SANTA ANA, Calif. — The JT Daniels that Georgia football unleashed on the SEC and in the final four games of the regular season looked quite familiar to Mater Dei offensive coordinator Dave Money.
The confident swagger to the line of scrimmage, the quick diagnostics once at the line of scrimmage, his pre-snap read rendering defense strategies mostly useless.
“When I watched him on TV this year, it looked like the same old JT,” Money told DawgNation in the midst of Daniels’ spring semester break back to the Golden State of California.
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MATER DEI BEGINNINGS
Money said it all goes back to Daniels’ sixth-grade year, when he first met the QB prodigy during the Mater Dei program’s quarterback academy.
“JT would come in here after I would meet with the quarterbacks, and they would leave whatever their drawings were on the board, and he would say, “I know better than they do,’ and he did,” Money said.
“He knew the pass protections, and he knew how to re-enhance the pass protections — in case we had overload to one side — and how to take care of those problems better than the quarterbacks we had here.”
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Daniels won MaxPreps national honors as Freshman High School Player of the Year and Sophomore Player of the Year. As a Junior, Daniels was the national Gatorade Player of the Year.
The Monarchs went 15-0 in that 2017 season, the first high school team to capture a unanimous national championship since the 1986 Valdosta (Ga.) squad.
Daniels’ gaudy statistics backed up Mater Dei’s dominance. The team won every game by double digits as he completed 262 of 365 passes (.718) for 4,123 yards with 52 TDs and 4 Ints. Daniels also rushed 63 times for 556 (8.83 avg.) with 9 rushing touchdowns.
That success, coupled with a hole in USC’s recruiting class, led Daniels to re-classify and skip his senior year of high school, instead, starting for the Trojans as a freshman.
QB LINEAGE
The SoCal High School ranks have long churned out great quarterbacks, with Mater Dei having more than its fair share en route to five national championships.
Matt Leinart, Colt Brennan, Matt Barkley, Daniels and most recently Alabama quarterback Bryce Young all played with Money calling the shots on offense under the direction of legendary head coach Bruce Rollinson at Mater Dei.
Daniels was advanced to the extent that Money wanted him calling his own plays at the line of scrimmage in his third year in the program.
“If you can get it figured out with pre-snap reads that’s a thing, (because) you always want to be in the best play possible, and JT was able to get us in that,” Money, in his 32nd year as offensive coordinator, explained.
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“It’s an advantage when you have a quarterback that understands the game, and it doesn’t slow him down his process of playing the game.
“He took us to another level offensively.”
The same was true at Georgia last season after Daniels’ surgically repaired knee had healed up enough for him to play in the seventh game of the season.
The Bulldogs averaged more than 40 points and nearly 500 yards of offense against SEC teams with Daniels at quarterback last season, converting a gaudy 64.8 percent (24 of 37) on third downs.
GEORGIA BEGINNINGS
Smart noted how his quarterback has continued to blossom going into the second year in Todd Monken’s Pro Style Spread attack.
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“We haven’t had great continuity with this back out, that receiver out, so we’ve been ping-ponging guys around,” Smart said. “I think (Daniels) asserted himself more in terms of command of the offense.
“There’s a lot of things that help you feel comfortable, in terms of being able to call plays as an offensive coordinator, and he understands those things and does a good job.”
Money said Daniels’ poise has been a constant.
“He has always been very calm and very confident in his ability,” Money said. “That’s just something he was born with. I’d like to give a shout out to his parents, too.”
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THEN AND NOW
It’s a sure bet Daniels has been the target of plenty of the opposition’s film study this offseason.
Clemson, which faces Georgia in both teams’ season-opening game on Sept. 4, is sure to have done its homework all the way back to Daniels’ days in the Trinity League.
The Tigers’ quarterback, D.J. Uiagalelei attended St. John Bosco — Mater Dei’s rival school and a program the Monarchs typically face twice every season.
Chris King, the St. John Bosco defensive coordinator, runs the same defense as Alabama, Georgia and Clemson and has had annual visits with the programs.
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King shared how variety was his key to attacking Daniels, and Clemson defensive coordinate Brent Venables is sure to have plenty of curveballs ready to throw at the Bulldogs’ offense.
Money said seeing defenses change up was a way of life for Mater Dei offense when Daniels was running the show.
“With JT and as much as we love to throw the ball, running our share of Air Raid offenses the last five years and our concepts being Pro-Style,’ Money said, “We would see everything from drop eight to pressure, so basically we would see something new every week.
“So even though we would be prepared for what we saw on video, we would also be prepared for different things.”
Daniels’ relationship with Monken is such that Georgia fans can rest assured the Bulldogs will be well equipped for the challenges.
“We speak the same language, especially in terms of football,” Daniels said during the bowl season “There are times where I’ll get the formation signaled in, I will know exactly what he’s calling.”
Monken shared the same sort of confidence in Daniels’ leadership, even before watching his orchestrate a game-winning drive in the final moments of the bowl game for a short-handed UGA offense.
“I think we’re only going to get better,” Monken said, “and get on the same page more and more during the off-season and 2021.”
Money has seen that, too, and he can hardly wait to see it again with Daniels at Georgia.
