Georgia Football Loses Out On Three 2021 Prospects
Georgia football has enjoyed unprecedented recruiting success under Kirby Smart. The strength of the Dawgs' recruiting pitch is the unveiling of their massive and impressive recruiting machine when prospects come to Athens on official visits. Prospect after prospect has told us verbatim, "Georgia feels like family". Players and their parents and loved ones come away from UGA confident that the university and the coaching staff will be the best place to help their development as a man, a student athlete, and ultimately reach the NFL.
COVID-19 has hampered on-campus recruiting in the NCAA and made the process different for both the schools and the prospects. Decisions and announcements have come in an unpredictable fashion and players that UGA had felt really good about such as James Williams, Tony Grimes, Romello Brinson, and Dallas Turner all ended up elsewhere. In the past 24 hours, three more Georgia targets have decided to either commitment to other schools or not include UGA in their top schools list.
Dietrick Pennington is a 6'5" 320 pound offensive guard. Yesterday he committed to the Clemson Tigers. Pennington was thought to be squarely in the focus of the Dawgs and Matt Luke after Fort Valley, Georgia, native TJ Ferguson committed to Alabama. Pennington is extremely athletic, especially for his size, and the multi-sport athlete out Tennessee would have been a great fit for Matt Luke's propensity to pull lineman and Todd Monken's use of the screen game. Look for Georgia to go hard after another guard from Tennessee, Noah Josey.
Damarius McGhee is a 4-Star defensive back out of Florida. McGhee had named a Top Five of Ole Miss, Louisville, Miami, Tennessee, and Georgia on June 10th. Today McGhee committed to the University of Tennessee. Losing out on the Under-Armour All-American is significant as Georgia is needing to load up on defensive backs in the 2021 class. Divaad Wilson has already entered the transfer portal and Eric Stokes, DJ Daniel, Richard Lecounte III, and Tyson Campbell could all realistically be gone from the program after the 2020 season. UGA is still in good shape with Nyland Green, De'Jahn Warren, Isaiah Johnson, Javon Bullard, and others.
Finally, 4-Star wide receiver Jalil Farooq from Maryland announced his Top Seven today. Georgia was not included. Oklahoma, Boston College, LSU, Alabama, Clemson, Maryland, and West Virginia did. The Dawgs offered Farooq back in June of 2019 and had been pursing him steadily throughout his recruitment. Georgia is in search of a second receiver for the 2021 class to join Adonai Mitchell who they flipped from Ole Miss. Jayden Thomas, Malcolm Johnson Jr., and Deion Colzie are the names to know at this position going forward.
Despite these set backs, the Dawgs are still in position to finish strong in December with this recruiting class. Major priorities Amarius Mims, Brock Bowers, and Xavian Sorey all appear to be trending to Georgia and our sources tell us that UGA has good reason to feel confident with all three. UGA is also a strong contender for number one overall prospect Korey Foreman. There has definitely been some adversity in the 2021 class, but the Georgia faithful should have patience and trust that this class is going to be more quality oriented than it is quantity d
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