One game and a handful of plays, and there’s no telling who’s playing quarterback for Georgia right now. 

Which fits perfectly with Carson Beck’s career. 

“I’ve been here before, for sure,” Beck said in July. 

Only this time, this mega-clash of a game against rival Alabama Saturday in Tuscaloosa means more than the last time opportunity arrived and changed the quarterback job at Georgia. 

And the course of Beck’s career. 

That was 2021, when in Week 3 he was primed to play for injured quarterback JT Daniels but didn’t practice well. Georgia coach Kirby Smart went with experienced third-stringer Stetson Bennett, and the next thing you know, Bennett was a star and Georgia won back-to-back national titles.

Fast forward to last season – Beck's first as a starter – and No. 1 Georgia’s 27-24 loss to Alabama in the SEC championship game. A handful of plays, Beck says, and everything could’ve changed. 

Georgia could’ve won, advanced to the College Football Playoff and won the whole darn thing again. And more than likely, Beck isn’t playing quarterback for the Bulldogs this time around. 

He’s in the NFL. 

“Sitting in that locker room (after the SEC championship game), that was motivation enough to come back.” Beck said. “I had to make it right.”

So instead of making millions as an NFL first-round pick, Beck returned — with the help of aggressive NIL deals — to take another shot at Alabama. To finish the story of perseverance from 2023, and return Georgia to the top of the college football mountain.

What’s the sense of sitting and waiting three years to play, and when your time finally arrives, the last thing you remember are the handful of plays not made in a game that meant everything?

When asked if he knew Alabama was on the 2024 regular-season schedule before he made his decision to return to Georgia, Beck said, “100 percent.”

He smiled, and quickly added, “Even if they weren’t, you’re going to have to beat them at some point. We all want another shot, not just me.”

So here we are, staring at the first all hands on deck game of the new 16-team SEC, and it begins with Beck finishing his story. Playing out his path, and figuring a way to vanquish the only real blemish in Georgia’s rise to college football greatness. 

Big, bad Alabama. 

The Tide and Bulldogs have played six times since Smart returned in 2016 to coach his alma mater, and Alabama has won five. Each loss as haunting as the next.

The second-and-26 touchdown throw in overtime of the College Football Playoff title game in the 2017 season. The blown 14-point lead in the 2018 SEC championship game.

The 17-point humiliation of a loss in 2020, and another 17-point loss in the 2021 SEC championship game. Only the 33-18 Georgia win the 2021 season national title game is the outlier, including last year’s loss to the Tide.

Even though Georgia has firmly entrenched itself over the last three years as the team to beat in college football, even though the Bulldogs are the first road favorite at Tuscaloosa for the first time since former Tide coach Nick Saban’s first season in 2007, Georgia may as well be little brother to Alabama. 

In the fine line between winning and losing within the high-level play of Georgia vs. Alabama, every snap counts. Every missed throw, every dropped pass, every protection breakdown.

Like the 32-yard missed deep throw from Beck to Arian Smith in the second quarter last year that – but for Tide cornerback Kool-Aid McKinstry’s leaping, slight deflection affecting the trajectory enough to confuse Smith – should’ve changed the game. 

Or the false start four plays later, a penalty that pushed a field goal attempt from 45 to 50 yards — and contributed to it clanking off the right upright to end a scoreless drive.

Or Beck missing running back Daijun Edwards in the end zone from the Alabama 16, instead throwing incomplete underneath to tight end Brock Bowers.

From the potential of 14 points, to absolutely nothing. 

“So close here and there, plays you have to convert when opportunity arrives,” Beck said.

Opportunity is here again for Beck.

He’s playing at a high level again this season, and could be the first quarterback taken in the 2025 NFL draft. Maybe even first pick overall. 

But like it or not, his college career will be judged on this game, and a few more in what is Georgia’s toughest schedule in years. Games against No. 2 Texas, No.5 Mississippi and No.6 Tennessee loom. 

So does a potential rematch against any of those teams (and Alabama) in the SEC championship game — and maybe a third game against one of those heavyweights in the College Football Playoff.

“You come here to play in those games,” Beck said. “Those games lead to where you want to be at the end of the season.”

Which is why Beck came back in the first place. 

Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.