College Football's Top 25 Most Important Players: No. 9 S KJ Bolden, Georgia

KJ Bolden anchors a Georgia defense that ranked fourth nationally in run defense and 10th in scoring defense in 2025. He does it as a 20-year-old junior, and heading into 2026 he sits on nearly every major preseason award list at his position.

Georgia opens against Tennessee State at Sanford Stadium on Sept. 5 at 3 p.m. ET, and the safety in the middle of the field is the surest thing on Kirby Smart's roster.

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No. 9: KJ Bolden, S, Georgia Bulldogs

The 6-foot, 190-pound junior started all 14 games in 2025 and finished second on the team with 76 tackles. He added 2.5 tackles for loss, two interceptions, five pass breakups, a fumble recovery and a blocked punt, and earned Coaches All-SEC Second Team honors.

The coverage numbers carry the case. Quarterbacks who threw into his area got almost nothing, allowing 10 catches, 146 yards on 23 targets all year, and he held up when offenses ran at him too, ranking 13th among SEC defensive backs with 37 tackles on running plays.

Bolden did this in his first year as a full-time starter, and he did it while replacing Malaki Starks, the No. 27 overall pick in the 2025 NFL draft and a two-time All-American. Georgia handed a five-star with limited playing time the deep middle of its defense and lost nothing.

KJ Bolden sits atop the 2026 preseason award lists

ESPN surveyed more than 20 front office staffers to rank the top returning players in the country and put Bolden at No. 10 overall, second among all safeties.

The Walter Camp Football Foundation named him a preseason All-American. He also made the watchlists for the Bronko Nagurski Trophy, given to the nation's top defensive player, and the Jim Thorpe Award, given to the top defensive back.

Georgia defensive back KJ Bolden (4) arrives before the start of the Georgia G-Day spring football game. | USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

One SEC personnel evaluator described how fast the Buford product reads a play and drives on it, then said he projects as the best safety Georgia has developed at the position in a while. That is a specific claim about a program that has sent a string of defensive backs to the NFL.

Bolden was a five-star recruit and the No. 1 safety in his high school class, a two-way player who caught 30 passes for 663 yards and 14 touchdowns as a senior and ran a 10.76 100-meter dash. The range and hands that made him a receiver prospect now show up in deep coverage.

Why KJ Bolden matters most to Georgia in 2026

Glenn Schumann's defense keeps its top-10 standing only if the deep field stays covered, and that responsibility is Bolden's. When a single-high safety erases the deep third alone, the corners in front of him play tighter, and Schumann can call more aggressive coverages underneath. Only a player of Bolden's caliber gives him that freedom.

Studied #Georgia S KJ Bolden this morning

Tough, physical, reliable, instinctive - lot to like and I feel really good about him turning into a future starter in the NFL #GoDawgs | #DawgsInTheNFL pic.twitter.com/TAz8vYj6J6
— Fran Duffy (@FDuffyNFL) July 17, 2026

Georgia's road back to the College Football Playoff runs through a stretch that includes Oklahoma at home on Sept. 26, a trip to Alabama on Oct. 10 and the Florida game in Atlanta on Oct. 31. Each of those offenses will test Bolden and the Bulldogs downfield.

Bolden told reporters this spring that his goal is a national championship, and teammates pointed to his leadership at 5 a.m. workouts as the thing that changed most over the winter. The talent was already there and now the defense runs through him.

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