.

Certainly, Rashada isn’t going to be beating out Carson Beck for the starting job this year. But with 5-star recruit Brock Vandagriff transferring to Kentucky this offseason, there was a roster spot to fill in Athens and Kirby Smart filled it with a player the Gators wanted just 18 months ago.

All that being said, is Rashada actually going to be any good?

I tried to answer that question when he committed to Florida back in 2022. To be honest, his high school stats didn’t scream “can’t miss”. He completed 57 percent of his throws in 2022 and then 64.1 percent in 2023, but only averaged 9.2 and 8.7 yards per attempt on those throws. Typically, I use those two stats in a player’s senior year for my analyses, so here’s what I wrote at the time.

“This (Anthony Richardson’s high school stats) looks a lot like Rashada’s statistics as well, just without the explosiveness through the air (11.3 yards per attempt vs. 9.2). I think what this suggests is that Rashada profiles as a good QB, but not a great one.”

What I should have said at the time is that projection was his ceiling, not his floor. In other words, comparing his stats to AR’s indicated that AR had a much higher ceiling but that Rashada could still be very good assuming he kept his completion percentage up at the 64 percent range in college. I say that because QBs with similar national recruiting rankings and high school completion percentages have outcomes that range from Justin Fields (best player on a playoff team) to Jake Fromm (effective college QB with limitations) to Tate Martell (35 career attempts at Ohio State, Miami and UNLV).

And now we have college data. At Arizona State last season, Rashada completed 44 of 82 throws (53.7 percent) for 485 yards (5.9 yards per attempt) with a QB rating of 112.1. He also ran 14 times for 23 yards, which at 1.6 yards per rush is well below average for an FBS QB. The caveat is that we only have a three game sample size to examine because of injury, but the converse to that argument is that the only game where Rashada was even average (QB rating of 143.3) was against FCS Southern Utah.

Years ago, I wrote about how it did seem like you could use the first three games of a QB’s career to determine whether he was going to be good or not. A short summary of that study is that QBs who had high completion percentages in high school saw that translate right away (within three games). Those with low completion percentages saw that translate right away as well. The idea of accuracy being a developed skill does not appear to be true.

Which means if we’re looking at what Jaden Rashada is going to contribute to Georgia, I’d put my money on “solid backup.” He certainly has physical tools that could still open up an upside that he didn’t show at Arizona State. And he’ll provide some peace of mind for Kirby in that he has a player with Power-5 reps to step in should something happen to Beck this season.

But the fact Smart needs that security blanket says a whole lot about the guys currently beyhind Beck on the depth chart.