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Advanced Stat/Scheme Preview - Georgia vs Clemson
And suddenly, it was football season… Here we are on game week, as UGA starts the toughest regular season schedule it has seen in years with a regional rivalry in the same building where its bid for a three-peat was foiled last December. 
Talk throughout the offseason has centered around trips to Tuscaloosa, Austin and Oxford, but don’t be mistaken- This is an important football game. Teams can afford a loss or two with the new 12-team playoff format, but the aforementioned road trips loom large in the distance for UGA. Their presence makes it even more important for Georgia to start the 2024 season with a win. 
The Tigers were part of every College Football Playoff from 2015-2020. During that run, Clemson’s combined record was 79-7. Then Georgia came calling at the start of the 2021 season. Georgia wanted to get to where Clemson had been. They needed to beat a team like the Tigers to show their success on the recruiting trail was translating onto the field. 
UGA started a national title season by smothering Clemson in a 10-3 victory where the best defense in modern college football history was on full display. “You’re either elite or you’re not,” was Georgia’s rallying cry through the summer, and became the lasting legacy of that game.
Since that night, Georgia has been elite. The Dawgs won back-to-back national titles before going 12-0 in the 2023 regular season. They came up short in the SEC Championship against Alabama, but many still believed the Bulldogs were the nation’s best team.
Clemson has been 30-10 since the start of 2021. The Tigers went 9-4 last year, and failed to win 10 games for the first time since 2010. His stubborn outlook on the portal and NIL has been criticized by some and laughed at by others. A win could change the perception of his program’s future and his own.
Now the two meet again. One is looking to stay on top. The other is looking to turn the sport on its head… Let’s dig in…
 
Clemson Offense vs Georgia Defense
- From a predictive standpoint, the first game of the season is almost always the most difficult. It’s gotten even more difficult in the portal era. Clemson was the only program in the FBS that didn’t take a transfer besides the three service academies. They return 7 starters on offense and 3 on defense. Dabo loves to talk about retention, but this is still a young roster. The Tigers only have 26 juniors and seniors on scholarship after losing 12 players to the portal and bringing in none. This actually makes the bowl game versus Kentucky an intriguing watch. All but a handful of Clemson’s projected starters were out there for that game. 
- The Tigers were beat soundly on a down-to-down basis in that game, but they ended +3 in the turnover column and pulled out a thrilling win late. Kentucky outgained Clemson by 3.2 yards per play (7.8 to 4.6). 
- Clemson was 117th in Red Zone Scoring Percentage last season. When the field shrank, they struggled. 
- The easiest place to start for Clemson is probably on the offensive line. They return a lot of production, which brings us to an important point about returning production. Not all returning production is good production. Clemson’s offensive line was decent at its best and subpar at its worst in 2023. Clemson gets Marcus Tate back at LG and Walker Parks back at RG after both were lost for the season last year. Parks was a starter in 2021 and 2022. He actually played in the UGA game 3 years ago, and gave up 6 pressures and 2 sacks. They also have a new Center in Ryan Linthicum. He was a backup last season.
- Clemson was unique last year, running a pretty close split of gap scheme and zone scheme. Most programs lean one way or the other, but the Tigers were 54.6% zone. Looking back on their season, they seemed to swap their scheme around depending on who they were playing that week. The Tigers swung all the way to 18 gap runs and 5 zone runs against Kentucky. Translation? They knew they couldn’t out push the Wildcats DL so they tried to out-leverage it. 
- Here are some overarching thoughts on this OL…
LT - #71 Tristan Leigh - Leigh is an experienced player but he has given up big plays to DL’s much worse than Georgia’s. He allowed 7 pressures against Kentucky last year and 24 total on the season (more than any UGA OL in 2023). Better zone run blocker than gap scheme run blocker.  LG - #74 Marcus Tate - Tate is solid in pass protection. He is the best player on this OL, and only gave up 4 pressures in 303 pass block snaps last year. He is coming off of injury, but I’d expect him to be good. Expect UGA to try and overload him with stunts and delayed blitzes from the ILB’s on obvious pass downs. Tate is so-so against the run. Not bad, but he can be taken advantage of at times.  C - #53 Ryan Linthicum - We don’t have a good sample set on Linthicum, but the fact he didn’t crack the rotation last year with two guards hurt makes me a bit suspect.  RG - #64 Walker Parks - Parks gave up 26 pressures in 2021 and then 24 in 2022. In Clemson’s 2023 season opener he allowed 5 pressures against Duke. His run blocking was decent in 2021 but took a step back in 2022. This is a spot to watch for UGA to create some havoc. RT - #78 Blake Miller - Miller is as inconsistent as the rest of this OL to this point in his career. He allowed 6 pressures to Duke and another 6 versus Miami last year. Then he gave up 3 each versus South Carolina and Kentucky to end the year. He was also called for 6 holding penalties last season, which feels like a bunch. He’s a pretty good run blocker, particularly in gap scheme.  - The million dollar question for this game is how much can Matt Luke improve this front five after coming onboard with the Tigers this offseason. The former UGA OL coach is good at coaching offensive lines, but what’s the actual ceiling here? Clemson had a PFF Pass Block Grade of 64.6 last year (71st). They had a Run Block Grade of 57.1 (91st). Luke is a gap scheme OL coach and Clemson was gap scheme heavy in their bowl win over UK, but UGA has so much quickness up front that going that route on Saturday feels risky. 
- He has a really good RB to make his OL look better. RB #7 Phil Mafah can play. He broke 39 tackles last season and he had 957 YDS on the season on 5.4 YPA. A little over 46% of his runs went outside, and Clemson will use inline TE’s a lot. Georgia needs to set edges on Saturday, but Clemson isn’t afraid to bust things up the middle with Mafah and let him try to get upfield in the A-Gaps. He has the size and vision to play behind pretty much any run scheme. Clemson will probably try to use some misdirection and pulls to split UGA’s DT’s at times. They run Inside Power up the A-Gaps very well. The Dawgs will have to read the OL and recognize when to shoot gaps and when to be patient and play their two-gap style of ball. If UGA can hold its space and not get overly aggressive then they should be able to limit big run plays.. 
- QB #2 Cade Klubnik has five-star pedigree, but he’s yet to put it all together. The passing game last year was extremely tame, and it’s hard to see it not being that way this season. The arm strength is fine for a college QB, but it’s not an NFL arm in my opinion. If you look at his throws outside the numbers, they often come from the near hash or on a rollout to the right. 
- 62.5% of Klubnik’s throws come between the numbers, and he throws outside the numbers to the right almost twice as much as he does to the left. My opinion is those trends are a product of him not being able to throw a flat ball on a 12-18 yard out route without being in danger of getting picked off. He threw 7 interceptable passes on 90 ATT’s in the 10-19 YDS range last year. He had 4 in 42 ATT’s on 20+ YDS throws. 
- Klubnik rarely pushed the ball deep last year, and he prefers the middle of the field on intermediate routes. He has shown that turning the ball over is in his nature, but he could be comfortable if Briningstool can find space up the middle. The best news for Georgia is that Starks will control a lot of what’s happening in the middle of the field and if Clemson wants to push it downfield then Klubnik is likely to have to make tight window throws. 
- Klubnik likes Corner Routes on the roll to the right, especially to the TE #9 Jake Briningstool (75 TGT/50 REC). He led the team with 75 TGT’s in 2023, and is a security blanket of sorts. He had 9 REC’s on 10 TGT’s in the bowl and he might be their biggest 3rd down target in this game because of the unproven nature of the rest of the pass catchers. UGA’s LB’s and Safeties will be key in coverage. 
- Klubnik does some good things with his eyes on RPO’s. He looks defenders off into the flat well and then he snaps his eyes up and fires downfield. He’s not always accurate on those second level throws, but he does influence defenders well. He’s just not always that accurate when he shoots the ball to the second level. 
- Klubnik is more athletic than you may think. He avoids sacks pretty regularly and does it with his eyes downfield. He makes some decent throws while scrambling or backpedaling, and UGA’s DB’s will need to be aware of it when plays start to break down and he leaves the pocket. Clemson will also run him at times in designed packages. Those usually are off RPO’s, so it’s his choice to run. He only had 3 runs of 15+ yards last year, but he did scramble for 30 first downs with his legs. The Bulldogs will need to keep contain on him on 3rd downs or he’ll keep possessions alive despite the back end doing its job in coverage. 
- Klubnik’s numbers aren’t significantly better versus the blitz versus when he’s not blitzed. Actually, his YPA drops from 6.8 to 5.7 when he isn’t blitzed. Ditto for play-action- He’s just 6.4 YPA on play-action throws versus 6.0 on regular dropbacks. Clemson also averaged just 4.2 YPA on screens last year. 
- All of that tells us something about Klubnik, but it probably tells us more about his WR’s. The most remarkable thing about them is how unremarkable they were in 2023. WR #6 Tyler Brown in the slot was the most productive at 68 TGT/52 REC for 531 YDS, but 153 of those came against Syracuse. He had 6 catches against UNC for 32 YDS. He had 7 against Georgia Tech for 41 YDS. He had 5 against South Carolina for 40 YDS. You’re not beating Georgia getting 5-7 yards per catch out of your main dudes. 
- WR #0 Antonio Williams averaged less than 10 YPC last year in 5 games of action, but he’ll likely start at X and he’s got some wiggle at 5’10? At the X should be WR #8 Adam Randall, and he is 6’2 and 225 LBS, but he had just 22 REC’s for 250 YDS in 13 games last season… The most realistic hope for Clemson to be truly explosive in the passing game is for freshman WR #12 Bryant Wesco or freshman WR #1 TJ Moore to have a “hello world” moment on Saturday. Wesco is 6’2” and was a top 100 overall recruit. Moore was a five-star who is 6’3” and has some decent size at 198 pounds, but breaking out against this UGA team is a big ask for a kid who was playing at a private school last fall. 
- Clemson was 121st in the nation last year with just 6 passing yards per attempt. Put simply, this offense struggled to create explosive plays through the air. Once they get into long yardage and depend on Klubnik to throw downfield, their chances of success go down significantly. The Tigers had just a 29% Success Rate last year when faced with 2nd & 7+ or 3rd & 5+ or 4th & 5+.
- Considering the fact that UGA’s 2022 and 2023 defenses were both top three nationally in 3rd down conversion percentage allowed (26.7% in 2023) it feels like this game could get real messy for the Tigers if they’re not getting 4-5+ yards regularly on 1st & 10. 
 
Georgia Offense vs Clemson Defense
- This defense was in or near the top ten in most major statistical categories last year, but they lose a lot of veteran depth and will have a lot of inexperience in the secondary. 
- Clemson brings back big 315 pounder DL/DE #11 Peter Woods. He’ll line up as a 4I DE or 3-Tech DT. He’s got a lot of elite traits, and hit the 20 pressure mark last year with just 175 pass rush snaps. He’s a gap filler in the run game as well, and the only real criticism you could make of his game is that he sometimes misses a tackle in the hole. I am curious to see what kind of shape he is in. He never played more than 33 snaps in a single game last year. Clemson needs him on the field for way more than that against this UGA OL. 
- On the right side will be EDGE #12 TJ Parker. He is the leading returning pressure getter for Clemson with 35 pressures and 6 sacks. He is a good run defender as well. Clemson plays heavier players on the edges in a lot of their fronts instead of doing the MINT style front like UGA where you have a stand-up OLB. I expect them to be good
- The DL is deep by ACC standards. The other potential playmakers to really watch up front are #55 Payton Page and former blue-chip DT Vic Burley. If this game is gonna go Clemson’s way they’re going to have to disrupt the interior of UGA’s OL. Page had 15 pressures a year ago and is a serviceable run defender. Burley is an unknown, but Clemson needs someone like him to emerge in a game like this. 
- Clemson will play a lot of man on the back end, including on the outside receivers. If you get into 3rd & long against them they will bring 5+ rushers more often than not. Hell, they’ll bring 5-6 on any down. That’s going to put a lot of emphasis on UGA’s boundary WR’s against Clemson’s CB’s. 
- The Clemson secondary lost a ton from last year, and the guys who have played have done so mostly in spot duty or blowout games. There’s an element of mystery to how they will be used and where exactly they will line up and when. 
- These corners are young and inexperienced, and we don’t have a ton of tape on them… CB #20 Aveion Terrell is the younger brother of former Clemson great AJ Terrell. He wasn’t really tested much in the bowl, and he played a lot of his snaps last year as a rotation player. Frankly, I don’t know what to make of him yet. He gave up 7 TGT/7 REC for 63 YDS versus FAU last year, but he performed well against UNC, South Carolina and ND. He had 32 TGT/15 REC’s for only 115 YDS last year, which shows promise. If he lines up versus Colbie Young then UGA has about a six-inch size advantage on the outside. 
- CB #19 Jeadyn Lukus is the other boundary corner who is projected to start. He is the guy I would test early and often outside if I was Mike Bobo. He only had 118 coverage snaps last season. He played 19 snaps in coverage against FSU last year and gave up 4 REC’s on 7 TGT’s for 68 YDS and a TD. 
- CB #2 Shelton Lewis will rotate some as well. He has just 89 career snaps in coverage as well, so I don’t know exactly what to make of him yet. He does look a bit slow at times when trying to cover 90 degree cuts like out routes and in-routes. He has some promising stuff on tape, like the 3 PBU’s against Georgia Tech last year, then you see him targeted 6 times by Kentucky because he’s caught out of position at moments. If he’s on the field, I would run screens to his side as well as swing passes and sweeps. He’s not a strong run defender and that could be a place where UGA breaks open a big play.
- We do have tape on #36 S/SCB Khalil Barnes. He plays the slot/nickel corner type role most of the time for Clemson, and he was feasted on by Kentucky in the bowl game. The Wildcats targeted him 8 times for 6 REC’s and 156 YDS. About half of that yardage came after the catch, and he gave up 2 TD’s in the midst of all that. Simply put, he’s a nice run defender at times, but he can’t run with a Dominic Lovett or an Arian Smith or an Anthony Evans. This is the duck. 
- In the back end is S #9 RJ Mickens. He is a pretty good tackler and is likely to be in a lot of single-high looks when Clemson brings its blitz packages. If UGA gets him in man coverage there could be a play to be had, but he is another guy it’s hard to know how to feel about. 
- Mickens could be joined by #24 Tyler Venables at the other safety position. He is the son of former Clemson DC Brent Venables, and didn’t play last year after seeing 150 coverage snaps (14 TGT/11 REC, 168 YDS) in 2022. I’ll just say it straight… He’s a nice player but he doesn’t seem like the guy you’d want matched up on Evans or Smith or Lovett. He’s shown the ability to miss a tackle or two in space as well. If he’s out there, Georgia is likely to hunt him. 
- A lot of hype has been going around about this LB corps. They can thump in the run game, and you can see they look comfortable in the box. #0 Barrett Carter was a five-star and because of that, there is an assumption he’s a stud. Reality is a bit different. He is a serviceable run defender but he misses a whole lot of tackles. Last season he missed 17, which was 20.5% of his tackle opportunities. #21 Kobe McCloud will line up next to him, and split time (depending on the personnel package) with #17 Wade Woodaz. 
- Those 3 LB’s have their moments in run defense and pass rush, but the coverage numbers from last year are eye opening… 
McCloud 2023 - 31 COV snaps, 4 TGT/4 REC for 32 YDS Carter 2023 - 299 COV snaps, 27 TGT/17 REC for 273 YDS (Long of 72 YDS + 197 YAC) Woodaz 2023 - 139 COV snaps, 16 TGT/12 REC for 95 YDS (69 YAC) - It is possible we see some of five-star LB Sammy Brown. The Georgia native chose to go up the road to Swinney’s program, but he was a five-star for a reason. He can rush the passer some off the edge and is athletic, but he still is a bit stiff. If UGA gets him matched up on a LB or TE they can break a big one. 
- Kentucky was able to stress Clemson in both the run and pass games with orbit motions pre-snap. You can scheme things up on this defense by running guys out of the backfield laterally and then sending them vertical. They don’t pass assignments off to each other very well. 
 
Special Teams
Clemson will start a true freshman kicker in this game named Nolan Hauser. He holds the national high-school record for career field-goals made with 66. Last year’s Clemson team had major issues in the kicking game, coming in at 118th nationally with just 60.9% of FG’s made. This will be a big environment for an unseasoned kicker. 
Clemson’s high level depth has been slowly eaten away at by Swinney’s refusal to use the portal. That will show up throughout a four-quarter game, but it can also be visible at times on Special Teams. They got burned for a 102-yard TD return by Barrion Brown of Kentucky in the bowl game. The athletes trying to run him down weren’t of the caliber that he is. Watch UGA’s returners in this game. There’s as good chance UGA could break a significant kick or punt return. 
 
Final Analysis/Score Prediction
I’ll say again that Week 1 is the hardest to predict because of all the unknowns that come with both teams. Any game includes a range of outcomes, and Clemson is a talented enough team to stress Georgia at times. The question we have to ask ourselves is what the recipe looks like for the Tigers to win. 
When Clemson has the ball…
It’s hard to see Clemson’s offense hitting big plays through the air in this one. Yes, Georgia has new faces in the back seven in Aguero (STAR), Humphrey/Harris (CB2) and Jackson/Bolden (S). It’s still hard to see the scenario where Clemson can put together explosives in the passing game. If they’re going to, then they need to score on them. That feels like a big stretch when considering UGA’s history of being the best tackling defense in college football. 
Unless the two freshmen WR’s (Wesco and Moore) can make some hero plays on the outside, but the best path for Clemson’s offense in this game feels similar to what we saw from Georgia Tech against FSU. The Tigers need to run the ball well on first downs and stay out of third-and-long. They’ll have to rely on short chunks in the passing game underneath and control the clock on long drives that shorten this game. 
Georgia’s edge setting and interior run defense will be tested out of the gate here. I expect to see better play on the edge against the run, and UGA’s linebackers should look a year older and react a bit quicker getting to the outside of the box. Clemson might catch UGA at times with Klubnik’s legs, but they will adjust quickly. This is an RPO heavy offense, and Mondon, Allen, Wilson (and maybe Bowles) will need to be disciplined with their eyes. This won’t be above their ability level though.
Clemson can live on Mafah at times, and they can work the TE Briningstool at others, but eventually the ball has to get pushed into the end zone. Clemson’s red zone offense was putrid  last year because it lacked weapons. Maybe Wesco or Moore can be Klubnik’s saving grace down inside the 20. I’d be surprised if Clemson doesn’t try some fades to them or the 6’2” Adam Randall at some point, but we’ve already established that Klubnik’s game isn’t living outside the numbers. 
When Georgia has the ball…
The comforting thing for Georgia is that they don’t need a recipe to workout in order to win this game. They can play this thing however they want. They can probably win by running the football in a game with less possessions, and they can probably win by throwing the ball and running tempo. 
Georgia’s offensive line comes into this game with lots of positive reviews throughout the offseason. If the Dawgs can run the ball with consistency this game will get ugly. Clemson’s strategy of bringing pressure has been a pattern through the years. Will they continue that with this young back end? 
I think they’re probably best served to try. If they play zone against Beck he will shred them, but the flip side of that is UGA can run out a set of speedy WR’s who can get separation quickly and let Beck slip the ball out behind Clemson’s pressure packages. Maybe that’s hitting Bell on slants, and maybe it’s involving Arian Smith or Anthony Evans. 
A lot of people are worried about Clemson’s pressure packages in this game, and they could create some havoc plays if they’re timed right. They could also cause UGA to break big explosive plays. Watch for that in short yardage if UGA goes heavy. There is a chance Clemson loads the line and Branson Robinson gets behind a defensive line that gets upfield too quickly. 
Beck's average time to throw on pass attempts last season was 2.22 seconds. That was the fastest of any Power 5 conference starter with at least 300 dropbacks in 2023. Good things happened when he got the ball out quickly. He threw it in under 2.5 seconds on 56.7% of his dropbacks, and was 208/259 passing (80.3% completion) for 2,127 YDS (8.2 YPA) with 17 TD/1 INT on those plays. Nobody in college football is processing things faster than Carson Beck. 
If you want to live on the blitz, Beck is the wrong guy for that. He was a 70.8% passer last year against the blitz, and he went for 9.2 YPA and 11 TD’s with 0 INT’s. 
In short, Clemson can lay back and let UGA’s run game lean forward, or it can try to force the issue and see if it can fool Beck with a simulated pressure that lets someone step into a passing lane and cause a turnover or two. History says they’ll take the second route. 
 
Final Analysis/Score Prediction
Georgia’s RB room will be thinner than we had once expected, but it still has players in it who can catch the ball. The solve for Clemson’s blitzing DL is UGA’s RB’s catching passes in the flat, on Angle Routes over the middle, and possibly on Wheel Routes down the boundary. Georgia can play in 12 Personnel sets and still run orbit motions and WR screens that exploit Clemson’s aggressiveness and make them chase UGA’s skill players side to side. 
Looking at Clemson’s 2023 tape, I think Georgia hits a big play on an end-around or reverse to one of the speedy wideouts. I think we also see them build some sort of downfield pass play off of the pre-snap orbit motions. UGA can then start slipping the TE’s up the seams or hitting them on tunnel screens off of that. Delp will be involved, but don’t be surprised if Luckie or Yurosek has an explosive play or a wow moment with the ball in their hands. 
I like UGA to keep Clemson's defense honest with some shot plays, and I think Arian or Lovett can hit a big one on Barnes or Venables. The weakness here is the safeties and the slot corner. UGA's passing game can feast on those guys, especially the TE's and inside receivers.
I expect Bobo and Beck to use quick passes, but I think this run game might be able to stand on its own either way. If the run game gets going well enough for UGA to freeze Clemson’s backers on play-action then this could get ugly. Either way, I would look for UGA to widen the field. Beck throws the ball better up the seams than anyone in the sport right now, but UGA will want to get Clemson out of the box first. 
I think Georgia will try to run early, and I think they will have good success doing it, but Beck can throw Clemson out of its heavy defensive sets if he needs to. Either way, Georgia has a path as long as they counterpunch correctly. 
As for the other side of the ball, I have learned a lot over the years of doing this piece, but one of them is that you can’t beat Georgia living on small chunks. They’re too good in coverage and they close too quickly and tackle too well. Clemson is either going to come into this game and die a slow death or they’re going to try and make some explosive plays happen. Georgia’s pass rush might make that a foolish thing to try. 
Wesco and Moore will be good ones, but expecting them to beat Georgia consistently on the perimeter in their first college games feels like a lot. If Clemson gets down two touchdowns in the first half then it’s likely we see an INT from Starks or Jackson/Bolden.
I am really confident in this DL’s ability to get pressure on Klubnik against this Clemson OL. I expect Jalon Walker to have a very big game coming off the edge on third down, and I expect Mykel Williams to meet him at the QB. This pair of tackles is good enough to win games in the ACC, but they aren’t good enough to hold Georgia’s pass rushers in check. 
This game will be a hello world moment for Damon Wilson. He showed his pass rush skills last year, but he’ll show his ability to two-gap in 2024. Chambliss will still be involved, but I expect this group of edge defenders to look deep and capable on Saturday. 
Mafah is a good back, and he will make some plays on his own, but Stackhouse and Miller should hold up well. If UGA can get some snaps out of Jarrett at nose it could stop Clemson’s bread and butter Inside Power run play. This defensive line has heard questions all offseason, and I have a feeling they will play inspired. 
Maybe Briningstool can hit a play or two matched up on the LB’s, and maybe Clemson can grind out yards on the ground. They’ll need some major turnover luck and a special teams play or two to win this game. Much has been made of the Matt Luke hire, but helmet communications take any signal knowledge off the table and Luke’s OL’s took time to gel early in the season during his time at Georgia. 
It’s hard to see Clemson scoring more than 20 unless some sort of massive change has happened that we just haven’t seen. Clemson will play hard and they’ll be motivated, but Georgia is just better. A blowout is on the table here, especially if Dabo really goes all out trying to win this game by forcing the issue. 
If Clemson tries to bomb it downfield and go ultra aggressive on defense then UGA could hand them an embarrassing loss. It feels more likely that Clemson takes its time and tries to keep this thing close with the hopes of limiting possessions and getting a break or two. 
Georgia 34 - Clemson 17

Georgia head coach Kirby Smart spoke to the media for a second straight day on Tuesday evening following practice, this time focusing more on the team's first game against Clemson. 
Here's what he said:
Impact of a high-caliber Week 1 matchup
Smart began his Tuesday availability by addressing the impact and benefits of playing a quality opponent like Clemson to begin the season. Not only did he say it was beneficial to be "battle tested" when conference play arrives, but the game's anticipation is good for the fans and recruiting efforts. 
Under Smart, Georgia has made it a priority to play big matchups when possible, most notably opening against Clemson back in 2021 and Oregon in Mercedes-Benz Stadium in 2022. 
How to attack Clemson
Smart talked about the recipe for success against the Tigers, noting the strong defense that the Bulldgogs will face. There were two main keys: Preventing third down conversions and running the ball effectively. 
All eyes will be on the Georgia running back room, playing behind one of the most experienced and talented offensive lines in the country. Trevor Etienne's status has yet to be confirmed for the game, leaving questions of who might receive Saturday's workload. If Etienne plays, he'll be a focal point. If not, look for Branson Robinson, who missed 2023 due to injury, to make an impact along with freshman Nate Frazier. 
Veteran running back Cash Jones will also be in the rotation and could receive carries on Saturday and beyond. 
"I love seeing him compete on special teams," Smart said. "He'll continue to do that. But he also gets lots of opportunities at running back as well.”
Roderick Robinson will miss time with a toe injury that required surgery. 
KJ Bolden
When asked about freshman safety KJ Bolden, Smart said Bolden missed time recently due to injury, but is back and has been for roughly eight or nine practices.
"I think he'll respond well, and when his number gets called on, he'll be ready to play,” Smart said.
Could Saturday be Bolden's 'welcome' moment, like it was for veteran defensive back Malaki Starks in his first collegiate game back in 2022?
Punt Return 
Smart hinted at a group of returners handling punts, at least initially with no clear indication of whose job it is yet. Anthony Evans, Sacovie White, Mike Jackson and Dominic Lovett were all names Smart said had been getting work in with the unit at practice. 
Smart also said he is excited to watch Evans play as a receiver. 
Saturday at noon, the 2024 campaign officially kicks off.
Photo Via UGA Athletics

As Georgia takes on Clemson in Atlanta on Saturday, many players on both sides had their college decisions come down to the two border rivals.
One of these players is outside linebacker Jalon Walker who has become an impact player for the Bulldogs over the last couple of years.
Walker was a top-50 prospect from Salisbury, NC in the 2022 recruiting class and his decision came down to Georgia and Clemson before ultimately deciding on the Bulldogs. Since this decision, Walker has played in almost every game for Georgia.
In the second episode of The Players’ Lounge’s “Bulldogs Unleashed” with Walker and Mykel Williams, he discussed his recruiting process and why he chose Georgia over Clemson.
Walker dove into his process with Williams, noting that he enjoyed his recruiting process and made lifelong friendships with a lot of people during it. "I enjoyed the recruiting process. It was a fun time for me. I got to meet a lot of guys that [are] gonna be my friends for a long time."
  He also credited Dabo Swinney and his coaching staff, including former Clemson defensive coordinator and current Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables. 
He continued to talk about the Tigers’ defensive coaching staff, noting current defensive coordinator Wes Goodwin was a Graduate Assistant and was elevated to the position during his recruitment. 
He concluded the discussion with a phrase that has become common for Georgia players, “I always made the best decision for myself [by] committing to the University of Georgia.” He added, "I don't regret it. Not a day, not a hour [and] not a second."
Catch the full episode between Walker and Williams in which they preview the Clemson matchup, discuss Georgia Tech’s upset over Florida State and more.
 

Let's Go! Football is finally here and soon enough it will be Saturday in Atlanta, where the top ranked Georgia Bulldogs will take on the 14th ranked Clemson Tigers.
Watch Kirby Smart's game week press conference. Get injury updates. See what Carson Beck and Mykel Williams had to say. Find out which top prospects will be at the game as guests of UGA. Get up to date intel, along with detailed stats and analytics. Keep this page saved as we post more throughout the week:
The Player's Lounge Events for Friday Night and Saturday - https://www.dawgscentral.com/topic/4003-uga-vs-clemson-tpl-events-for-friday-night-saturday-night/
What We Are Hearing As UGA Enters Game Week - https://www.dawgscentral.com/topic/3991-what-were-hearing-as-uga-enters-game-week/
Georgia Expected to Be Down a Starter - https://www.dawgscentral.com/topic/3961-expecting-uga-to-be-down-another-starter-for-week-1/
Rod Robinson Injury Update - https://www.dawgscentral.com/topic/3981-update-on-an-injury/
Georgia Will Be Hosting Multiple Five Star Commits and Top Targets - https://www.dawgscentral.com/topic/4007-uga-vs-clemson-visitors-list/
Kirby Smart Game Week Press Conference - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI6KTvmag4I&t=31s
Kirby Smart Game Week Presser Transcript - https://www.dawgscentral.com/news/dc/everything-kirby-smart-said-in-mondays-press-conference-r56/
Carson Beck Game Week Interview - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz6u33DZV6I&t=2s
Everything Carson Beck and Mykel WIlliams Said to the Media Monday - https://www.dawgscentral.com/news/dc/what-carson-beck-and-mykel-williams-said-during-mondays-press-availability-r57/
Kirby Smart Tuesday Media Session - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rwRW5Nwb80&t=1s
Kirby Smart Tuesday Presser Recap - https://www.dawgscentral.com/news/dc/kirby-smart-on-clemson-tuesday-press-conference-recap-r62/
 Advanced Stat/Scheme Preview - Georgia vs Clemson - https://www.dawgscentral.com/news/subscriber/advanced-statscheme-preview-georgia-vs-clemson-r63/
Malaki Starks reflects on Oregon game in 2022 - https://www.dawgscentral.com/news/dc/malaki-starks-reflects-on-oregon-game-in-2022-r65/
Using Advanced Analytics to Predict the Georgia vs. Clemson Game - https://www.dawgscentral.com/news/dc/using-advanced-analytics-to-predict-the-georgia-vs-clemson-game-r64/
The Power G Podcast With Graham Coffey and George Foster - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGuRA7FsXYk
Wednesday Night Intel - https://www.dawgscentral.com/topic/4020-wednesday-night-intel-ahead-of-clemson-uga/
My God a Podcast Clemson Preview - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0VRt_9K7lg
The Five Biggest Visitors This Weekend - https://www.dawgscentral.com/news/subscriber/the-five-biggest-visitors-this-weekend-r67/
Late Friday Night Notes - https://www.dawgscentral.com/topic/4035-couple-late-friday-notes/
UGA Releases Game 1 Trailer - Assume Nothing - https://www.dawgscentral.com/topic/4041-uga-releasees-game-trailer-assume-nothing/
UGA Releases Depth Chart for Clemson - https://www.dawgscentral.com/news/dc/uga-releases-depth-chart-for-aflac-kickoff-game-vs-clemson-r70/
Post Game Injury Update - https://www.dawgscentral.com/topic/4047-postgame-injury-report/
Kirby Smart Post Game Presser - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gdKp72ZJmc
 
 
Photo Courtesy of UGA Athletics
 
 

Head coach Kirby Smart has become known for having a keen eye for freaky athletes on the defensive side of the ball, and he may have struck again with Quintavius Johnson.
Johnson is a 6-foot-4, 242-pound outside linebacker from Mays High School in Atlanta, GA. Johnson started his high school career as his team's starting quarterback before fully transitioning to the defensive side of the ball his junior year.
Following the transition, Johnson turned into a four-star recruit on almost every major recruiting site and picked up a multitude of P4 offers despite being lowly ranked for much of the cycle.
Although he is relatively new to defense, Johnson has already made waves in the Bulldogs' fall practices. He especially caught the eye of tight ends coach Todd Hartley, who praised the freshman while speaking with the media a couple of weeks ago.
"I've been pleasantly surprised with Q. Johnson," Hartley said. "He's athletic and surprisingly for a freshman has not been overwhelmed with what our defense is trying to do schematically — not that I can tell. Chidera might give you a different story."
Johnson was one of the Bulldogs' early enrollees from the 2024 recruiting class and arrived on campus during winter to begin his preparation for the 2024 college football season. He also received praise from a leader on the defensive side of the ball, senior Chaz Chambliss.
Chambliss noted Johnson's size, speed and power while noting that they are wanting to find his greatest strength and "playing to them." Johnson may not see the field often this season as he is currently facing a loaded position group, but his performance in camp could earn him some looks in UGA’s DL rotation.
He is currently behind or competing with names like Mykel Williams, Chaz Chambliss, Damon Wilson, Sam M'Pemba and others. This could be a blessing in disguise for the former high school quarterback as he will have the time necessary to improve and acclimate to the outside linebacker position.
Johnson will sport the No. 33, previously worn by CJ Allen last season, and could be one of the freshmen the coaching staff unleashes in clean-up duty to cause havoc and receive in-game reps. Expect his name to be brought up often over the next couple of seasons.
Photo via UGA Athletics.

"Who would you rank as the coaches most important to UGA's success?"
A DawgsCentral user posting under the name PiousMonken posed that question to me in the spring of 2023, and I quickly realized that a good answer would require quite a bit of consideration. 
When thinking about the question, I kept coming back to an old football cliche, "It's not the X's and the O's, but the Jimmys and the Joes that make the difference." I found myself considering the players who suit up on Saturdays. Good gameplans and great play calls are key to the success of any college football program, but they are usually only as good as the personnel executing them. With that in mind, I decided to broaden the scope of the rankings beyond members of the coaching staff. 
It sparked a series of longform articles called 23 For 2023. The premise was simple- Profile the 23 people who were most important to Georgia’s success on the gridiron in 2023. To create such a list, one must make value judgments on what on and off-field assets are most important to a modern college football program. 
It focused on players and coaches within the UGA program. Collectively, the series served as a giant preview for the season ahead. It became a favorite of subscribers, and it forced me to ask questions that I hadn’t before. 
This year, I am bringing the list back once again. Naturally, it will be called 24 for 2024. 
With his former mentor now manning a microphone on ESPN, Kirby Smart is college football’s most accomplished coach. In 2024, Smart will have to navigate significant staff turnover and seismic changes within the sport itself. Georgia came up short of a third straight national championship in 2023, but winning it all this season would give the Bulldogs three titles in four years. That achievement would cement the program as a modern dynasty. 
Whether or not Georgia can reach that lofty pedestal, and how they go about trying to do it, will be largely influenced by the roles these 24 individuals play. 
Today we continue the rankings with #4 Mike Bobo and #3 Carson Beck. Let’s get after it…
Previous Entries
 
#24 - David Hill
#23 - Will a True Nose Tackle emerge for the Dawgs?
#22 - Benjamin Yurosek
#21 - Will Muschamp
#20 - Dominic Lovett
#19 - Jalon Walker
#18 - Chidera Uzo-Diribe
#17 - Daylen Everette
#16 - Trevor Etienne + #15 - Josh Crawford
#14 - Daniel Harris + #13 - Donte Williams
#12 - Earnest Greene + #11 Stacy Searels
#10 - Malaki Starks + #9 -Travaris Robinson
#8 - Mykel Williams + #7 - Tray Scott
#6 Colbie Young + #5 James Coley
24 For 2024 - #4 Mike Bobo + #3 Carson Beck
Perhaps Kirby Smart always knew this moment would come…  
When Mike Bobo arrived back in Athens in January of 2022 he did so to little fanfare. He had left Georgia in 2014 after being on staff for Mark Richt’s entire tenure, and had always been a lightning rod for opinions from certain segments of the fanbase. His value to the program became clear when we finally saw what UGA’s program looked like without him in 2015. Richt was let go after a year of dysfunction and chaos with Brian Schottenheimer coordinating the offense. 
After 5 years running his own program at Colorado State, Bobo was let go from a coaching job for the first time in his life. The OC job at South Carolina was supposed to be a fresh start, but Covid-19 shutdown the sport and Will Muschamp was fired midway through his only season in Columbia. With the Gamecocks, Bobo coordinated an offense that was missing the type of personnel one needs to win big in the SEC. 
A former Broyles Award finalist, Bobo was soon offered a job on another SEC staff. This time he went to The Plains to coordinate Bryan Harsin’s first offense at Auburn. He did some nice things with Bo Nix, coaching him into better decision making and helping him bump up his completion percentage and yards per attempt numbers. Unfortunately for Bobo, he had again taken over an offense that lacked playmakers. Demetris Robertson transferred from UGA to Auburn that offseason after being unable to break into the rotation in a meaningful way in Athens. He immediately became AU’s most explosive receiving threat. Once again, Bobo had landed at a program that was led by a coach on a downslide. Harsin’s presence in the head job had fractured Auburn’s internal dynamics. The experiment was doomed from the start, and Bobo was let go following a 6-7 season that would have felt a whole lot different if Auburn had been able to pull off the upset in a 24-22 loss to Alabama in quadruple overtime. 
After two consecutive seasons on lame duck staffs, Bobo wanted stability. When his former teammate called and offered him a chance to come home to Athens, Mike said yes. Many believe that wasn’t the first time Kirby had offered to bring Bobo onto his staff. It was the first time that Mike had been willing to return to Athens. So, what changed? On numerous occasions, sources have told DawgsCentral that Bobo was hesitant to return to Athens while former AD Greg McGarity was still in charge of the athletic department. 
When Kirby Smart arrived at Georgia he had a vision of what the program could become if it was provided the proper resources and investment. Smart demanded that certain promises be made before he took the job. Few understood how imperative Smart's wish list was better than Mike Bobo. He lived through the consequences of UGA's tight budgeting for 14 years. Bobo and his boss, then head coach Mark Richt, were forced to battle against facility deficits on the recruiting trail. Some rivals in the region were building palatial weight rooms adjacent to locker rooms that resembled lounges. Others were expanding and renovating football offices. Those projects at other schools were a representation of their commitment to being as good at football as possible, but Georgia didn’t even have an indoor facility to practice in when the weather was bad in Athens. 
The penny pinching under McGarity was so severe that Richt paid money out of his own salary to his assistants. Bobo knew what Georgia could become if it ever became fully invested in football. The whole experience left a bad taste in his mouth, and that was made worse by the way Mark Richt’s termination was handled by McGarity. I asked a source about the chances of Bobo returning to Athens when his tenure at CSU ended in 2019. I was told in no uncertain terms that Bobo wouldn’t come back to UGA as long as Greg McGarity was still roaming the halls of the athletic offices.
McGarity retired at the end of 2020. Then mama called. 
Coming home
Kirby Smart brought Georgia to glory in 2021. He did it with a walk-on quarterback who was protected by a fantastic offensive line and complimented by a generational defense. His roster was the result of years of great recruiting finally coming to fruition. Over four decades had passed since Herschel and Vince had stood in the middle of a mob of Georgia fans on the floor of the Louisiana Superdome on January 1, 1981.
That titleless streak almost ended at 31 years instead. If you're a Dawgs fan over the age of 20 then you remember December 1, 2012. That’s when Georgia and Alabama played for the national title in the greatest SEC Championship ever. Either team would have pulverized Notre Dame in the BCS Championship, but a tipped pass on the final play led to Bama getting the honors instead of the Bulldogs. Mike Bobo was in the booth that day calling plays. He was in the booth for so many big moments for so long at UGA. Knowing what we now know about the machine that Kirby Smart has built, and the investment that is required on every level to maintain it, you can’t help but feel like it’s a bit miraculous that UGA was able to get as close as it did in 2012. It is a bit of a miracle that Georgia sustained 10 wins a year for so long under Richt. 
I would argue they never would have been there without Mike Bobo. People forget that he was one of the best recruiters in the SEC during his first stint in Athens. Here’s a quick list of names for you...
Five-Stars
Trenton Thompson Matthew Stafford Ray Drew Sony Michel Richard Samuel Aaron Murray Josh Harvey-Clemons Terry Godwin Marlon Brown Nick Chubb Four-Stars
Caleb King Malcolm Mitchell Mohammed Massaquoi Jay Rome Aron White Malkom Parrish Zach Mettenberger Rennie Curran Shawn Williams Bacarri Rambo Yup, Mike Bobo helped land all those guys. He was the primary recruiter on almost all of them, and the secondary recruiter on a few. The man went and landed big time recruits year after year despite the lack of facilities and everything else. Without some of the talent he brought into the program, Kirby Smart’s tenure may have never gotten fully off of the ground. 
Bobo and Smart had some legendary recruiting battles when Kirby was at Alabama. The old college buddies would go to war for some of the best prospects in the Southeast on an annual basis in the late 2000’s and early 2010’s. Sometimes those battles would get heated, but once Signing Day had come and gone the two would get together on the golf course and put work on the shelf. They remained friends through it all. 
It’s hard to say if Kirby knew that Bobo would be needed to call plays down the road when he offered him the opportunity to come be an analyst for $100,000 a year at the end of the 2021 season. At the very least, I can promise you that he didn’t want to have to recruit against Bobo if he landed somewhere else. 
When Mike got back to Athens he started by sitting in on all sorts of meetings. He quietly observed for a while, but soon he and OC Todd Monken built a rapport. Monken once joked that Kirby asked him about hiring Bobo as an analyst to make it seem like it was his own idea, but in reality he always knew it wasn’t his choice to make. 
Bobo’s ideas held weight with Monken and he used them in his gameplans. Most importantly, they worked. 
Monken said this about Bobo at The Broyles Award ceremony in December of 2022. “The first two touchdowns passes we threw the other day (against LSU), those were Mike Bobo’s ideas, those weren’t mine.”
Monken treated his staff like a rock band. It was a great collaboration, and while Todd was the composer and lead singer, Bobo’s instrument became the loudest in the ensemble as 2022 wore on. The jailbreak screen that Georgia ran to Kenny McIntosh for a touchdown against TCU? Vintage Bobo. 
The QB coach and the forgotten man
Bobo has always been a quarterback guy. When he arrived, Stetson Bennett had already won a national title. He was the project that Buster Faulkner and Monken started and saw to fruition together. Bobo had developed Matt Stafford and Aaron Murray into stars in the SEC, so it would be a waste of his talents to not have him working on the position in some way. 
Maybe Mike always knew what was coming when Monken would eventually leave, but he took an interest in a talented veteran named Carson Beck. For most of his career, Beck had been a reckless player. He wanted to throw deep shots down the boundary. He could look good doing it at times, but at other moments he forced balls into double coverage. He was inaccurate underneath and over the middle. The hero throws were never a problem for his big arm and long frame, but those aren’t the throws that an offense is made up of. You have to be able to live off of the little chunks to win games at the top of the SEC. 
At the time, sources believed that some on Georgia’s offensive staff had essentially given up on the idea of Beck ever putting it together. His inconsistencies in the short/intermediate passing game felt like more of a trait than a habit. Bobo saw something in the Jacksonville native that he felt like he could work with, and he started drilling Beck on the types of throws that he would eventually make look routine. In late game action throughout the 2022 season, Beck started to show the staff that the light had come on. He had the ability to get through reads quickly, which is something many college QB's never accomplish. Then he started to look off defenders and make smart decisions with the ball. It was less about the throws he made in mop up duty in 2022 than the throws he didn't try to attempt. He didn't force the ball into tight windows. He also showed that he could deliver accurate balls to the first and second levels of the defense. It’s possible that Beck’s career never would have gotten off the ground if Bobo hadn’t arrived. Now we know that he was priming his future starter for what was to come. 
Bobo and Beck, evolving together
When Bobo was hired as OC, some in Bulldog Nation let out a collective groan. They lamented over past calls in games from a decade earlier, or feared that Georgia was moving backwards instead of forwards. 
In reality, Bobo’s offensive philosophies changed greatly since the I-Formation days of old. There was no Chubb or Michel on the 2023 Georgia team. He didn't have a Gurley or a Marshall either. Todd Monken was hired to modernize the Georgia offense. Mike Bobo was hired to keep it that way. The mandate he was given centered around continuity. In many ways, Mike Bobo has been asked to run the Georgia Offense that Monken installed over his three years in Athens. 
Early on in the 2023 season, Bobo did that a little too well. Through 3 games, 10 of Bobo’s 11 most used concepts were in Monken’s 11 most used concepts in 2022. Georgia struggled to run the ball out of the tight formations and 12 Personnel (2 TE) sets that it had thrived in with Darnell Washington at tight-end back in 2022. 
Bobo took his unproven quarterback and he used his early season games to get him comfortable with the short/intermediate passes that had once plagued him. Banged up at RB, the Bulldogs ran lots of screens as an extension of the running game. Against South Carolina, Beck protected the football, but became too locked in on those short routes over the middle. Bobo’s schemes were getting receivers open downfield, but Beck wasn’t seeing them. Against UAB, he started to look more patient and trusting of his offensive line. He began letting things develop. 
Georgia went to Auburn for its first major test of the season. Georgia's opening script was vintage Monken, but the personnel wasn’t the same. The running backs were getting stuffed far too often and the interior of the OL looked out of sync against an Auburn defense that was loading the box and playing aggressively. The Bulldogs’ offense had been very efficient to that point in the season, and it was again that day, but it is hard to move the football to the end-zone 4 yards at a time. Georgia needed to do something else to take control of the game. It needed to find some explosive plays through the air.
Bobo needed his inexperienced quarterback to trust his line, trust himself, and wait for things to develop on the back side against Cover 2. Above all, he needed Beck to utilize the best player on the field. Beck targeted Bowers 12 times for 8 receptions and 157 yards plus the game winning touchdown. When it was all said and done, Beck had gone 16/20 for 236 yards in the 2nd half of his first ever road start. He was 6/7 passing on 3rd downs in the third and fourth quarters. The average distance needed for a 1st down on those plays was 8.1 YDS, and Beck averaged 13.4 YDS per attempt on the 7 third down throws. Five of the completions went for first downs that kept the drive alive. The game had fallen onto Beck's shoulders, and Beck had delivered.
That was the moment that Carson Beck grew up, but it was also the moment where Bobo scrapped what wasn’t working and put his own stamp onto the Georgia offense. The foundation of the system was still rooted in what Todd Monken laid, but with his quarterback now proven, Bobo opened things all the way up when the Dawgs returned home against Kentucky. 
Against the Wildcats, Georgia started the night getting Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint and Rara Thomas involved. Beck had a season-high 16 attempts outside the numbers. He also had 10 attempts of over 20 yards downfield. 7 of those throws were on target. The results were dazzling. After a few drives, Beck was 11/11 for 146 yards and 2 TD’s. 
Mike Bobo realized something important. 2023 Georgia was not a run-first football team. 2023 Georgia was a team whose quarterback needed to throw it 30-36 times a game. He also realized that the best way for this offensive line to run the ball was going to vary week to week. Against Auburn and South Carolina, the Bulldogs ran for just 4.2 YPC on 27 attempts. Against UK, a 50/50 Gap Scheme to Zone Scheme combo resulted in Georgia’s best rushing game of the season. Bobo got the ball outside the tackles early and made UK’s defense chase the Dawgs side-to-side before hitting the Cats with more inside runs as the game went along. At Vanderbilt, the Dawgs ran Inside Zone Read 16 times for a gaudy 206 yards with a 68.75% Success Rate.
Bobo worked with the rest of Georgia's offensive staff to get the Bulldogs' run game going, using different gameplans that were designed around what would work that week instead of being overly reliant on one type of run scheme or philosophy. The best coordinators are the ones who don’t allow themselves to be overly committed to their first idea if given evidence that it’s not working properly. Bobo became someone who constantly took in new information and tried to use it to improve his offense.
Bobo realized that the Bulldogs weren't built to run into stacked boxes, and so he used his quarterback to force defenders out of the box. Beck shined by doing so, and Georgia's run game got stronger as the year wore on. Georgia came out of the bye week and let Beck open things up. He threw for 315 yards versus the Gators and his throws were timed so perfectly at some junctures that the receiver would be entering his break as the ball was released. 
Georgia survived a good Missouri team by being able to stay efficient and bust both big runs and big passes that created scoring plays. Against Ole Miss, UGA got a 300+ yard passing performance out of Beck and a 300+ yard rushing performance out of the offense. They leaned on their zone scheme more in wins over Mizzou and Ole Miss, but they incorporated more gap scheme into the gameplans against Tennessee and Georgia Tech. Bobo found a rhythm for his backs and Kendall Milton closed the year on a tear thanks to Bobo putting him into play designs that he was comfortable in. Milton went for 156 yards and 2 TD's in the regular season finale against Georgia Tech.
Falling short
Georgia's bid for a third straight title was derailed in its SEC Championship loss against Alabama. A lot went wrong for the Bulldogs that day, but specifically, UGA struggled to deal with the injury to Amarius Mims and failed to get separation on passing plays.
Georgia started the game out running tempo, and slicing through Alabama's defense. When Mims was injured, the offense got conservative. The Dawgs tried to man ball the Tide and run into heavy fronts. They went through the rest of the first half that way, and only became aggressive again once they got down in the second half. It made sense that UGA wanted to be cautious. Xavier Truss replaced Mims and struggled to protect Beck against Dallas Turner and Chris Braswell. Beck's top two targets, Brock Bowers and Ladd McConkey, were badly hobbled. The Dawgs were also without Rara Thomas. 
Bowers and McConkey struggled to separate from Tide defenders while playing hurt. With Thomas out, UGA lacked a WR who could go and win jump balls with regularity. In the run game, the Dawgs never found their footing after the opening drive. Georgia ran for just 3.2 yards per an attempt on 29 carries for a total of 92 yards. 
Looking forwards, it's hard to know what lesson Bobo and Beck should take from the loss that rendered a perfect regular season meaningless in the eyes of the CFP committee. The answer might involve not playing safe. The ball was taken out of Beck's hands for a lot of that second quarter. Georgia had the better QB, it should have wanted more possessions in the game. It's impossible to know if playing healthy players instead of the severely limited versions of Bowers and McConkey would have changed anything, but there were times where Dominic Lovett was running wide open if Beck had gotten to his second or third read. Perhaps his growth will involve turning down tight throws for bigger openings in 2024. 
The truth is that the scenario was extremely unique, and it's unlikely the Dawgs will find themselves in it again. Bobo took tons of heat after the loss, but conversations with sources this offseason have made me wonder if the decision to slow things down and run the ball more on third downs was more of a staff decision. 
Many have called Bobo a downgrade over Monken, but Georgia's statistical output in 2023 was essentially right in line with the 2022 team in all but one area. 

The only place where UGA saw a significant drop off was in its red zone scoring percentage. That fell almost 9% from 2022 to 2023. The 2023 UGA team converted TD's more often once it got inside the opponent's 40 than 2022 UGA did, but the 2023 Dawgs didn't have the same ruthless efficiency inside the 20 that the 2022 Bulldogs had. 
2023 UGA started the year struggling inside the opponent's 20, but they got better as the season went along. The 2022 team scored 81 times in 83 red zone trips. 2023 UGA scored just 74 times in 81 red zone trips. 
Looking forwards
What Bobo achieved last year is impressive when you consider the injuries to Bowers and McConkey and the fact he was breaking in a new quarterback. He also started the year with Daijun Edwards and Kendall Milton both either severely limited or hurt. The Bulldogs moved Dillon Bell to RB to get by, and Bell will be a starter at wideout for them in 2024.
The red zone conversion issue should be helped by the addition of 6'5" Miami transfer Colbie Young. He should be the guy who the Dawgs can go to when everyone else is covered. Dominic Lovett should be explosive out of the slot, and Bell should rotate between the X and Z positions. Speedy senior Arian Smith will join those three in the first group. Behind them is a mixture of speed, youth and players who can help the Dawgs in more specialized roles. Who emerges and gains Beck's trust will be one of the biggest storylines to monitor early in UGA's 2024 campaign. 
Oscar Delp should give UGA a really solid presence at TE. His blocking will be dependable in the run game and he will take advantage of spaces left in the middle of the field and out in the flat. Lawson Luckie and Benjamin Yurosek are x-factors who could add some real explosiveness and versatility to Bobo's scheme. We know Yurosek can block and make big receptions from his time at Stanford. If he can do it in the SEC, watch out. Georgia will be able to live in two and three TE sets and punish opponents for going either too heavy or too light with their defensive personnel. 
Sources close to the team are also confident that this year's RB room will be the best UGA has had in a few years. Former #1 overall RB recruit Branson Robinson returns and will be joined by former Florida star Trevor Etienne. They'll be backed up by Nate Frazier and Cash Jones early in the year, and they should be joined by Roderick Robinson late in the regular season. 
The offensive line is filled with experience and talent. Earnest Greene will be in the conversation for best tackle in the SEC. Jared Wilson replaces Sedrick Van Pran at Center and may have an even higher ceiling than the former three-year starter. UGA will have 7-8 linemen it feels comfortable playing, and should rotate them frequently. 
The field general
Of course in the middle of it all is Beck, the blue-chip QB recruit who waited. When last season started, Beck was the only remaining top 20 ranked QB from the Class of 2020 who hadn't either started a game or transferred. 
He was once labeled as a bit aloof. He was seen as inconsistent. In the end, he became much more than anyone ever thought he might be. In fact, Beck's field vision is already the best I've ever seen from a Georgia quarterback. The numbers back that up too. Beck's average time to throw on pass attempts last season was 2.22 seconds. That was the fastest of any Power 5 conference starter with at least 300 dropbacks in 2023. Good things happened when he got the ball out quick. He threw it in under 2.5 seconds on 56.7% of his dropbacks, and was 208/259 passing (80.3% completion) for 2,127 YDS (8.2 YPA) with 17 TD/1 INT on those plays. Nobody in college football is processing things faster than Carson Beck. Last season was the first time he had started a football game in four years. How much more can he improve?
His 302 completions in 2023 were the second most by a UGA quarterback in a single season, and he would've easily eclipsed Stetson Bennett's record of 310 (2022) if he had played a full game in the Orange Bowl or a fifteenth contest like Bennett did. Beck also already owns the second most single season passing yards in UGA history, throwing for 3,941 last year. He is already the most accurate QB in UGA history, completing 72.42% of his passes last year. 
Beck accomplished all of that last season despite UGA's staff later admitting that they really didn't know what they had when the season started. This time around, there will be no wondering if Beck knows how to protect the football. His 24 TD and 6 INT's in 2023 were impressive, but his adjusted completion percentage of 80.6% was downright gaudy. If not for 18 drops by UGA pass catchers last season, Beck may have approached accuracy numbers that would've been historically significant on a national level.
One area where Beck could grow is in the deep passing game. He struggled with underthrows and overthrows at times on deep shots and never fully got on the same page with his wideouts on certain vertical routes. Another offseason to synch up with them could spell T-R-O-U-B-L-E for the rest of the S-E-C. 
If Beck and Georgia show that they can connect on just 1-2 true deep balls a game, then this offense could hit rarified air. We know Beck can work the seams, but late in 2023 we saw him start to get comfortable on longer throws outside the numbers. If that continues then opposing safeties will be forced to sit deep and protect against Arian Smith, Anthony Evans, Dom Lovett, Colbie Young, Dillon Bell or whoever else UGA turns into a deep threat. 
That would mean more green grass for RB's hitting the second level, and more space between the LB's and safeties for Beck to throw into. For all of its success in 2023, UGA's longest pass play was 56 yards. If the Dawgs can start hitting some shots in-stride with speedy threats like Lovett, Smith and Evans then everything else they do suddenly gets easier. 
Beck already has a chance to be the first QB taken in the 2025 NFL Draft, but putting those types of downfield throws on tape would stamp him as an absolute total package. It could also give Bobo another QB drafted tops in his class, a full 16 years after Matthew Stafford was taken first overall by the Lions in 2009. It would be a fantastic achievement for an OC/QB duo who waited and developed when some questioned there futures. 
Before any of that there is the business of the 2024 season. Beck has told people he came back to Georgia to complete the unfinished business of winning a national title. Bobo also knows that nothing less than a title will allow him to reach a 100% approval rating among the Georgia fanbase. 
They'll start the journey in Atlanta on Saturday. They will look to return back there on January 20th with the ultimate prize on the line. 

Georgia is looking to avenge their 2023 season this year and no two better players to lead the charge than Carson Beck and Mykel Williams. 
The two stars of the roster met with the media following head coach Kirby Smart's press conference on Monday to discuss the Bulldogs' matchup against Clemson and how they feel heading into Saturday.
Here is everything Beck and Williams said during their press availability.
Carson Beck
On coming back for another season
"I've said that now a bunch of times that that was probably the main reason for me coming back. Coming back and finishing the job and winning that national championship. I think the team is really excited, especially as head into a true game week. It's been a while. Our last game was against Florida State and honestly, for me, it seems like yesterday, and it also seems like so long ago. I know the team's excited; I know I'm excited, especially as we really start to prep. I know that the sense of urgency has definitely been up. You go through fall camp; you really focus on you. You get out of camp; you really start to hone in on your week one, which is Clemson for us. I know the guys are super excited, I'm super excited as we prepare for this game."
On memories from the 2021 Clemson game
"It was a crazy game, first off. By crazy I mean there wasn't much offense involved in that game. I think it was 10-3, if I'm correct. Really good defenses, I remember their defense being really good that year. Our defense was really good that year as well, having spent a lot of time on the scout team going against them. Going back to then, obviously it's a very different situation compared to now. It's crazy to see how time goes, how things can change. Going back to then, just remembering how good of a team they are. Them coming in, being ranked. Us coming in, being ranked. How big of a match up that is to come into week one. Now, full circle coming again three or four years later and seeing the same exact thing coming back, but actually being the starter this time."
On differences from starting Week One last season
"It's very different, some of the nerves I had last year going into week one are not present. I'm very anxious to get out on the field, very excited, I have a lot of energy heading into week one considering we haven't played in so long. It's definitely a different mindset, same approach but in a different way. Seeing the difference between game one to game fourteen last year, I am excited to see what the jump is going to be from game fifteen to however many games we end up playing this season.
On expectations for the Georgia defense
"Fall camp is always very difficult, playing against our defense especially in the conditions of the Georgia summer, the Georgia heat. It's a hundred degrees out there, you get out in that stadium, and it feels like a hundred and ten. There is no wind, the air is trapped in the stadium in those scrimmage games and our defense has done an unbelievable job. Those coaches have those guys so well-prepared week in and week out, especially playing against us they see our stuff every single day, they go walk through it they come out to the scrimmage, they know we are going to run this and that, it's almost like they are covering everything. We have a lot of talented guys that are going to make plays against our defense and so do other teams, but I have a lot of confidence in our defense, and I think they are going to do some really special things this year.
Mykel Williams
On facing Clemson in the opener
“Clemson is a great team. Watching a little tape on them. Great quarterback, great offensive scheme.”
On his position change
“There is not really too much change. A little bit of stuff is different, it is kind of the same thing.”
On how his role has changed
“I would not really say it has changed. I would just say I do a little bit more on first and second down.”
On offensive lineman Jahzare Jackson
“Exactly that, huge. He has extremely long arms. He has the athleticism in his body, so he definitely has the talent to be somebody with a lot of hard work and dedication.”
Cover photo via Tony Walsh/UGA Athletics

Georgia is set to kick off their season against Clemson in Atlanta on Saturday and a few questions have arisen for the Bulldogs this week.
The Bulldogs have been relatively healthy but have suffered a few injuries and off-the-field issues that have some fans concerned about certain players' availability for Saturday. 
Head coach Kirby Smart met with the media on Monday to discuss the Bulldogs' matchup against the Tigers and the availability of the team heading into Saturday. Here is everything Smart had to say.
Opening Statement
"Welcome to Monday game week. Our guys got work in on Thursday, Friday, a little bit Saturday and then starting back today after Sunday off on Clemson. Our guys are excited for a great matchup. Looks like we'll get the earliest kick of the day, so it should be exciting in terms of all the people across the country that'll be waking up on the West Coast, getting to watch a great game and really, a great rivalry. A rivalry that when you look back, I didn't realize how many years consecutively Georgia played Clemson for a long time. Just a lot of respect for their program, what Dabo (Swinney) has done, he's done an incredible job. He's got a great culture there, a great environment. You think about their coaching staff, how intact it's been able to stay, how many coaches he's had go on to be head coaches and they do a tremendous job recruiting our state and we go head-to-head with them quite a bit. When you look across their roster, there's a lot of kids that we were really close to and I'm sure it's the same way with him. So, it should be an awesome environment. I have so much respect for the Kickoff Classic Game, Gary Stokan and his staff. Aflac is near and dear to my heart and has done a tremendous job in our state. And for them to take over this cause, I think it's a great event. To have two teams like this, it's going to be awesome.”

On what he is studying about Clemson
“Well, you study the history of the coordinators, and you look at that hard. You know Dabo has an impact on the offense, so you look at what he's done through his time being there. The most recent you look at is last year's games, and nobody is exactly what they were the year before, but you don't have any other options to study. You don't have game film of this year. This is the only game that we'll go into without game film of this year, so it all starts to change. But I'm sure everybody across the country is the same way. Do you have a new wrinkle? Do you have a new player that's an impact that you're trying to use in a certain way? What are you going to do different? What are you going to do the same? At the end of the day, coaches chase all those things, but it boils down to who blocks the best, who tackles the best, who makes the least catastrophic mistakes and avoiding turnovers and being explosive.”
On Clemson quarterback Cade Klubnik…
“It seems like he's been there forever, and this is really his third year, but he's a great, really good athlete. He's played a lot of football for a guy that age, has the ability to scramble, make plays on his feet, has more weapons around him. I think he's a lot more comfortable now in their offense. You could see that throughout the year last year as you watched the season go on, how much more comfortable he got, especially when they started going to Phil (Mafah) a lot more as their feature back and became a much more physical team. The addition of Matt Luke, who's a tremendous coach, was here with us. I think that makes them even more versatile in some of the things he's going to bring to the table. But Cade has been a great asset for them, and I know he'll be very experienced.”

On Clemson offensive line coach Matt Luke
“Toughness. He's got an extremely experienced offensive line. I want to say it's almost 100 starts. I mean, three of the five guys have over 25 or something. That's crazy. Very rare in college football to have a person with more than 25 starts, because that means they’ve stayed for, at least, they're coming into their third season starting. They've got a tremendous offensive line in terms of the amount of experience they have starting. I would have thought ours was one of the most experienced offensive lines in the country. Well, theirs has got more starts than ours. I know Matt will do a tremendous job. They'll play with toughness, effort. I'm sure he'll add some wrinkles to their offense, but he's a really good football coach.”
 
On Colbie Young’s availability
“Yeah, Colbie's been great. Ever since the scrimmage, not this Saturday we didn't scrimmage, the Saturday before that, he's been able to get out there and run and do some things. He practiced ever since we started on Clemson full go. He's been great and should be ready to go.”
On Clemson recruiting Georgia players and its impact on their identity
“I don't know if I have a better identity, I guess, compared to what? To other teams we play? I mean, you play more teams in your conference, and you see them more in overlap film. So, a lot of times you can see defensive players in the SEC multiple times in your breakdown. Clemson you won't see in your breakdown very often. We do know a lot of their players, but it's offense and defense both in terms of that. There are a lot more, it seems like Georgia flavor to their defense. Some of that may be the area that their coaches on defense recruit. I know they've got a former high school coach of Georgia on their defensive staff. There's a lot of good defensive players from our state on their defense.”
 
On the running back room
“Really excited about the backs we've got. The guys have worked really hard. They continue to grow and get better. You know, Rod's (Roderick Robinson II) toe is still an issue for him. Any time you go into the new season you're like, ‘What do I have?’ You don't really know what you have. That's why it's so critical in our spring to go out and play our spring game like it's a game because it's the first version of your new self. Then you go through the scrimmages, which we've had two, and you try to figure out the best version of yourself in those scrimmages because those are preseason games in the NFL terms. I felt really comfortable with where our backfield is in those games and doing a good job. I mean, at Georgia we don't like to say, ‘Okay, let's start all over.’ There's these guys that have been in our program that have been picking up stunts, blitzes that our defense runs. We do two-spot walkthroughs where they're getting to pick things up. There's a lot of guys that have had a lot of reps doing those things that hopefully have a great game Saturday.”
On Warren Brinson’s and Roderick Robinson II’s statuses
“Warren (Brinson) looks good. He's practiced every day. We've practiced for Clemson. He's done a good job. He's been out there competing. I mean, he didn't get the luxury of going through camp, which to me is like, you know, camp is what you build your foundation on. So, he missed some time in camp. But he also has had four camps in his time at Georgia. So, it's not like it's his first go-around in terms of that. And, yeah, Rod did have surgery on his toe.”
On Carson Beck’s relationship with the team
“I think that each individual person responds differently to how they perceive NIL. So, to assume that it's a problem in a locker room is probably not a good assumption, and to assume that it's not is probably not a good assumption. So, we try to address that early in our team back in January and February when you start brand new that everybody is in a different position. It's no different. We show the NFL salary cap. We show the NFL minimum. We show the NFL the highest thing you can get at each position in franchise players. It's very obvious what quarterbacks make as starting quarterbacks in the NFL, and by no means do I think that we are the NFL. But our kids acknowledge and recognize that the quarterback is a different position when it comes to NIL, and Carson does a good job handling that. It's never been about that with him. He's very humble. He works hard. He's a leader, and the players respect what Carson went through to get where he is. And I think he earned that.”
On Beck’s comfort with the offense
“I was pretty comfortable with Carson last year, to be honest with you, because he's seen a bunch of live bullets in practices. When you've got a guy that's been in your program as long as he has and done as many drills and pickups and blitzes and third downs. I mean, the guy, that was not my biggest concern last year, and it wouldn't be my biggest concern this year in terms of his ability to execute, to understand what defenses are trying to do. He's seen most of it. It's more about can he elevate the people around him in this game? Can he make them better? And that's one of the things he's been working on.”
On Beck’s experience and improvement
“He's very comfortable in the offense. I think Coach Bobo, Coach Hartley, all the guys on offense that make decisions, they know they can probably put a little more on his plate in terms of volume. But you're always limited by the other people around you. And I think that's key in the first game, is that we're not overloading their plate to appease Carson and being smart about how much you game plan and how much you put in versus what do you do well and what do you do all year round well.”
On Trevor Etienne and the freshmen running backs
“I'm excited about all those guys. I don't really talk about any of the other stuff in regards to any of our players with suspensions. But I'm excited about all the guys that are going to get an opportunity to play it back.”
On Roderick Robinson’s recovery
“Not real sure. Probably be week to week. Not sure how long it will take in terms of the surgery."
On if suspensions have been levied
“Like I said, we don't discuss those. Thank you.”
On Clemson not adding players from the portal
“I think that's much ado about nothing. I mean, you have who you have, right? So, in the spring, you have, I'm going to guess, 90 percent, 95 percent of your roster. You might pick up some after that. But I think everybody makes a big deal about that. I mean, I'm like Dabo. If I could keep my entire roster, my roster, I'd be all for keeping my roster, my roster because I believe in the kids we sign, I believe in the kids we recruit, and I want to grow them to get better. It's not realistic to think that you're going to keep all your players right now. I mean, what is realistic is that you need to be operating with as much depth as possible, and it's made it tougher to do that. But as far as evaluating the opposing team, whether they have kids or don't have kids, one thing you know is they're going to know their system because they've been in it. They're not new to it. They're ingrained in it. They know their culture. They know who they are. They know how they play. They know what their standard is. And that, to me, is you can be envious of that, the fact that they have the guys that have been in their program are in their program.”
On Mykel Williams changing positions
“He's not really at a new position. All the things he did last year, he's done this year. So, he works last year at outside linebacker in individual period, and he worked with defensive line. So those two are like a mirror, they almost share the same responsibilities. He's done the same thing this year that he did last year. I think that's more of a souped-up answer that he's playing a different position. He's not really playing a different position. He's got the versatility to be able to go out and be an outside linebacker because he's a really good athlete. He can cover and play people, but it's one of the best qualities. The most rewarding quality is rush, and we want him to be able to rush.”

On familiarity with Mercedes-Benz Stadium
“Hard to say. That's about five minutes' worth of value. Once the game kicks off, nobody's thinking about where they are, they're thinking about the person they're playing against.”

On Clemson’s defensive line
“You look at it on paper and people say, well, they only have a certain number of defensive starters, but two of the best players and statistically their best players they had last year, are back, and they were freshmen who technically didn't start. Those guys were dominant players, (T.J.) Parker and Peter Woods both were really good players, but we knew those guys in recruiting, and they're tremendous athletes, and both very productive with other guys coming back. They've got experienced guys coming back. So, when you look across the defensive front, Clemson is never going to be short there. They have twitchy, fast, hard-playing guys. The linebacker crew is extremely instinctive and well-coached. You can see the carryover from when Brent (Venables) left. They don't miss things in terms of keys and recognition, and they play really hard on defense.”
On Mykel Williams changing positions
“He's not really at a new position. All the things he did last year, he's done this year. So, he works last year at outside linebacker in individual period, and he worked with defensive line. So those two are like a mirror, they almost share the same responsibilities. He's done the same thing this year that he did last year. I think that's more of a souped-up answer that he's playing a different position. He's not really playing a different position. He's got the versatility to be able to go out and be an outside linebacker because he's a really good athlete. He can cover and play people, but it's one of the best qualities. The most rewarding quality is rush, and we want him to be able to rush.”

On familiarity with Mercedes-Benz Stadium
“Hard to say. That's about five minutes' worth of value. Once the game kicks off, nobody's thinking about where they are, they're thinking about the person they're playing against.”

On Clemson’s defensive line
“You look at it on paper and people say, well, they only have a certain number of defensive starters, but two of the best players and statistically their best players they had last year, are back, and they were freshmen who technically didn't start. Those guys were dominant players, (T.J.) Parker and Peter Woods both were really good players, but we knew those guys in recruiting, and they're tremendous athletes, and both very productive with other guys coming back. They've got experienced guys coming back. So, when you look across the defensive front, Clemson is never going to be short there. They have twitchy, fast, hard-playing guys. The linebacker crew is extremely instinctive and well-coached. You can see the carryover from when Brent (Venables) left. They don't miss things in terms of keys and recognition, and they play really hard on defense.”
Cover photo via Connor Dillon/UGA Athletics

"Who would you rank as the coaches most important to UGA's success?"
A DawgsCentral user posting under the name PiousMonken posed that question to me in the spring of 2023, and I quickly realized that a good answer would require quite a bit of consideration. 
When thinking about the question, I kept coming back to an old football cliche, "It's not the X's and the O's, but the Jimmys and the Joes that make the difference." I found myself considering the players who suit up on Saturdays. Good gameplans and great play calls are key to the success of any college football program, but they are usually only as good as the personnel executing them. With that in mind, I decided to broaden the scope of the rankings beyond members of the coaching staff. 
It sparked a series of longform articles called 23 For 2023. The premise was simple- Profile the 23 people who were most important to Georgia’s success on the gridiron in 2023. To create such a list, one must make value judgments on what on and off-field assets are most important to a modern college football program. 
It focused on players and coaches within the UGA program. Collectively, the series served as a giant preview for the season ahead. It became a favorite of subscribers, and it forced me to ask questions that I hadn’t before. 
This year, I am bringing the list back once again. Naturally, it will be called 24 for 2024. 
With his former mentor now manning a microphone on ESPN, Kirby Smart is college football’s most accomplished coach. In 2024, Smart will have to navigate significant staff turnover and seismic changes within the sport itself. Georgia came up short of a third straight national championship in 2023, but winning it all this season would give the Bulldogs three titles in four years. That achievement would cement the program as a modern dynasty. 
Whether or not Georgia can reach that lofty pedestal, and how they go about trying to do it, will be largely influenced by the roles these 24 individuals play. 
Today we continue the rankings with #6 and #5. Let’s get after it…
Previous Entries
#24 - David Hill
#23 - Will a True Nose Tackle emerge for the Dawgs?
#22 - Benjamin Yurosek
#21 - Will Muschamp
#20 - Dominic Lovett
#19 - Jalon Walker
#18 - Chidera Uzo-Diribe
#17 - Daylen Everette
#16 - Trevor Etienne + #15 - Josh Crawford
#14 - Daniel Harris + #13 - Donte Williams
#12 - Earnest Greene + #11 Stacy Searels
#10 - Malaki Starks + #9 -Travaris Robinson
#8 - Mykel Williams + #7 - Tray Scott
#6 - Colbie Young + #5 - James Coley
Miami transfer WR Colbie Young's first visit to Athens stayed mostly under the radar. We here at DawgsCentral broke the intel first, but many Georgia fans shrugged Young off as just one of many portal visitors who were likely to come through the Classic City before ultimately ending up elsewhere. 
Young was different though. He only visited Athens and Happy Valley before choosing Georgia over Penn State. Why did it matter? In Young, the Dawgs got a type of wideout that they didn't currently have on the roster. His addition could bring a previously missing element back to the Georgia offense. 
Young was the seventh ranked JUCO wideout in the 2022 cycle before committing to Miami and enrolling in Coral Gables in June of that year. Do you want size on the boundary? If so, Young is your kind of guy. He has a frame that is a legit 6'5" and he weighs in at 215 pounds. His stats are not totally eye-popping on the surface, and that's probably why his addition wasn't a bigger story at first, but there are some indicators that point to Young having the potential for a breakout season if he is paired with the right quarterback. 
He had 63 targets with 47 receptions for 574 yards and 5 touchdowns at Miami in 2023. That is a 74.6 percent reception rate, which was the highest of any Miami wideout who played consistent snaps last season. The other intriguing thing about Young was his 64.7 percent contested catch rate in 2022. He pulled down 11 out of his 17 receptions contested catch opportunities, which was a higher percentage than anyone on UGA's 2023 roster. Young's 11 contested receptions was four more than Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint's 7, which led the 2023 Bulldogs.
Hard to answer
After Georgia’s 51-13 win over Kentucky in Athens this season, Georgia head coach Kirby Smart was asked about the play of WR Rara Thomas. The UGA wideout had five receptions for 63 yards and an acrobatic touchdown catch in the win over the Wildcats. Smart answered the question by talking about the challenges a good contested catch receiver can create for a defense. 
“It loosens your whole defense up when you’ve got a guy at X that can win some one-on-ones… Because there are a lot of answers you can have, it’s hard to answer if the guy can go up and catch the ball one-on-one.”
Smart succinctly explains why he believes his offense needs big bodies at the X position. When UGA got the commitment from Young it looked like they were going to have two, but the summer dismissal of Rara Thomas adds even more importance to the presence of the Miami transfer.
Young could be a weapon high-pointing the ball on contested throws both along the boundary and in the end zone. His combination of size and height means he is never truly covered by one defender. Put simply, Young doesn’t need separation to make big plays.
The height and size that Young has is coupled with better speed than you might expect. Don’t sleep on his ability after the catch. He isn’t just shifty for his size. He is shifty for any receiver. Normally one thinks of a smaller receiver being on the end of screen passes from the quarterback, but Young had 12 catches behind the line of scrimmage in 2023, and he averaged 11.1 yards after the catch per reception on those plays. Young forced 10 missed tackles with the ball in his hands last season. The only UGA player with more missed tackles forced after the catch in 2023 was Brock Bowers. The star tight-end had 18 missed tackles forced, but no receiver on the Georgia roster had more than 7.
When you consider the amount of weapons that UGA will have surrounding Carson Beck next year, Young could find himself in some situations where forcing one missed tackle after the catch might allow him to break into space and score a touchdown.  
Georgia’s 12-0 season ended in a three-point loss to Alabama in the SEC Championship. The Dawgs were missing starting x-receiver Rara Thomas that day. WR Ladd McConkey and TE Brock Bowers were both playing on injured ankles that kept them from running routes as effectively as usual. Georgia’s pass catchers struggled to create separation against an elite group of DB's, and it ultimately cost UGA a chance to win a third straight title. 
With Young on the roster, the Dawgs will have a true X body type to isolate one-on-one on the boundary. Against the best secondaries Georgia plays, Young’s contested catch ability could be a massive asset to Carson Beck and the passing game. Young played over 25% of his receiving snaps while lined up in the slot in 2022. He wasn't targeted often during those snaps, but his familiarity sliding inside could be valuable if UGA finds itself struggling to create separation again. Young could give Carson Beck a big target who can wall off defenders with his size when Georgia needs a slant converted on 3rd & 6. 
Young’s physical tools are what you would want if you were drawing up a boundary receiver in a lab. His size, speed, and aerial ability bring lots of interesting possibilities to the Georgia offense, and the buzz around him has been consistent since he arrived in Athens for spring practice. He made an impressive TD catch against CB Julian Humphrey on G-Day, walling off the corner and using his size to make himself the only player with a chance to grab the ball. Early in fall camp a source shared that Young might be the most improved player on the team from fall to spring. 
Scheme flexibility
Even before coming to Georgia, Young has shown the ability to make plays against different defensive looks. His size gives him an advantage against man coverage, but he actually feasted on zones in 2023. He saw 31 TGT/27 REC for 399 YDS and 2 TD's while averaging 14.8 yards per catch against zone. That 87.1% target to reception ratio would be impressive in any offense, but it is particularly impressive considering Miami's QB struggles last season. 
Those numbers tell us that Young isn't just a big body who is posting up defenders. Young is a savvy route runner with field awareness and he knows when to sit down in a gap between defenders. He averaged 6 yards after the catch per reception on those 27 catches versus zone coverage as well. He can accelerate back up to full speed quickly, and he also caught 7 of 8 contested targets versus zone. 
In total, Young's production gives him a gaudy 2.79 Yards per Route Run against zone. If he has the breakout 2024 that it feels like he could, that 2.79 YRR could be a canary of sorts. Georgia's athletes on offense have been too good in recent years for most teams to play man against. In 2023, the Bulldogs' pass catchers saw man coverage on just 13.6% of targets. If Young is a 2.79 YRR receiver against zone coverage at Georgia then he's going to be a household name for all college football fans by the time the season ends. 
The 11 contested catches that Young made in 2023 are more than any UGA wideout has had since Lawrence Cager made 12 contested catches on 14 contested targets in 2019. Just like Young, Cager joined the Georgia for his final season of eligibility after transferring from Miami. Cager was also 6’5 and 220 pounds, which is the exact same size as Young.
Cager was one of the bright spots in a 2019 Georgia offense that struggled mightily at times. He had 33 catches on 40 targets for 476 yards and 4 touchdowns. He made key contributions in UGA’s wins over Notre Dame and Florida that season. It would be a major boost to the 2023 Dawgs if they can get similar contested catch production out of Young.
Having Young creates more options for Georgia OC Mike Bobo. It also means Carson Beck has somewhere to throw the ball even when everyone is covered. Those might be luxuries in most of the games the Bulldogs play next year, but those contested catches could be the difference UGA needs against some of the better teams on its schedule. There is a good chance that Young will see his highest target numbers against the best secondaries that Georgia plays. That makes him an extremely important player for the Dawgs. 
Coming full circle
Young wasn't the only person with South Florida ties that Georgia added this offseason. 
If you had made a list of former Smart assistants who you might guess would return to Georgia, James Coley may have been last on the list. He spent one ill fated season as UGA's offensive coordinator in 2019 before the Bulldogs hired Todd Monken the next offseason. It's worth noting that Smart never actually fired Coley, but he left UGA for the WR coach position at Texas A&M after the Bulldogs brought on Buster Faulkner and Monken that winter.
Georgia fans probably remembered him as the man before the man. The 2019 Bulldogs were just 70th nationally in creating explosive plays (20+ yard gains). That year’s Georgia team had a suffocating defense that led the nation in scoring defense while allowing just 12.6 points per game. Despite that, they went 12-2 and were held back by an offense that was ineffective in its attempts to modernize.
Coley was hired on Smart's original UGA staff and had held titles of WR coach and Co-OC/QB coach before being promoted to OC in January of 2019 after Jim Chaney left for Tennessee.
Coley tried to take UGA out of the run-first philosophy that predecessor Jim Chaney had implemented. In Chaney’s final season of 2018 the Bulldogs ran the ball on 57% of downs. Coley evened out UGA’s run/pass ratio a bit, with 2019 UGA throwing the ball on 47.5% of downs. The problem was that UGA wasn’t successful in doing so. Smart spoke candidly about Georgia’s offensive ineptitude after their 37-10 loss to LSU in the 2019 SEC Championship.
In hindsight, it was a turning point for Smart. He came to the realization that his offense must be dynamic enough to go blow for blow with the best units his defense would come up against. Georgia might shut down 13 out of 14 opponents in a given year but no matter how good UGA’s defense might be, they would eventually run up on an offense that was too good to be held down for four quarters.
The Monken era modernized Georgia’s passing concepts and shifted to more gap scheme run concepts after Chaney had been so reliant on zone runs. In 2019, Coley called Inside Zone or Inside Zone Read on over 27.5% of UGA’s snaps. Monken came in and started to vary the offensive scheme, but UGA also underwent an overhaul on the offensive line. The switch from Sam Pittman to Matt Luke coincided with UGA looking for more athleticism in its OL recruits. 
It would have been strange for Coley to be in the building while a new regime was working to change what he had been part of building and executing. Jimbo Fisher had employed Coley at FSU from 2008-2012, and he had helped Fisher recruit a team so talented that it cruised through the regular season on its way to a national title. At A&M, he helped Fisher upgrade the talent. 
He spent two years coaching WR’s before being promoted to Co-OC/TE coach in 2022-2023. When Fisher was fired, Shane Beamer targeted Coley to join the staff at South Carolina. The two had worked together at Georgia from 2016-2017, but he came home to UGA when WR coach Bryan McClendon left UGA for the NFL this spring. 
Looking back to project forward
Georgia's receiver recruiting has become a topic of tension for some segments of the fanbase in recent years, but it wasn't always like that. The Bulldogs recruited WR's well early on in Kirby Smart’s tenure. Before any national titles or SEC championships, there was the 2017 UGA recruiting class. It was ranked 3rd nationally, and it announced the Georgia program as ascendant to the rest of the college football world. One of the key pieces was Jake Fromm, and the blue-chip QB helped convince Top 100 WR Jeremiah Holloman to come to Athens with him. 
The man who recruited Holloman was James Coley. A South Florida native, Coley’s ties in the Sunshine State helped UGA land heralded talents like James Cook, Tyrique Stevenson and Tyson Campbell. He was such a strong recruiter that he helped Georgia land big names like Campbell and Stevenson despite them playing on the other side of the ball. Coley's time in Athens started in the WR room, which he oversaw in 2016 and 2017 before he moved to working with QB’s and calling plays as the offensive coordinator. 
Before the failed 2019 campaign as a play caller, Coley helped UGA stack the WR talent that would allow it to breakthrough and win its first national title in over four decades. Here is a list of wideouts that he helped bring to Athens…
5* George Pickens 5* Dominick Blaylock 4* Kearis Jackson 4* Jeremiah Holloman 4* Riley Ridley 4* Javon Wims Cortez Hankton was hired from Vanderbilt and named WR coach when in 2018 when Coley shifted over to working with QB's. Bryan McClendon replaced Hankton when he left for LSU after the 2021 national title. You can see that Georgia's WR recruiting quickly changed directions when Coley left Athens. 
- The 2021 class featured AD Mitchell, who was an overlooked three-star that the Bulldogs did a fantastic job of evaluating. The only other WR recruited was three-star Jackson Meeks. He is now at Syracuse. 
- UGA’s 2022 class included 4* De’Nylon Morrissette, who was the 35th ranked WR in the class and never came close to cracking the rotation in Athens. He has since transferred to Purdue. He was joined there by CJ Smith, another recruit from that class who was the 52nd ranked WR in the country. That class did include a 3* WR named Dillon Bell out of Houston, TX. He was another guy who Todd Monken pounded the table for, and he seems primed to become a household name this fall. 
- The 2023 cycle saw UGA land its first top 100 WR since Coley left the program when it signed Tyler Williams. The problem is that Williams was raw and needed time to develop. He left UGA this offseason for Minnesota. That class also included Anthony Evans, who was a Top 200 player and the 27th ranked wideout in the cycle. He has loads of speed, and he could become a contributor this season. Georgia also saw #31 ranked WR Yazeed Haynes come into the program and leave for Syracuse after just one year. 
The 2023 cycle was notable because UGA supplemented its high-school prospects with transfers Rara Thomas and Dominic Lovett. The Bulldogs brought Thomas into the program to be a true X-WR who could be physical in the air and high point 50/50 balls. Mitchell served that role in 2021 and 2022, but UGA lacked anyone with his size/speed combo after he left. It lacked it again in the 2023 SEC Championship due to Thomas's injury. Lovett was the speedy technical route runner UGA needed to man the slot. 
- In this past recruiting cycle, UGA once again missed out on a true blue-chip wideout. Nitro Tuggle was brought into the program as one of the 25 best receivers in the class. He is speedy and has decent size at just over 6 feet tall, but he is not a true X-WR either. UGA also signed 5’9” Sacovie White. The 3* is already looking like he has a future as a productive player in Athens, but he will have to create space to get open.
Georgia went harder after WR’s in the transfer portal this year than it ever has after any position. It signed the big bodied Colbie Young to be a bully in the red zone. It also brought in 6’3” London Humphreys from Vanderbilt to deepen the pool of outside receivers. Michael Jackson III was added from USC to help Georgia with yards after the catch and compete for the now open Z-WR position where McConkey had shined. 
Getting back to how business is done
Kirby Smart has always used the portal, but the addition of this many players at one position is not the status quo. The program got to the top of the sport by recruiting elite talent and keeping the best of that talent. It was not built on playing portal roulette. Georgia players are recruited and developed for their physical traits, but also for their mental makeup. They embrace the dirty work, and they understand that the long game pays greater dividends than the short one. 
Time will tell if UGA’s newest additions fit that makeup. What's for sure is that a modern college football program has less options when it's relying on the portal to fill needs. Since returning to Georgia this spring, Coley has been fighting to make sure that the Bulldogs won’t have to do that in the future.
UGA signed five WR’s ranked among the Top 15 players at their position in the last two cycles Coley was with the program. The Bulldogs have signed 0 in the four cycles since he’s been gone. In June, UGA snagged a commitment from WR Talyn Taylor. The 9th ranked WR in the 2025 cycle, by landing Taylor, Georgia snagged an elite wideout who has a total package of skills. The Bulldogs also continue to work on flipping 4* CJ Wiley, the 13th ranked WR in the 2025 class.
UGA has dealt with negative recruiting in recent years because it spreads the ball around and hasn’t had a 1000 yard pass catcher since Terrence Edwards in 2002. It has also had to deal with the fact that Brock Bowers was a focal point of the offense. Rivals have told recruits that UGA doesn’t feature receivers, but a lot of UGA’s best wideouts have failed to play full seasons. If not for injuries, the stat lines for some UGA receivers could have been very different.
Details matter
Now back in Athens, Coley will coach a 2024 WR room that looks deep on potentially productive players. 
The buzz around Coley this offseason has been positive, and the players in his room have told people that his attention to detail has helped them perfect different aspects of their games. Coley has coached offensive football for decades, and it has given him an appreciation for things that many coaches tend to overlook. He puts considerable time into helping his players have complete route trees by focusing on building from the ground up. He might spend an entire practice period working with his receivers on nothing but how they take their first step off the line of scrimmage at the snap. Once that's done right, they can build a release that is more technically sound.
Coley expects perfection on every detail, and he has that in common with his boss. Understanding Kirby Smart's standard for the Georgia program has made his transition back to Athens a smooth one. He is competitive on every level and he tells his wideouts that he expects them to set an example for hard work and execution instead of trying to chase the work ethic being displayed by a different position group. 
Coley's coaching helped a lot of Georgia receivers go into the summer with plenty to work on. They worked to better those details on their own and came back to fall camp as better players than they were at the end of spring. Young may have made the biggest leap of any player on the UGA offense. Freshman slot receiver Sacovie White has emerged as a player who the Dawgs should be able to depend on this fall. Vanderbilt transfer London Humphreys has started adjusting to Georgia's standard because of Coley as well.
It will be interesting to see how the season progresses, but it is likely that some of UGA's wideouts will improve rapidly once Coley gets game tape to dissect and provide teaching points on. 
Coley's first group of wideouts is likely to include Dillon Bell, Dominic Lovett, Colbie Young and Arian Smith. The skillsets of those players should compliment each other well. Lovett and Bell have shown they can work underneath when needed but also have histories of making big plays when sent downfield. Young's size and speed should allow him to function over the middle and down the boundaries.
The x-factor is Smith. Some wondered if the speedy Florida native might just be a gadget player, but Coley has helped revive his hopes of becoming an NFL wideout. He helped recruit Smith back when he was Georgia's OC, and now he is trying to unlock the potential that many have been waiting for him to realize ever since. His ability to stretch the field has never been in doubt, but Coley has helped him develop short and intermediate skills that might make him nearly impossible to gameplan for. If defenses are forced to respect his ability to catch a deep curl or a 12-16 yard in-route then it will unlock an array of double moves and deep shots that could make this UGA passing game as explosive as any we've seen under Smart. 
That first group will be pushed and spelled by players like tough USC transfer Michael Jackson III, the long and speedy Humphreys, twitchy burner Anthony Evans, freshman Nitro Tuggle and the aforementioned White. Who emerges from that group as dependable parts of the offense will be interesting to see. How well the entire room replaces the production of Ladd McConkey and Brock Bowers will determine whether this Georgia offense is special or merely good. If the group proves to be deep then these Dawgs could be harder for defenses to gameplan for than last year's team.
Last year's Georgia offense only had one regular WR with a PFF Run Block grade of over 70 (Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint - 71.3). The 2022 Bulldogs had one above 80 (Kearis Jackson - 80.4) and four above 70 (Blaylock, Rosemy-Jacksaint, McConkey, A. Smith and Bell). 
Coley's influence on Georgia's downfield blocking was extremely positive in the past. Javon Wims was Georgia's #1 WR in 2017, and he also was the best perimeter blocker on the team. That set an example for the rest of the room, and the dirty work that UGA's wideouts did to pave the way for Sony Michel and Nick Chubb allowed the Bulldogs to come within a whisker of a national title. 
Those nuances may seem minor to many, but sealing a block on the edge on a third down screen can be the difference between a punt and continuing a touchdown drive that changes the shape of an entire game. At the level UGA is playing at, everything matters. Coley doesn't just understand that. He also embraces it.
That made him the right man to lead Georgia's WR room as Kirby Smart looks to push his team back to the mountaintop in the first season of the sport's expanded playoff era. If he can get that detail oriented approach to show up on the field then his WR room will help Georgia create explosive scoring plays. They could do it even when they're not touching the football. 

You’ve probably seen the stat. Terrence Edwards was the last Georgia pass-catcher to eclipse 1,000 yards, back in 2002. Despite great pass catchers over the years, even Brock Bowers nearly reaching the mark as a tight-end, it has been over two decades since the century mark was passed.
In 2024, with a returning quarterback in Carson Beck, and a multitude of weapons, can a Georgia receiver hit the 1,000-yard mark? How dominant will the Bulldogs’ passing attack be? 
Here’s a full wide receiver preview. 
The Starters
In Georgia’s offense, there projects to be a core of four wide receivers, following the dismissal of Rara Thomas. Each of the four possesses different skills and will be utilized by offensive coordinator Mike Bobo in various ways. Expect to see Dominic Lovett, Dillon Bell, Colbie Young and Arian Smith on the field most.
Lovett will be suiting up in the red and black for a second season, following his transfer from Missouri after the 2022 season. Last year, he was heavily involved in the slot, catching 54 passes for 613 yards and four touchdowns. In 2024, expect Lovett to be a favorite target of Beck’s who will see the most action on the field. 
Bell didn’t have eye-catching numbers in 2023 but is a versatile weapon who flashed at times and may be in for a bigger role in 2024. Bell’s best game came against Tennessee, catching five passes for 90 yards and a touchdown while throwing for a touchdown as well. In total, he finished the year with 29 catches for 355 yards and two touchdowns. However, Bell will likely be a focal point of the offense in 2024, even if he doesn’t finish with the most catches or yards. Bobo and wide receivers coach James Coley will gameplan to get the ball in Bell’s hands when a big play is needed, and Bell is capable of delivering. 
Young, standing at six-foot-three, will be a phenomenal jump-ball threat. Without much speed, Young will have to rely on being able to catch a ball over defenders and should get a heavy workload in the red zone. At Miami last season, Young caught 47 passes for 563 yards and five touchdowns. In 2024 with the Bulldogs, the touchdown count should rise. 
Smith is a senior and has been with the team the longest out of the bunch. Through four seasons, Smith has 20 catches for 539 yards and six touchdowns, perhaps the most important coming against Ohio State in 2022. However, with his game-breaking speed, Smith should be in line for more work in 2024 as a threat to take the top off the defense. 
Depth
Behind these four starters, numerous other pieces can make an impact when needed, especially if someone in the rotation were to get hurt. Sophomore Vanderbilt transfer London Humphries is the next man up. Georgia fans remember his speed when he gashed the 2023 defense for a 49-yard touchdown.
Freshman Sacovie White could make an early impact as well from the slot, after making a few impressive plays on G-Day.
Nitro Tuggle, also a freshman, may not see the field as much, but has extreme talent and can make a big play when he gets his opportunity. 
Anthony Evans is also a player with great straight-line speed that could see the ball thrown his way, although deeper in the rotation.
Junior Cole Speer could also appear on the offense, maybe more than what is expected. 
USC transfer Michael Jackson III rounds out the receiver room, likely as a slot receiver deeper In the rotation.
1,000-yard man
If there were going to be a Georgia receiver to go for 1,000 yards this year, it would be one of two guys: Lovett or Bell. I would lean Lovett, as he will likely see the most opportunity and will be on the field the most, barring injury. However, Bell could push for it, as the Georgia offense will find ways to get the ball in Bell’s hands early and often. 
Ultimately, I think that there will not be a 1,000-yard receiver, as the room is filled with depth, but lacking a star that stands out far beyond the rest. Additionally, I see the Georgia offense utilizing a balanced attack, leaning on their run game behind one of the country’s best O-lines more than people might expect. 
Carson Beck and the receiving room should have great years, but I don’t expect Georgia to throw the ball up and down the field on teams this season to produce eye-popping numbers. 
 

"Who would you rank as the coaches most important to UGA's success?"
A DawgsCentral user posting under the name PiousMonken posed that question to me in the spring of 2023, and I quickly realized that a good answer would require quite a bit of consideration. 
When thinking about the question, I kept coming back to an old football cliche, "It's not the X's and the O's, but the Jimmys and the Joes that make the difference." I found myself considering the players who suit up on Saturdays. Good gameplans and great play calls are key to the success of any college football program, but they are usually only as good as the personnel executing them. With that in mind, I decided to broaden the scope of the rankings beyond members of the coaching staff. 
It sparked a series of longform articles called 23 For 2023. The premise was simple- Profile the 23 people who were most important to Georgia’s success on the gridiron in 2023. To create such a list, one must make value judgments on what on and off-field assets are most important to a modern college football program. 
It focused on players and coaches within the UGA program. Collectively, the series served as a giant preview for the season ahead. It became a favorite of subscribers, and it forced me to ask questions that I hadn’t before. 
This year, I am bringing the list back once again. Naturally, it will be called 24 for 2024. 
With his former mentor now manning a microphone on ESPN, Kirby Smart is college football’s most accomplished coach. In 2024, Smart will have to navigate significant staff turnover and seismic changes within the sport itself. Georgia came up short of a third straight national championship in 2023, but winning it all this season would give the Bulldogs three titles in four years. That achievement would cement the program as a modern dynasty. 
Whether or not Georgia can reach that lofty pedestal, and how they go about trying to do it, will be largely influenced by the roles these 24 individuals play. 
Today we continue the rankings with #10 and #9. The first entries in this series were not paywalled, but they are now. Let’s get after it…
Previous Entries
#24 - David Hill
#23 - Will a True Nose Tackle emerge for the Dawgs?
#22 - Benjamin Yurosek
#21 - Will Muschamp
#20 - Dominic Lovett
#19 - Jalon Walker
#18 - Chidera Uzo-Diribe
#17 - Daylen Everette
#16 - Trevor Etienne + #15 - Josh Crawford
#14 - Daniel Harris + #13 - Donte Williams
#12 - Earnest Greene + #11 Stacy Searels
#10 - Malaki Starks + #9 -Travaris Robinson
#8 - Mykel Williams + #7 - Tray Scott
I’ll never forget the phone call I had with a source about a week into UGA's fall camp in August of 2022...
Source: “Mykel Williams will be a better college player than Travon Walker.”
Me: “Travon Walker was just picked #1 overall in the NFL Draft”
Source: “I don’t care. Mykel will be more productive.”
Me: “Alright then…”
By the end of camp, Williams was Georgia’s first team defensive-end. On the year he tallied 410 snaps for the Bulldogs. Veterans Robert Beal Jr. and Nazir Stackhouse were the only linemen who played more snaps for Georgia in 2022. He also led Georgia in pressures as a true freshman. 
Williams totaled just 17 tackles in 2022 and 11 tackles in 2023. For a star defender you might expect more, but UGA’s defensive scheme asks Williams to two-gap a lot. Is Mykel athletic enough to shoot between the Tackle and Guard and get into the backfield? Yes, but then he risks surrendering the edge. By not choosing a gap to shoot into, Williams is essentially taking away two lanes. Georgia has deployed this strategy for years under Kirby Smart and longtime DL coach Tray Scott. Williams doesn't tack up many tackles because his athleticism forces ball carriers towards the middle of the field where his LB’s and DT’s can stuff the run. 
That ability to play two gaps at once is rare, and it offers UGA a massive strategic advantage. By controlling multiple gaps with one defensive lineman, Georgia can play with less defenders near the line of scrimmage. That give the UGA secondary more bodies to defend the pass with, and it is one of the biggest reasons why Kirby Smart’s program produces elite defenses year after year. 
Those skills often take multiples years to develop, but Williams was properly executing this technique as a freshman. We saw him improve upon it as the 2023 season went along. Williams is an extremely talented player who came to UGA with a ton of accolades. He has become one of the most well known defensive players in the sport. That he has committed himself to a style that focuses on team defense instead of gathering individual stats is a testament to both him and the UGA staff. 
That makes Williams just the latest future first-round draft pick who has bought into Tray Scott's style. 
One team vs 11 individuals
"Two on me, somebody free."
That's the philosophy that Scott preached to his pupils in the lead-up to Georgia's 2021 season. That defense would go on to become the best that college football had seen in the era of spread offenses and RPO's. The success of that Georgia defense was a product of elite play at every level, but the defensive line included Travon Walker (#1 overall pick), Jordan Davis (13th overall pick) and Devonte Wyatt (28th overall pick). Those three emphatically broke Georgia's 18-year drought without a first-round pick on the defensive line. A year later, Jalen Carter joined that trio when he was taken 9th overall by the Eagles and joined Davis in Philadelphia. The success of UGA's defensive line represented a meteoric rise in the coaching profession for Scott. 
Just a decade ago, Scott was on Jason Simpson’s staff at UT-Martin. Even though he was at the tiny school in West Tennessee, Scott managed to make a name for himself in his first job as a position coach. He oversaw the DL from 2013-2014, and his line played an aggressive style that helped UT-Martin rack up more than 50 sacks and 160 tackles for loss during his two years with the Skyhawks.
In 2015, then North Carolina coach Larry Fedora came calling. At just 30 years old, Scott became a position coach at a Power 5 program. Prior to his time at UT-Martin he had played for D2 Arkansas Tech from 2003-2007 before becoming a grad assistant for the program from 2008-2009. He moved on to Arkansas State from 2010-2011, spending one season under head coach Steve Roberts before the Red Wolves promoted OC Hugh Freeze to head coach in 2011. When Freeze left for Ole Miss the next offseason, Scott took a GA role with the Rebels. 
When Larry Fedora plucked Scott off the UT-Martin staff, he was in the midst of trying to overhaul his defense. Scott was the last man hired to fill out the staff, and his name wasn’t nearly as big as some of the other defensive coaches Fedora brought in that offseason- Gene Chizik (DC), Charlton Warren (DB) and John Papuchis (LB). 
At North Carolina, Scott became known as a hands-on developer. If he didn’t like a player’s technique he didn’t just tell them what they did wrong. He got onto the turf in a three-point stance and showed them what they needed to do. His high-energy tactics worked. He turned a three-star DE named Nazair Jones into an All-ACC player. His first year on staff the Tar Heels led the conference in interceptions and turnover margin and his DL was 64th in the FBS in havoc rate. 64th might not sound that great, but a year before the same UNC defense had given up 70 points and 789 yards to East Carolina in an embarrassing loss to an in-state G5 program. What Scott did in just one offseason with his unit was nothing short of football magic. 
Scott also gained a reputation off the field. He isn't a big personality on the sidelines or on social media, but his ability to connect with players is very real. Recruits liked Scott, and his players listened to him. When you talk to people about Tray Scott you'll find that they unanimously mention how much he cares about his players. He is seen as a father figure by many of the kids he coaches, and his loyalty to them and the University of Georgia breeds loyalty in return. That meant he was not just signing talented prospects. His ability to get through to them meant he was also capable of getting them to listen. A player who listens is a coachable one, and a coachable player can be developed. 
After Kirby Smart’s first season at Georgia ended with 5 losses, he decided to make a change to his staff. Tracy Rocker was one of the only coaches who Smart had retained from Mark Richt’s last UGA staff, but Kirby decided to cut him loose after National Signing Day in February of 2017. Smart always believed that acquiring talent was the most important factor in building a winner. His first full recruiting class at Georgia came in at #3 nationally, but there were some glaring holes up front. The Bulldogs signed just one defensive lineman who was ranked in the nation’s top 300 prospects (Malik Herring) and only one defensive tackle. That interior lineman was Devonte Wyatt, but Wyatt would have to spend time at the junior college level, and he didn’t enroll at UGA until January of 2018. 
Mentor and mentee
When Smart went looking for a new defensive line coach, he knew there was only one man he needed to call. That individual was Pete Jenkins, who many around the sport consider to be the father of defensive line coaches. Jenkins is a Macon native who coached high-school football in the Columbus/Phenix City area as well as Warner Robins before becoming a DC and DL coach for five SEC schools. His longest stint was at LSU from 1980-1990 and he joined the Tigers' staff on two other occasions after that. From 2007-2009, Jenkins coached the defensive line for the Philadelphia Eagles.
The man who brought Jenkins back to LSU in 2000 was none other than Nick Saban. Jenkins and Saban worked long hours together building the LSU defense that would capture Saban his first national title. Jenkins retired after the 2001 season, but he did remain on the mind of his former boss. Jenkins has consulted with many programs over the years, but he became Saban's personal fixer when the Alabama front started to look problematic. Sometimes those calls came in the middle of a season. Others came after a bad scrimmage during fall camp. Whenever the phone rang, Jenkins dropped everything to help. He was not there to coach the players. Pete Jenkins would come to Tuscaloosa, and many other college towns, to coach the coaches. His attention to detail has become the stuff of legend in the coaching profession. Jenkins can look at a tape of a practice and notice that a coach is standing a few feet away from the ideal spot to have the proper angle on a drill. 
When Smart decided to move on from Rocker he phoned Jenkins and asked him to identify a young coach who would want to stay at Georgia for a longtime and develop within the program. Jenkins told Smart about a mentee of his named Tray Scott.
Smart's call to Scott came at an awkward moment of sorts. You see, the Bulldogs were not the only admirers of Scott’s work. After two years at UNC, Hugh Freeze had hired his former GA to coach the DL at Ole Miss. A little over a month after taking the job in Oxford, Scott joined the Bulldogs staff in February of 2017. The defensive line position on Georgia's staff was filled less than 24 hours after Smart had decided to move on from Rocker.
Promise fulfilled
Georgia fans were not sold on Scott in the beginning. Sure his time at North Carolina was nice, but this was the SEC. This was the ultimate line of scrimmage league, and Scott didn’t come to UGA with a history of developing first-round picks and signing five-star recruits. The best coaches surround themselves with the best coaches, and Smart saw into the future when talking with Jenkins. He knew what the young coach could be with the proper amount of time and support. Knowing what we do now, the hires of Scott and a young analyst named Glenn Schumann might have been the most inspired coaching acquisitions of the Smart era.
His first cycle in Athens was recruiting the 2018 class. He brought the aforementioned Wyatt back to his home state after he spent a year at Hutchinson Community College in Kansas. Then he signed an unknown kid out of the Charlotte suburbs who he had seen once at a camp when he coached at UNC. The kid’s name was Jordan Davis. He was 6’6” and he was heavy. Some other coaches on the staff weren’t sure he would ever get into good enough shape to be a real player, but Scott went to the mat for Davis and the Dawgs brought him in. Punter Jake Camarda was the only player with a lower ranking in UGA’s 2018 recruiting class.
Much like Smart when he hired Scott, Georgia’s new defensive line coach had the ability to look at Davis and see what he would become. He also had the ability to get Jordan to listen. Davis became a college football cult hero. At 330+ pounds, he chased running backs down on the perimeter like a linebacker. His rare combo of size/athleticism forced defenses to double team him. That gave Georgia’s other defenders plenty of room to work, and the 2021 defense became the best in modern college football history. Scott's words came true. With two blockers on different UGA defensive linemen the rest of the front seven was free to hunt. 
The recruiting wins eventually came for Scott and UGA. In his first three cycles at Georgia, Travon Walker and Jalen Carter were the only prospects Scott signed who were ranked among the top-150 players in their class. In 2021, UGA signed consensus blue-chippers Jonathan Jefferson and Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins.
In 2022, the Bulldogs landed the aforementioned five-star Williams as well as top-100 prospects Bear Alexander (transferred to USC) and Christen Miller. In 2023, the Dawgs landed five-star defensive tackle Jordan Hall and top-100 DT Jamaal Jarrett. UGA’s 2024 class included six defensive linemen. Among them were national recruits like five-star DE Joseph Jonah-Ajonye and four-stars Nasir Johnson, Jordan Thomas and Justin Greene. There were also lower ranked prospects who Scott recognized elite traits in like massive NC native Nnamdi Ogboko and the intriguingly athletic Quintavius Johnson out of Mays in Atlanta. 
Georgia didn't reach the top of the sport by signing polished five-stars who were ready to come in and wreak havoc at the start of their careers. The Dawgs did it by identifying prospects like little known three-star Jordan Davis and the overlooked Wyatt and turning them into high level players. Now UGA has become a destination for elite linemen who have seen what being developed by Scott can do for a player's future.
When Davis was drafted in 2022 he was asked how UGA would replace all of the departed talent on the defensive line. His answer proved to be prophetic. “If they getting coached by Tray Scott, they in good hands. He’s not only going to develop you as a player, he’s going to develop you as a man. He’s dropped so many gems in just life stuff. I really appreciate that man. Love him to death. I love him like he’s
A bird? A plane? Williams has been built from the inside-out
 
 
Williams had two sacks in the College Football Playoff as a freshman, serving notice to the college football world that he was the next UGA defensive lineman to watch.
Against Ohio State, he lined up across from Paris Johnson, who would become the 6th overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft a few months later. Coming into the matchup with UGA, Johnson had only allowed one sack all season.
With UGA trailing by a touchdown midway through the second quarter, the Dawgs defense had forced OSU into a third-and-long and needed to get off the field. With the Buckeyes in an obvious passing situation, Williams lined up further outside than normal. At the snap, he came screaming off the edge and used his 34+ inch arms to keep Johnson from recovering. Mykel was on top of CJ Stroud in an instant for a sack. 
At 6’5” and 265 pounds, Williams is a rare player. He has enough quickness and length to speed rush off the edge when lined up out wide as a pass rusher. He also has enough size to clog gaps against the run. He is a true three-down lineman who possesses the best traits of both an elite pass rush specialist and an elite run stopping defensive end. 
In fact, Williams has shown that he can even play defensive tackle in certain situations. Look at the versatility he's shown throughout his time in Athens...
Mykel Williams Pre-Snap Alignment 2022 (410 Total)
Lined up Outside Tackle: 228 Snaps (55.6%) Lined up Over Tackle: 100 Snaps (24.3%) Lined up in B-Gap: 65 Snaps (15.8%) Lined up in A-Gap: 17 Snaps (4.1%) Mykel Williams Pre-Snap Alignment 2023 (380 Total)
Lined up Outside Tackle: 191 Snaps (50.2%) Lined up Over Tackle: 157 Snaps (41.3%) Lined up in B-Gap: 29 Snaps (7.6%) Lined up in A-Gap: 3 Snaps (0.7%) As you can see, Williams moves around a lot. Thus far in his UGA career, he's most often been seen lined up tight on the shoulder of the opponent’s left tackle, playing the same 4I DE role that the aforementioned Walker excelled in for UGA in 2021. Mykel has shown himself to be a disciplined run defender, using his quickness to set the edge on some plays and deploying his size to crash into the middle and help close interior gaps on others. His PFF Run Defense Grade jumped from 75.3 in 2022 to 80.3 in 2023, and he did that despite battling nagging injuries throughout much of the season. 
The solidity that Williams provides in the run game is of tremendous value, but so is his pass rushing ability off the edge. Looking at the pre-snap alignment breakdown above, we notice a trend. Williams is shading inside less as his time at Georgia goes on. 
In the lead up to the Orange Bowl, sources told DawgsCentral about a very interesting development that was happening in Georgia's bowl practices- Williams was practicing with the outside linebackers. Against the Seminoles, we saw Georgia use Williams in a very different way than they had in the past. 
Mykel Williams Pre-Snap Alignment Orange Bowl (31 Snaps)
Lined up Over Tackle: 9 Snaps (29%) Lined up Outside Tackle: 21 Snaps (67.7%) Lined up Over Slot: 1 Snaps (3.3%) Williams had 6 pressures in that game, which was a career-high for him. He also had 2 sacks and a forced fumble. The 2 sacks represented a third of his season total in 2023. Yes, the performance came against an FSU program that did everything but no show for the game, but Williams looked violent and impressive in that role. Shading him outside put tackles on an island more often on passing downs, and gave Williams the ability to go hunt the QB against one-on-one blocking. His PFF Pass Rush Grade of 93.4 was over 17 points higher than the next highest of his career.
In the video below you can see some of the traits that make Williams such an intriguing prospect at OLB/EDGE. He isn't moving to OLB full-time though. He has spent plenty of time practicing with UGA's DL during fall camp, and the expectations is that he will split time between the positions.
That begs the question of what the ideal way to use Williams is. Is he an EDGE who was playing out of position shaded inside, or is he a DL who can help Georgia more if he controls the interior gaps? The answer is both and neither, and what's fascinating is the way that Scott's methods have turned him into a complete football player.
You see, Williams always had long arms, quick twitch ability to get off the snap, and a blend of speed and power that would allow him to both bull rush and speed rush his way to the QB. Now after two years with Scott, he has elite technique as well. 
Watch Williams in the clips above and you see the way he skillfully uses his hands. On his best snaps, he is in control of both his body and the man in front of him. On the run plays, he's letting the opposing OL lean into him without leaning onto him. His eyes are up, and he's controlling the gaps to his left and right by not over committing. At the moment he gets a read on where the run is going, he extends the arms and rips past the offensive linemen. There isn't a lane in either gap at this point, there is just Williams. 
That technique is textbook Pete Jenkins, and Scott has worked underneath Smart to make it synonymous with Georgia Football. Scott has spent the 2024 fall camp teaching these Bulldogs the same techniques. The Bulldogs use their hands and their leverage to beat opponent's blocking schemes just as much as their power and speed. Those who understand the level of nuance involved would go so far as to call it an artform. UGA's defensive line is looking to perfect the details. When executed properly, Georgia's linemen will condense the spaces between the opposing blockers while walking themselves towards the direction that the play is slanted. When the ball carrier looks to head downhill, they'll find a wall of humanity with defenders protecting either end of the box. It's a technique that goes against sending linemen upfield at the snap, which has become trendy in today's game. On a lot of passing and running downs, Georgia's defensive line is looking to collapse themselves upon the backfield as opposed to shooting into it. 
The style eliminates big plays in many instances, and it has been an excellent solve for the problems that modern dual-threat quarterbacks create for defenses. Back at Alabama, Smart charted the times when a QB took off against his defense. There were times when QB's scrambled out to the sidelines and picked up a first-down at the sticks, but the moments when the Tide really got gashed by a QB's legs almost always came when the passer could step up in the pocket and takeoff directly upfield. Shooting defensive linemen leave holes behind them when they get upfield.
One could argue that Georgia has executed the tenants of Jenkins's philosophy better than any program in the sport over the last three years, but Pete's relationship with Saban made working with Alabama a priority for Jenkins. He was even called in at times to help the Tide prepare for its matchups with Georgia. 
With Saban now out of the sport, it will be interesting to see if Jenkins starts to consult with Smart and Scott more often. Jenkins was hired as an analyst by Brian Kelly and LSU in the midst of the 2023 season, but the 82 year-old moved on after the Tigers' hire of Texas DL coach Bo Davis this offseason. It's possible Jenkins could be available to consult if Georgia needs him, but there's no certainty that they will. At the very least, they won't have to go against him like they did when Saban was still at Alabama. 
"No bulljunky"
Scott’s value to UGA’s program is multifaceted, but the easiest way to sum it up might be to point out the way Georgia’s linemen play within this team-first scheme. The number one ideal of the Kirby Smart defensive philosophy is that nobody runs on Georgia. In modern college football, play-action passes are successful about three times more often than straight dropback passes. If Georgia is controlling the run with a light box through its two-gap technique then its defensive backs aren't biting up on play-action. The result is that opponent's offenses come to a stall. 
Scott has gotten super recruits like Walker, Carter and Williams and the rest of Georgia’s linemen to two-gap instead of shooting into the backfield every down. That requires unselfishness.
Everybody makes it a priority to stop the run. The difference in the Georgia defense and everyone else in college football? UGA’s secondary gets to regularly play with five and six men because the two-gapping defenders let Georgia cover two rush lanes with one player. It is a schematic trump card like no other. 
The 2023 Bulldogs struggled to hold those spaces in the middle at times last year, and they struggled to set the edge at others. Against Alabama in the SEC Championship, Georgia was faced with the philosophical dilemma of whether to pressure Jalen Milroe, and risk opening run lanes up the middle of the field, or keep him in front of them and collapse the pocket onto him. In the end, UGA's inability to get home on Milroe with three and four pass rushers led to some key plays for the Crimson Tide. 
When considering Williams and his place in the 2024 UGA defense, it's worth noting that his time practicing at OLB started after this loss. 
Back in 2021, UGA had stud linemen (and linebackers) across the front. Everyone could hold their space, and the disruptive push of Davis and Wyatt often led to double teams on the interior. The rest of the front feasted on the one-on-one blocks. Remember: "Two on me, somebody free." 
Whether Georgia's 2024 defense has a truly disruptive force at defensive tackle remains to be seen, but Williams might be a solution if UGA lacks an interior defender who demands double teams. 
Williams' time on the defensive line has taught him all of the two-gap principles that he needs to know to play the run in a light box, but it has also made him into a much more well-rounded pass rusher. He's not just trying to beat offensive tackles with speed and force. He gets the nuances of how to use his hands and how leverage matters. If Georgia can't get two blockers on someone inside, then Williams can be the pressure maker off the edge while lining up further off the tackle's shoulder.
Even if UGA has the personnel to make its traditional straight-up style of defensive line play work, it's still likely we will see Williams shade further outside on third and longs when offenses are in obvious passing situations. That should turn him into a player putting up double-digit sacks. If he becomes so disruptive that offensive coordinators start sending TE's and RB's to help chip him, then UGA's inside linebackers can take advantage by blitzing up the A-Gaps when they recognize that their man is staying in to block. It could be 2024's version of "two on me, somebody free," but Georgia would be getting to that point in a different way than the 2021 Dawgs usually did. 
For Georgia to make a run to a third national championship in four years, the Bulldogs and Scott will need be better on the defensive line than they were a year ago. In Williams, Scott has an ally. 
The rising junior told reporters after G-Day that he wants to uphold the standard for the young players around him. I asked him to elaborate further.
"Just by not allowing any... Bulljunky... Just remembering how Nolan (Smith) and those guys held me to the standard and doing the same for those guys."
The good news for Scott, Smart, Williams and Georgia fans dreaming of January glory? If Williams is seeing snaps further outside that means that one of his peers is likely ready to hold the line further inside.
Perhaps that is Gabe Harris or Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins at defensive end. Maybe Stackhouse is ready to get back to his 2022 form at defensive tackle. Maybe Christen Miller is ready to be an every down player. Perhaps massive North Carolina native Jamaal Jarrett is ready to become the nose tackle the Dawgs have been missing. 
The defensive line room is filled with recruits that Scott saw something in. He believed he could develop these players into the next Wyatt or Davis, and he has developed Williams into a complete weapon who can get to a QB in an instant off the edge and plug a gap for him anywhere he's needed across the defensive line. History says Scott will develop the next crop of great Georgia defensive linemen.
In the coming months we will find out which of his projects is ready for primetime. We'll also learn if the usage of Williams represents another evolution that layers on top of the two-gap philosophy that Smart and Scott subscribe to. 

It’s Nathan again. Proprietor of Chapel Bell Curve, everyone’s favorite UGA podcast that is only tangentially about college football. In the existential sense, I’m here today because I was in marching band in high school and didn’t get many dates, so stats about football was my coping mechanism. In a more specific sense, I’m here today to talk about the win projections that Ross Rutledge, proprietor of r2sportsmetrics has derived from our power ranking index, CBCR2. 
So, without further ado, let’s look at the teams our numbers say are most likely to go undefeated. (You can find the full list here)

A couple of things stand out to me here. One, if Oregon beats Ohio State, they’ll be in the catbird seat for making a top-4 seed this year. The Ducks play out-of-conference foes Boise State and Oregon State (what the hell), and outside of Ohio State, their most daunting opponents are Michigan and Washington teams that have been heavily depleted by coaching departures and graduation. This isn’t necessarily to say I think that Oregon is a shoe-in, as stepping on a rake against an underwhelming conference opponent is a Big Ten tradition, but it does illustrate the degree to which scheduling is vital to our new 12 team playoff dystopia/utopia.
Over the past 25 years, there has been a series of pendulum swings in how athletic directors schedule. The first 150 years of college football were essentially defined by regionalism. Teams played teams in their state, and in states that bordered their state. If you want an illustration of how locked-in this kind of thinking is, look at how intensely UGA celebrated their 1943 appearance in the Rose Bowl. This regional identity has slowly eroded in the past 35 years. The rise of national sports networks, live sports streaming, and conference realignment have made this a truly national sport for better and for worse. Starting in the 2010’s and continuing through the 4 team CFP era, AD’s began scheduling more  splashy out of conference opponents from across the nation. Georgia’s 2011 loss to Boise State is a great example of this philosophy. It’s also a great example of what the red power ranger would look like if he had a football uniform, but that’s a different article. This aggressive scheduling approach, however, may find its days numbered. While there is more leeway for teams to take additional losses, the rise of the super conference in the SEC and Big Ten eats up some of that wiggle room. In short, if everyone has a hard schedule, teams are unlikely to get extra credit for losing to someone from outside of their conference.   
If you want a further illustration of this point, look at Texas. CBCR2 gives them ~58% chance to go 10 - 2 or 9 - 3. While these records aren’t necessarily disqualifying in a playoff that will almost certainly take at least 3 teams from the SEC, they could cost Texas a playoff bye. Outside of the matchup with the Dawgs, America’s Ground Beef Team – I’ll never forgive your aggression against Uga, Bevo –  faces Michigan, TAMU, and Oklahoma, ranked 9th, 10th, and 13th respectively. 
Ultimately, this simulation illuminates our brave new CFB world. For fans of a sport that has historically valued the mythical undefeated season above all else, this should be a wake up call. We’re living in a world where 10-2 Texas could play 11-2 UGA in the title game as a rematch. I don’t have anything wise to say about that. So I suppose I’ll leave you with the immortal words of America’s greatest philosopher, Samuel L. Jackson: Hold onto your butts.
If you liked this article, check out my first episode of CBCR Quickie, my show with the famous Ross Rutledge. We talk about his preseason rankings and get into the nitty gritty of the stats more there. 
Also, if you want more shenanigans, check out our newest episode of Chapel Bell Curve here, where we go over our off-season, smack talk for the new entrants into the SEC, and the folk heroes of this year's Olympics.