ATHENS — In the span of four days, Georgia has added a second former Alabama player. And this time it’s at the game’s marquee position.
Quarterback Parker McLeod, who played for one season at Alabama, has joined Georgia’s football team as a walk-on, his father and a team spokesman both confirmed. McLeod, wearing No. 14, has been practicing with the team since last Thursday, the first day of classes. He will have two years of eligibility.
McLeod is not new to UGA: He spent the 2015-16 school year as a regular student at UGA, pursuing a finance degree. (His father, Bob, preferred to let his son speak for himself on the circumstances of his joining the team.)
There are a couple connections that may have led to McLeod walking on to the Bulldogs.
McLeod (listed at Alabama as 6-foot-3 and 190 pounds) played at Marietta’s Walton High School, where he was a teammate of current Georgia senior center Brandon Kublanow.
After leaving Walton, McLeod signed with Alabama (where Kirby Smart was defensive coordinator) in 2013 as a three-star prospect, one of two quarterbacks the Crimson Tide signed that year. The other was Cooper Bateman, who is still competing this year to win Alabama’s starting job.
But McLeod never played for the Crimson Tide, and his only pass during the 2014 spring game was intercepted. After one season, he transferred to Western Kentucky and sat out the 2014 season, per transfer rules. But he quit the Hilltoppers after one year, without ever playing.
Georgia still only has three scholarship quarterbacks: Senior Greyson Lambert, freshman Jacob Eason and junior Brice Ramsey. It does have another walk-on, junior Sam Vaughn. Another walk-on, Nick Robinson, elected to transfer over the summer and ended up at Penn.
The Bulldogs have a commitment to sign in February from Jake Fromm, a four-star prospect from Warner-Robins’ Houston County High School.