ATHENS — Kirby Smart said on Wednesday that freshman quarterback Carson Beck has not gone unnoticed and will continue to get a lot of work this week and moving forward.

Beck, Smart said. “will continue to get a lot of work throughout this week and the coming weeks ….  I think he’s growing, getting better, which is what we challenge every player to do in our program.”

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Smart spent most of this week discussing third-year quarterback JT Daniels, a transfer from USC who appeared poised to make his first appearance at Missouri before the Tigers pulled out on Saturday’s scheduled game on account of COVID-19 positive tests and tracing results.

Beck, like Daniels, has yet to see action this season and that led a reporter from the Jacksonville Times-Union to press the issue and accuse Smart of not considering the true freshman for playing time.

“Obviously people wonder why he’s not really in the mix, or doesn’t appear to be in the mix for consideration for playing time …. “ The Florida-based reporter said.

“I would disagree with that, he has been considered,” Smart said. “He just has not gotten a ton of reps since the season started. It’s hard to prepare a number of quarterbacks and you have to prepare the guys that you have an opportunity to.

“We thought he got a lot more reps in fall camp, but we think he’s going to be a really good player.”

Georgia started redshirt freshman D’Wan Mathis in the season-opening game at Arkansas before going to Stetson Bennett on the seventh series of that game with the team trailing 7-2.

Bennett has started the past five games but suffered a sprained AC joint in his throwing shoulder in the 44-28 loss to Florida and has been limited this week in practice.

“We have a lot of freshman on our team that maybe haven’t gotten the opportunity to play,” Smart said. “What we think we do better is, we really plot and plan how we develop a guy and how he gets reps and how he gets work to grow as a player.

“Carson has been in every single quarterback meeting, he’s been in every single walkthrough, he’s gotten a lot opportunities in scrimmages and things that we weren’t able to give Stetson [Bennett] because Stetson had the experience of playing.

Former Georgia quarterback Aaron Murray raised eyebrows in August when he reported from a scrimmage he attended that Beck looked better than other UGA quarterbacks.

Murray took the Tweet down within 24 hours, leading to more curiosity over his observation.

“I think if you look across the country, it’s hard to prepare two people for a week of a game,” Smart said. “It’s easy to rep a lot of guys in off weeks, it’s easy to rep a lot of guys in camp but we have had a lot of guys to rep.”