"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
#23 - Will a True Nose Tackle emerge for the Dawgs?
#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.
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