NASHVILLE — It was one of the defining plays of Georgia’s championship run during the 2022 season. LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels remembers it less fondly.
In the second quarter of Georgia’s 50-30 win over LSU, Jalen Carter had wrapped his arms around Daniels, squeezing the slippery LSU quarterback. Only instead of slamming him to the turf, Carter hoisted and held Daniels up in the air.
With Daniels in one arm, Carter flashed the No. 1 sign in his free hand. It was an iconic play from Georgia’s highest-drafted player on the 2022 championship team.
Daniels gave his thoughts on the play months later as he is now readying to lead LSU into the 2023 season.
“Jalen Carter is a great player. In the moment I didn’t know what was going on,” Daniels said at SEC Media Days. “I could just feel him trying to pick me up. I tried to put pressure on my ankle and really couldn’t/ It’s a viral moment for their statement run that they made.”
Daniels was dealing with an ankle injury that forced him from the game. He went 16 of 24 for 208 yards, throwing a touchdown and an interception in the loss. The ankle injury limited him to just six rushing attempts, as he finished with a -6 rushing yards.
LSU head coach Brian Kelly made it clear that Daniels will be LSU’s starter moving forward. Garrett Nussmeier replaced Daniels in the SEC championship game, where he completed 15 of his 27 pass attempts for 297 yards and two touchdowns.
Daniels will likely be voted as an All-SEC quarterback later this week, with All-SEC teams being announced on Friday. The LSU quarterback though has bigger goals on his mind, with the 2022 season giving him a taste of success in the very competitive SEC.
“I just think we were that close to really winning the SEC,” Daniels said. “We were a couple of plays away from competing with Georgia, the national champions.”
After beating LSU, Georgia went on to take down Ohio State and then TCU in the national championship game. The Bulldogs have won back-to-back national championships and are one of the favorites to win it all again in 2023.
The win over LSU showed just how far the Tigers have to go against Georgia in particular. Kelly was asked about closing the gap and pointed to how the Tigers have been recruiting and must continue to recruit in order to chase down the Bulldogs.
“I know that based upon how we’ve recruited and how we’ll continue to recruit that we’ll have a football roster that will be able to compete against Georgia,” Kelly said. “Is that right now? No, it’s not. But if we continue to do what we’re doing, we’re going to have a roster that can compete against Georgia, and then it’s just a matter of getting it done on the playing field so everybody then can assess they’ve closed the gap.”
To Kelly’s point, Carter was a 5-star prospect in the 2020 signing class. Georgia has signed a top-four signing class every year dating back to the 2017 recruiting cycle.
LSU has aggressively used the transfer portal to fill some of the holes on the LSU roster, with Daniels coming over from Arizona State. But the Tigers want to recruit the high school ranks to build their team. LSU signed the No. 6 overall class in the 2023 recruiting cycle. Georgia brought in the No. 2 class and currently has the No. 1 class for the 2024 recruiting cycle.
Georgia and LSU are not scheduled to meet in either the 2023 season or the 2024 season. The last time the two teams met during the regular season was in 2018, with LSU winning at home. The two teams though figure to be the favorites to represent the SEC East and SEC West in the 2023 SEC Championship Game.
If that happens, Daniels won’t have to worry about Carter lifting him into the air as he is now a member of the Philadelphia Eagles. But he knows Georgia is still the team to beat in college football.
