Georgia was able to address some major needs on Wednesday during the first day of the early signing period. The Bulldogs signed a total 23 prospects, including five 5-star prospects.

Among the major positions of need were outside linebacker and defensive back. With the additions of Marvin Jones Jr. and Malaki Starks, along with others, Georgia is well-positioned to absorb some of the personnel losses it figures to see.

However, you can’t please everyone and there were some rumblings about the wide receiver and offensive line units. The Bulldogs signed three wide receivers and four offensive linemen, but neither had a player ranked among the top 200 of the 247Sports Composite rankings.

Smart, who once again noted he does not care about the rankings, still feels good with what Georgia brought in at those positions. He went into great detail to explain his thoughts on the offensive line, the wide receiver position and a number of other key aspects of Georgia’s 2022 signing class.

Kirby Smart 2022 Georgia signing class

On the offensive lineman in this recruiting class:”I think it’s like everything. You have a group, a class of O-lineman. Any NFL general manager or scout will tell you, ‘OK, this class is loaded with this.’ Last year’s NFL Draft class had a lot of really good corners. We had two good corners go pretty high. We had corners go before, but that was a really big corner draft class. As you look across the country, the offensive line class now, I’m not talking about recruiting rankings like you referenced—I would refer to that because they are going to have a certain number of five stars and four stars that they’ve got to hit—but the pool of offensive lineman probably wasn’t as great as it’s been in years past in terms of quality depth at that position. Now if you go statistically, there is 100 four stars, 20 to 25 five stars. There may be the same number, but we’re talking about on our board we rank things completely different than stars and things like that. We rate them where we can rate them across classes. Compare a guy three classes ago to a guy in this class. There were probably not as many guys. I feel great about the guys we got. We have a couple guys with great size. We have a couple of guys with great upside, kids that we think are going to be really good players that maybe haven’t played football for a long time. I love the core group we got, and we have a good group here, a good nucleus here on campus that we feel good about in terms of offensive line.”

On the wide receivers in this class:

”It starts with speed. You’ve got to have vertical speed down the field, and we feel like we’ve got some guys that can really stretch the field and do that. High character—you’ve got to be able to learn, buy into the offense, understand the splits, understand the route tree, understand the intricacies that go with playing the position. We’ve got a really good group there. I think each one of those guys that we bring on board brings a different attribute, whether it’s excellent speed, excellent size, quickness, toughness, all the things you look for. Wideout is another position where when you look across the board, we’re down. We were down all year, not just because of injury but because we had three or four leave, and now, we’re trying to replace those guys and catch up, and that’s tough to do. I like to have the numbers where we hit quota, and you’re finding out more and more now it’s easier to leave than it is to get them, so we’ve got to get some more guys there.”

On the emphasis placed on defensive backs in this class:

”We don’t have enough DBs now. I don’t know what you would be referring to—I don’t know how many are in there, I get confused between what’s in and what’s not in, but we don’t have enough. We’re still lower than we’ve ever been in terms of defensive backs. We have more leaving than we have coming. We were already below, so if you have more leaving than you have coming, you’re actually net gain, so we’re still working on that defensive back position. It’s a position that’s been tough for us this year because we’ve not been able to play dime packages, we’ve not been able to do some of the things we’ve wanted to do, put six DBs on the field. I am really proud of the DBs in this class that we have, but we’re not anywhere near where we used to be. I think there are seven that have left since the last year, then you throw in the seniors, those core Georgia guys that have been here forever and they’re all finishing. When you add those seven plus four or five, that’s a one-year window of 14 to 15 guys. In my mind, we’re still short numbers of scholarship players.”

On Malaki Starks:

I think Malaki has a bright future. He’s fast. Number one, he’s very intelligent. He’s high-character and you’re going to hear me repeat that over and over because that matters way more than what reputation they’re coming in with.”

On wide receiver Chandler “C.J.” Smith:

Character. He’s a high character young man that we actually recruited a long time and had an official visit set up with and then he ended up committing to Florida. After that, we kept in contact with him. I think he has a great set of parents—military-based, on time to everything. Academics are important to him. He’s really fast. A track guy. Has excellent hands. When you look at the skill positions, that’s the one trait you really don’t develop as much as a lot of other traits—just sheer speed.”

On the addition of Gunner Stockton:

”The recruitment of Gunner was really interesting because we’ve known, at least I’ve known, Gunner since he was a small kid. His dad hosted me at an official visit at Georgia Southern many years ago, so I’ve known his dad for a long time. My dad was the high school there was Gunner was a young, young kid. Tremendous athlete, tremendous character, I don’t know you could raise a finer young man in today’s day and age of all the attention-seeking people. He’s never done that. He’s stuck to his guns that he loves UGA. He wants to be here, and certainly, a major part of our class.”

Georgia will be able to address further needs, as a handful of prospects — including 4-star offensive lineman Earnest Greene — will announce on Jan. 8. There is also the transfer portal and the Feb. 2 signing date. Three committed Bulldogs will sign on that date as well.

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