ATHENS — There’s never an ideal time to have to get your backup quarterback ready to play.

But Kirby Smart did at least acknowledge that the three-week gap between the SEC Championship game and Georgia’s quarterfinal playoff game does give the Bulldogs some time to help prep Stockton while it waits to learn the status of quarterback Carson Beck.

“It certainly wasn’t a great script last night to have to do it against the number one team in the country on defense, and to have to do that at halftime was tough,” Smart said after the SEC Championship game. “But this situation does give you time if that’s what has to happen. I mean, there is time there. But, I mean, experience is so valuable, and you can’t really get experience in this amount of time.”

By winning the SEC Championship game thanks to the play of Stockton, Georgia won’t have to play in next weekend’s set of first round games. The Bulldogs will face the winner of Notre Dame-Indiana, who play on Dec. 20.

But the extra time off doesn’t just give Stockton the chance to get some extra practice reps with the Georgia offense. It also allows some of Georgia’s injured players the chance to get some much-needed rest.

Consider that running back Trevor Etienne didn’t play in the three games prior to the SEC Championship game due to a rib injury. He then went and logged 20 carries in the win, scoring twice.

Having a fresh Etienne could go a long way in helping get the most out of a Georgia offense that is going to need a better-rushing attack moving forward.

“I feel like that’s huge for us,” Etienne said after the SEC Championship game. “You know, like I said, I just come back from an injury. There’s a lot of guys that have nicks and bruises. So, we want to get as healthy as we can to be our best moving forward.”

Two of Georgia’s more banged-up positions this season have been on the offensive and defensive lines. Earnest Greene has been dealing with an arm injury that caused him to miss the final three games of the regular season, while Tate Ratledge, Micah Morris and Jared Wilson both missed time during the regular season with injuries.

On the defensive line, defensive lineman Christen Miller missed both the Georgia Tech and Texas games with a shoulder injury. The Georgia defensive front found a way to limit Texas on the ground to just 31 rushing yards on 28 attempts. Georgia also had 15 tackles for loss in the win, the most ever in the Smart era.

Miller did dress out against Texas and was not on the injury report. Georgia did see defensive lineman Jamaal Jarrett enter the transfer portal this week. Jarrett did not play in the SEC Championship game.

After the win over Texas, Smart made it a point to emphasize how important the lines of scrimmage are in terms of winning.

It made a difference in the SEC Championship game. If Georgia can be healthy on those two sides of the line in the College Football Playoff, the Bulldogs have more than enough talent to make a deep run, regardless of who is playing quarterback.

“Look, it’s a line-of-scrimmage game. Sark knows that,” Smart said after the SEC Championship game. “That’s why he recruits the way he does. He gets big people. We get big people. That is the difference in our conference and the other conferences.

“Everybody can find skilled players, everybody can find quarterbacks, receivers, DBs. But the mass in the defensive line and offensive line is the difference in there.”