SEC East Recruiting: The Talent Gap is Widening

As Kirby Smart and the Georgia staff finished out signing day, flipping Jermaine Burton from LSU, they quickly leapfrogged the Tigers for the 4th spot in the 247sports.com rankings.

And with the likes of Kelee Ringo, Darnell Washington and Zach Evans seeming to be leaning towards the Dawgs, the chances Georgia takes the top spot in the 2020 recruiting class are highly likely.

So, we have an understanding of where Georgia's 2020 class is headed, but where does that leave the rest of the SEC East and just how far is that talent gap widening? We take a look.

#8 Florida - (0) 5-stars, (16) 4-stars, (7) 3-Stars

For all the talk about losing top in-state talent thrown Georgia's way recently, there's not a program in the country that should be more dedicated to keeping the top guys in their state than Florida. 43 of the nation's top-300 prospects come from the Sunshine State. Sure, Florida secured Gervon Dexter in this class, but they missed out on the Top-5 in-state talents. Mullen's second full recruiting class was a slight improvement on last season's, but he's got a ways to go before entering the "elite" category.

Grade: B+

#15 Tennessee - (0) 5-stars, (14) 4-stars, (10) 3-stars

Jeremy Pruitt has done an excellent job in recruiting since taking over as Tennessee head coach. Now, he's offered more players over the last two seasons (932) than any other coach in the country - yes that's a real number - but he's managed to win out on some highly touted recruits. Pruitt has done his best to wall off the state of Tennessee as well, signing 3 of the top 5 players in the state in 2020.

Grade: A-

#16 South Carolina - (1) 5-star, (7) 4-stars, (13) 3-stars

Jadeveon Clowney, Marcus Latimore, and Jordan Burch. All three the top player from South Carolina in their class, all three elected to stay in their home state. At least for now, considering Burch hasn't signed his LOI just yet. Now, a lot of that is a testament to location, but you still have to prove your school worthy of playing for. Muschamp has done a fairly good job of recruiting some of the most proven talents Georgia has to offer.

Guys like Rico Power Jr, Jaheim Bell, Joey Hunter, Makius Scott, and Rashad Amos who are all talented football players, but all come from some of the toughest classifications and regions that Georgia has to offer.

Grade: A

#23 Kentucky - (0) 5-stars, (5) 4-stars, (16) 3-stars

Enough cannot be said about the job that Mark Stoops has done and is continuing to do at Kentucky. Last year he produced Kentucky's first 10-win season since 1977, and this year he's followed it up with the highest-rated recruiting class in school history.

Stoops has done so by identifying big men that he knows he can bring in and getting after them early. The sheer size of the class is astonishing enough: (6) commits over 6'4" & (6) commits over 300 pounds.

Grade: A+

#52 Vanderbilt - (0) 5-stars, (0) 4-stars, (16) 3-stars

It should go without saying that Derek Mason has one of the harder recruiting tasks every year due to Vanderbilt being one of the country's toughest schools to get into. Add on top of that the fact that you're entrenched in the SEC and it only magnifies things just a bit. Mason is attacking recruiting in a much different way too. Of his 17 commits in the 2020 class, only one is from the state of Tennessee and he's a long-snapper. All things considered, since Mason's arrival they've hovered around the school's perenial average in terms of rankings.

Grade: B

#81 Missouri - (0) 5-stars, (1) 4-star, (10) 3-stars

Whenever you fire your head coach a little under a month before National Signing Day, you are basically punting on the early signing period. It's almost entirely impossible to judge Missouri's class as of now because there are just 11 commits in it. That being said, it's hard to believe they can make up the considerable amount of ground that's already been lost. The 81st ranking would be far and away the program's worst class to date.

Grade: C-

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