There is likely a quicker way of summing up the last few days for Tate Ratledge without involving a Patrick Swayze comparison, an Instagram group chat or a startling bike accident.
Yet this is what we do here sometimes in this space.
The 4-star OT from Darlington High camped like his game has room for another star on Sunday at the Atlanta Opening regional.
Ratledge was named the OL MVP after a dominant showing at right tackle.
That’s his natural side. The side where he has always felt better with that right hand and that “punch” he delivers off that flank.
He also spent Saturday visiting the University of Georgia. Check out that view.
He chronicled that trip up fairly succinctly.
“It was great,” Ratledge said. “I’d sum it [up] as another day of improving relationships with everyone.”
There are a few bags to unpack here on Ratledge. We can discuss that Instagram group message between the nation’s No. 5 OT and the Georgia staff. The name of that thread?
“Tate Ratledge is a 🐶 .”
His camp day makes one think he might get a rating bump. But of all those things, none of those really stand out.
- The fact he punts for his high school stands out. He delivered a 39-yard net for Darlington last fall. (Maybe Smart might be taking this roster efficiency thing with the 2020 class a little far. Of course, I jest. Kinda.)
- The fact Ratledge likes to talk more about his high school battles than his recruiting stands out. This kid doesn’t really get caught up in the hype, it seems.
- Maybe the biggest standout is that Ratledge grew into an even bigger standout of late.
There is no reason for this, but somehow Ratledge has grown at least 1-to-1.5 inches since the summer of his junior year.
Do you realize how many players hope and pray to get bigger to attract more college interest? Somehow and way Ratledge has found a way to super-size himself up from the March 2018 version of himself.
The young man already had Alabama and Georgia and everyone else offers when he was still south of the 6-foot-6 mark. But he showed at the Opening and measured in at 6 feet, 7 inches. He is now 311 pounds.
Those tidbits all pop the mitt here with Ratledge, but maybe not as much as a “road hog” story shared on Sunday by his father.
RELATED: Get to know Darlington High’s Tate Ratledge
Tate Ratledge: “You couldn’t tell him not to try it”
“He was always adventuresome,” his father Dean Ratledge said. “I don’t care what it was but you couldn’t tell him not to try it. Do you know what I am talking about?
There was this one time when Dean tried to teach his young son how to ride a bicycle. That’s a time-honored memory for any American family.
“So we are out in the cul de sac and he’s riding around and says ‘I think I can do this by myself” after just a few trips,” his father said.
Tate was five. He may have even been four years of age.
“All of a sudden he decides he is going to come down the hill going a hundred miles an hour and give me a no hands with all of that,” Dean Ratledge said. “Do you know what I am talking about with this kid?”
Ratledge was ready for his Evel Knievel turn after no more than his first hour on that bicycle.
“He hit a mailbox,” his father said. “It hit him right in the chest.”
That mailbox sent Tate in another direction. Kind of like the way this young man redirected a few fellow 4-stars on Sunday.
“He’s laying there off the ground and he’s saying ‘It didn’t hurt Daddy’ and ‘It really didn’t hurt’ after I ran over there like I thought he was dead.”
I’m not sure what the proper admissions test might be for a future member of Sam Pittman’s Great Wall of Georgia, but I have to think it involves some of the following.
Check all the boxes that apply:
- Play OT at an elite level and yet is still athletic enough to punt for his high school team
- Play on both sides of the ball for his high school team
- Big enough for the “GWOG” prior to a pre-senior year growth spurt
- Sound like a current member of the “GWOG” (Clay Webb is the pick here) and has the speech patterns and mannerisms of Hollywood action star. (Ratledge gets a ✅here because a fellow media member felt he reminded them on Sunday of the late Patrick Swayze. Probably the “Road House” version.)
- When he steps on the field the charge is this: “I want to go out there and physically manhandle and dominate people,” Tate Ratledge said. “I want them to not want to play me again.”
- Been guilty of a few personal foul penalties in high school for aggressive play in his day
- Gives his pop a “No hands” after bouncing off a mailbox during a pre-K train wreck.
Ratledge will check off all of those.
I’ll now interrupt this 5-year-old Tate story with the habitual recruiting updates with this young man. It seems like Alabama is declining, Georgia is maintaining and Tennessee has been gaining of late.
There’s this Sam Pittman fella recruiting Tate Ratledge
Stop me if this sometimes feels like “Pulp Fiction” and the Winston Wolfe character a lot of times. There’s a big-time elite OL and basically, when folks learn Pittman is on the case, it does equate to those sentiments expressed regarding how well “The Wolf” goes about his work.
If it is good enough for Samuel L. Jackson it is good enough for DawgNation, right?
That’s kind of what is at work here with Pittman and Ratledge. Ratledge’s father says those two can talk for hours about anything but football chatter. The aspiring business major won’t let his foot off the gas there.
But when football comes up, the conversation is more one-way. Pittman just doesn’t go the “no hands” route with any of his priority targets.
“Coach Pittman is probably the coach I have come the closest with in my time of being recruited,” Tate Ratledge said about Pittman.
What are the biggest things he likes about UGA right now?
“I like Athens,” Ratledge said. “I feel like I’d be happy there if I wasn’t playing football. Like I could live there and coach Pittman.”
The Tate Ratledge decision timeline
His words work best here.
“I feel like right now I’d like to get it over before my senior season,” Ratledge said.
Does he want to announce it at an All-American game? Maybe.
“But I’m not a big like put myself out there and to get all this media attention so I might just do it like a simple thing on Twitter,” Tate Ratledge said. “Something like that.”
He could not decide today. He said he had “no clue” with that.
Which hats would be on the table?
“Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Auburn and Florida,” he said.
He is also honest enough to admit that USC has offered him. The lure of a California official visit does appeal to him.
Ratledge has the fewest questions about Georgia and Tennessee. He saw Athens this past weekend. He will likely be in Knoxville this weekend.
“I have been there the most and I have built great relationships with [Tennessee offensive line] coach [Will] Friend and coach Pittman,” Ratledge said. “Every time I go down there it is not a tour of everything. It is getting closer with the coaches and building those relationships.”
Ratledge comes from a Volunteers family. He was born in that state. His father, Dean, does still have an orange power “T” front license plate on his truck.
That, it seems, will not be a factor here.
“He’s not pressuring me at all like that,” Tate Ratledge said. “He’s like ‘wherever you go if you don’t go to Tennessee that ‘T’ is coming off and where ever you go is going on.”
He has broader shoulders for the 2019 season, but he sounds like he doesn’t want to carry the burden of the recruiting process on them much longer.
“I’m almost done I think,” Ratledge said. “I’m kind of tired of the whole recruiting process. For the first like a couple of months, it was like ‘this is awesome’ and then it is like ‘this is kind of getting old’ all these people hounding you about like ‘come here’ is kind of annoying.”
Pittman has been clear about his future worth in Athens.
“He says I am not going to guarantee you a position but we are losing both of our tackles by the time you are here and if you compete and you play with the ability that I believe you can play at, there’s a very good chance you end up playing as a freshman here.”
3 tweets in regard to Tate Ratledge
These are pretty much self-explanatory. The first one came from the Darlington High squat rack last May. That’s when Ratledge was already squatting 500 pounds.