Stockton vs. Philo at Last: Georgia's Two High School Legends Finally Face Off

ATLANTA

The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party is indoors today, in another state, and the two quarterbacks have never actually played each other. Everything about Florida–Georgia this Halloween is slightly out of place — and lands exactly where it belongs.

No. 3 Georgia (6-1, 4-1 SEC) meets Florida (5-2, 3-2 SEC) at 3:30 p.m. ET — 12:30 p.m. PT — on ABC at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. EverBank Stadium's $1.4 billion renovation forced the rivalry out of Jacksonville for the first time since the 1994–95 campus detour; the game moves to Tampa in 2027 and returns to Jacksonville in 2028. Both teams are ranked for the first time since 2020 — also the last time Florida won this game. Georgia has taken five straight since; a sixth today tightens its grip on the SEC and Playoff races.

The quarterbacks are the story, and Georgia high school football wrote it years ago. Georgia's Gunner Stockton, a Rabun County graduate, holds the state's career record with 177 passing touchdowns. Florida's Aaron Philo, a Prince Avenue Christian graduate, holds the state's career record with 13,922 passing yards — a mark that pushed him past Trevor Lawrence. Until today, they had never met head-to-head: they shared a field three times since 2020, but Philo was always the backup — a high school freshman behind Brock Vandagriff in 2020, then twice a Georgia Tech backup in games against Georgia. Today they finally start against each other — in the building where Philo broke the state yardage record and won his second state title, and where Stockton has won two SEC championships.

Philo hurt his throwing shoulder late in Florida's Oct. 10 loss to South Carolina and sat out the trip to Texas, where backup Tramell Jones Jr. won his first career start, 27–24, throwing for 155 yards and two touchdowns — the first Florida quarterback since Jesse Palmer in 1997 to win his debut on the road at a top-10 team. Philo was named the starter on Thursday, and both quarterbacks were upgraded to probable on Friday. He returns with 1,341 passing yards, nine touchdowns and three interceptions in six starts — and a chip: he grew up in Bogart, about 13 miles from Georgia's campus, and Georgia never offered him.

Stockton arrives with the better numbers and the fresher wound. He has thrown for 1,570 yards and 16 touchdowns against four interceptions, completing 74.1% of his passes. But his last outing was his messiest in a Georgia uniform: in the 27–24 home loss to Auburn on Oct. 17, he threw two interceptions — matching his total from the first six games combined — and, with the score tied and just over a minute left, collided with his own center and fumbled at midfield to set up Auburn's winning field goal. Georgia had the bye to sit with it; under Kirby Smart, the Bulldogs have lost back-to-back regular-season games only twice, both in 2016.

The ground game may decide it. Running back Jadan Baugh has 763 rushing yards and 13 touchdowns, but Georgia's run defense allows just 91.4 yards a game, 10th nationally — and Tim Tebow, on The Paul Finebaum Show this week, pointed at the crack: in Florida's last three games, 31% of the Gators' runs went for no gain or a loss. "You do not beat Georgia that way," Tebow said. The counter-receipt is real, too: Auburn ran for 192 yards on this defense, and Alabama ran for 161.

So here is the Halloween card: a borrowed stadium, a split crowd under a roof, two Georgia schoolboy legends finally starting against each other, and a favorite trying not to lose two straight for the first time in a decade. Georgia is favored by 11.5, with the total at 56.5. The party moved. The stakes didn't.

Kickoff: 3:30 p.m. ET / 12:30 p.m. PT, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta. TV: ABC.