Editor’s Note: This is the third in a four-part series on Georgia’s quarterbacks

The Bulldogs’ co-third-string quarterback isn’t giving up. He’s not out making phone calls or sending out tapes looking for a school to transfer.

Blake Barnes said he will work hard and fight to slowly move up Georgia’s depth chart.

Barnes’ plan: “It’s just to continue competing, continue playing and just see what happens. You never know what the season will bring,” the redshirt sophomore said.

In his mind, Barnes said he still sees the starting job as open, and he is still in the fight.

And there could still be a competition, quarterbacks coach Mike Bobo said.

“We’re reevaluating every game,” he said. “It’s constant competition. If you didn’t do it that way, you’d have guys that’d get worse before they’d get better.”

The move was rough for Barnes, who entered camp as Georgia’s second-most experienced QB and listed at No. 2.

The number of reps Barnes receives in practice have dropped sharply and are now “sparse,” he said. Bobo, however, said Barnes still gets enough playing time to try and make a move up.

“It’s been tough to really find a rhythm in practice and get back into it,” Barnes said.

Right now, he doesn’t have thoughts of transferring.

“I really love Athens,” Barnes said. “I see myself sticking it out here.”

Family and friends sent plenty of messages of support telling him to keep working, Barnes said. Roommate A.J. Bryant said Barnes took the news fairly well and was in good spirits.

“He’ll be able to get them back,” the junior wide receiver said. “If he was (down), he probably wouldn’t show it. He’s just that type of guy. He won’t show a sign of weakness. He probably is (a little down). He just believes. He believes something good is going to happen for him.”

A lack of consistency knocked Barnes and the others out of the competition to be the starter.

“I wouldn’t say there was much separation between all four,” Bobo said. “Joe T(ereshinski), he was the most consistent and (Joe) Cox second.”

Barnes said he likely worked the hardest he ever has this past summer, competing for the job and rehabbing his knee, which kept him out of some of spring practice. The knee wasn’t a problem in the fall.

Three years ago, Barnes was in a much different situation.

He was a big time recruit from the tiny town of Baldwyn, Miss., – population 3,352 – and enrolled early at the University to practice in the spring. Georgia was set at QB with David Greene and D.J. Shockley.

Baldwyn, located about an equal distance between Oxford (home to Ole Miss) and Starkville (Mississippi State), hadn’t had a player like Barnes in a long time. He was the first Division I recruit from Baldwyn High School (home to 250 students total) since the ’60s.

“Up to this point there’d been no word of that,” he said of his town raising such a high profile player. “Nobody really knew what that was about.”

Barnes hopes to show his town he was more than a big college recruit.

The small-town boy’s goal remains to play in the NFL.

But before that can happen, he acknowledged, he must see the field at Georgia.

No one knows when that could be.