With a container of eggs and sausage with hot sauce added from nearby Stripling’s General Store on the table in front of him in the Prince Avenue Christian field house, Greg Vandagriff Tuesday morning dug into this week’s appetizing storyline.

His son Brock going up against the No. 1 Georgia football team Saturday night.

Brock Vandagriff was along for the ride the last three years as a Bulldogs backup quarterback to Stetson Bennett and then Carson Beck, winning a pair of national championships and making memories and good friends that he still has even though he now plays for Kentucky.

“He’s got things to prove no matter who it is,” said Greg Vandagriff, the school’s ninth-year head coach. “Their team has things to prove and it just happens to be the No. 1 team in the country.”

Brock Vandagriff was finishing up his own breakfast—a bologna, pepperoni and cheese sandwich with mustard and mayo—about an hour later when he answered the phone to talk to an Athens reporter.

He was in a better mood than might be expected considering he was just three days removed from a rough home outing against South Carolina, a 31-6 upset drubbing.

He began watching the Georgia defense on film on Monday morning ahead of the 7:30 p.m. game Saturday in Lexington, seeing many of the same players he went up against in practice last year.

“It wasn’t really too strange,” said Brock Vandagriff, who watched the Georgia-Clemson week one game on TV because the Wildcats played a night game. “It’s nothing different than just a normal game. Offense struggled last game obviously. We’re going to have to go out there and move the ball regardless of the team we’re playing. We’ve got to execute and do the things we’ve been coached to do on offense regardless of the opponent. Really looking forward to the game and seeing those dudes maybe before and after a little bit.”

Vandagriff said he wanted to see whether corrections and improvements will carry over to game day. There are a lot.

After completing 12 of 18 passes for 169 yards with 3 touchdowns and an interception and rushing for 35 yards in a 31-0 win against Southern Miss, the 6-foot-3, 217-pound Vandagriff went 3 of 10 for 30 yards with an interception returned for a touchdown against the Gamecocks.

He was on the run and under pressure for much of the day and was sacked four times while playing through a shoulder injury from the previous week.

“We did not have a good game on Saturday, but that’s not all on Brock,” Kentucky coach Mark Stoops said. “We didn’t even give him a chance half the time. Let’s be honest.”

Greg Vandagriff, who has won three state championships at Prince Avenue and played for a fourth, said he gave his son space afterwards to process the showing because both he and Brock are so competitive about winning.

“I didn’t really handle it too well directly after,” Brock said. “It just wasn’t the outcome we were looking for. Offense didn’t play to our standard. Definitely, some emotions after the game.

Brock Vandagriff leans on his faith and friends from his Georgia days

Brock went Sunday morning to Reforming Truth Church in Lexington with his roommate, Elijah Hynes who also went to Prince Avenue Christian and played at Georgia Southern. Elijah is dating Brock’s sister, Anna, who plays volleyball at Eastern Kentucky.

“Heard a good message and really just refocused at the end of the day,” Vandagriff said. “Football is not everything. As a Christian, we serve a sovereign God and everything happens for a reason. Really putting things in perspective and knowing that the sun came up the next day and it was time to go get better and attacking that week of practice.”

Brock said he hears from former Georgia teammates and good friends—running back Cash Jones and quarterback Carson Beck--just about every day via Snapchat, texts, calls or while playing Fortnite.

“I value that friendship even outside of football,” Vandagriff said.

“I’ll probably give him a little text this week,” Beck said. “Obviously rooting for him. He’s a great friend of mine, but maybe not too much (Saturday).”

Vandagriff is closest with former Georgia tight end Brock Bowers who is now an NFL rookie with the Raiders.

They lived with linebacker Chaz Chambliss for their time at Georgia in a house they rented. Jones was over all the time.

“We always used to have a competition, we called it B’s versus C’s,” said Chambliss, now a Georgia senior. “Brock and Brock, and me and Cash. We always competed, we always wrote it up and counted it down. We would fish to compete. We would play pool to compete, golf, anything you can think of. Brock’s just the ultimate competitor. I mean both of them are, everything we did was just always a competition between us.”

Vandagriff said cornhole and basketball were also part of the competition but that he and Bowers were probably best at pickleball.

“For all the fishing competitions we had a rulebook written out on the refrigerator,” Vandagriff said. “Everybody had signed it. We kept track of wins and losses and pounds. It was pretty fun.”

Big decisions for Vandagriff to choose Georgia and then to decide to leave

Brock won a lot at Prince Avenue Christian where he led the team to the GHSA Class A Private state championship in 2020, the program’s first, and soon enrolled at Georgia.

Vandagriff made big news in the world of recruiting when the five-star recruit from Bogart just outside of Athens decommitted from Oklahoma in January of 2020 and flipped weeks later to the school about 20 minutes away.

He signed with the Bulldogs that December and Georgia went 42-2 during his time with the team, but Beck won the starting job in a competition leading up to the 2023 season.

Vandagriff announced his decision to transfer with two days after the SEC championship game loss to Alabama.

“At the quarterback position, there comes a point in time when if you haven’t played, you’re running out of time to play,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said this week. “So I don’t know what you want a kid to do. Play out his whole career and not play? He did graduate. He became a better player. He certainly feels he had a great experience at Georgia, two national championship rings. That’s a positive more than it is any kind of negative.”

Two days after entering the portal, Vandagriff announced he was heading to Kentucky.

“We didn’t play let’s make a deal because that’s not who we are,” Greg Vandagriff said of NIL. “We were going for the opportunity to play football and if you pay us, that’s great. We’ll worry about that later.”

Beck’s returning was the main factor to hit the portal. Vandagriff earned his undergraduate degree in communication studies, but did not walk in the school graduation.

“He had kind of told me a little but earlier before he had announced it that he was going to be coming back,” said Vandagriff who has another season of eligibility after this one. “Wouldn’t really make too much sense to sit behind him one more year and only have one year to play. I feel like maybe two years is a little bit better than one if the goal is trying to play in the league.”

Vandagriffs have mapped out seeing Brock this season by car and plane

Greg Vandagriff and his wife Kelly were part of a group of about 10 supporting Brock last Saturday at Kroger Field including Prince Avenue athletic director Richard Ricketts and his wife.

Greg said he will head out at about 5 or 6 Saturday morning to make the drive to Kentucky after a Friday night game against Johns Creek.

The next two Kentucky games are at 12:45 p.m. at home against Ohio and noon at Ole Miss.

Vandagriff said he’s lined up private flights for those and another game at Texas from friends in exchange for tickets to the game.

“We said, look, you get us there, we’ll pay for everything,” he said.

Greg and Kelly also have a daughter, Audrey, who is a freshman softball player at Alabama.

“I’m more of a sports psychologist than I am a father,” he said. “What that means like I told him, ‘No high is too high, no low is too low.’ Just keep it all in stride. Your playing in the toughest league in the country at the highest level. There’s going to be good games, there’s going to be bad games. You don’t have time to worry about any of it because the next game is coming.”

This week, that’s Georgia.

“They’re playing four of the top 10 teams in the country,” his father said. “I think right now Kentucky is committed to Brock and Brock is obviously committed to the process. He’s got to go out there and just get a week better. He’s antsy, they’re antsy. All that stuff is growing pains.”

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: How Brock Vandagriff and father approach Kentucky QB playing Georgia