Could Stetson Bennett be the next late round steal?

After winning back-to-back National Championships and posting impressive numbers at the NFL Combine, is Stetson Bennett a potential NFL star as well?

The list of back-to-back championship quarterbacks in college football is fairly interesting.

I looked it up after Georgia won again with Stetson Bennett at the helm. I found 14 instances of a college football program winning the National Championship (by some metric) two years in a row. Of those 14 instances, eight of them had the same quarterback for both titles.

Here’s the list:

Most of these guys are lost to time now, but I’ll give you a brief historical. Bruce Smith actually played halfback for whatever ancient set the Gophers used, he just lead them in pass attempts. Jerry Tagge was more of a passer than you’d guess from his profile as a Cornhusker quarterback, but he didn’t make it in the NFL. Steve Davis and Tommy Frazier were pure option quarterbacks.

Johnny Lujack was the most successful pro of this entire list, even though he only played four years with the Bears before moving into coaching. Different times.

Our recent three guys, Matt Leinart, A.J. McCarron, and Stetson, are all mostly defined by serving as the quarterbacks for powerful machines with elite offensive lines. Neither McCarron nor Leinart were stars in the NFL with Leinart starting his rookie year only before being relegated to back-up while McCarron was a back-up for his entire career (both played seven years).

Those Crimson Tide teams featured the same starting tight end and they had six offensive linemen make up their two starting units. 2011’s center William Vlachos (undrafted) graduated and they slid left tackle Barrett Jones (4th round) to center and inserted Cyrus Kouandjio (2nd round) at left tackle. Left guard Chance Warmack (1st round), right guard Anthony Steen (undrafted), and right tackle D.J. Fluker (1st round) stayed in the same positions for two years.

It should be no surprise for anyone who can’t recall those teams that they were very effective running the football and protecting McCarron.

As for the Trojans? Everyone mostly remembers them for the featured players in the ESPN documentary about them, Leinart, LenDale White, and Reggie Bush. Well they also had a dominant defense (until 2005, when they didn’t and were punished for it by Vince Young and Texas) and an offensive line.

They had some overhaul between 2003 and 2004, losing four starters. Left tackle Jacob Rogers was drafted and right tackle Winston Justice was injured (he’d return in 2005). They replaced them with future 1st round pick Sam Baker at left tackle, 2nd round pick Ryan Kahlil at center, and 2nd round pick Deuce Latui at right tackle while eventual 7th round pick Fred Matua held right guard down both years.

The 2005 USC line was even more legendary with Winston Justice joining everyone mentioned above from the 2004 crew.

The observable pattern of returning champions in the modern era has been “dominant O-line, great defense, and field general quarterback.” The last part has been the trick, how do you know if a quarterback is driving the bus of his team’s success with physical skill or sheer know-how? In terms of winning, the latter is actually more important, but when projecting to the NFL you don’t really want to draft a guy who’s success was a result of being able to keep

Was Bennett just a savvy winner? Or could he actually be more?