Want to attack every day with the latest UGA football recruiting info? That’s what the Intel brings. This entry will serve up the first DawgNation recruiting dive on elite 2023 defensive end prospect Derrick Leblanc. 

Derrick LeBlanc had no stars. No rankings.

That said, he had still picked up offers from Alabama, LSU, Michigan, Penn State and Texas as of late May.

That’s what the combination of being six feet and five-plus inches tall AND 245 pounds with that freshman game tape below did for him.

Derrick LeBlanc is a class of 2023 prospect who said he already has at least 38 college offers at this time. (Derrick Leblanc/Courtesy photo)/Dawgnation)

It is still proof that the game will find a young man before the internet recruiting fame.

LeBlanc is 15. He will turn 16 in September and he already has at least 38 college offers.

That’s after not starting as a freshman in 2019. He had to play behind seniors and was a second-string on both sides of the line.

How good does a 2023 prospect have to look in order to grab DawgNation’s attention?

Do they have to be a highly likely future 5-star like Newton High’s Justin Benton?

There is a clear point here that most won’t have the tunnel vision to deal with a big 2023 recruiting update amid a pandemic.

Will it just be the 2021 class that catches everyone’s attention?

Maybe an elite 2022 commitment like Marquis Groves-Killebrew perhaps?

Football just started up basically last week across Georgia and some other states in the South.

This might be one of those rare 2023 exceptions like 2023 RB offer Richard Young from last month, too.

LeBlanc can play like those guys, too. Just look at this game film from the 6-foot-5 sophomore-to-be from Osceola High in Florida.

And then consider what his tweet conveyed about what his most recent offer from Georgia meant to him.

That’s good. But what he said about that offer was even more intriguing.

Derrick LeBlanc on that “dream” Georgia offer

Check out a sampling of these quotes.

  • “I always have used to tell my coaches from high school that Georgia is a good place to be,” LeBlanc said. “This would be a good place where I would want to be at.”
  • “Most of the time when I am home alone just working out I will roll the Georgia tape from every game they played this season from Notre Dame, South Carolin and all those games they played. I watched how coach [Tray] Scott coached that defensive line. It is just real. It just makes me real happy that my dream school just offered.”
  • “I am from Miami but like people think there is now way you are a Georgia fan. You grew up like a Hurricanes fan. So like for me I’ve liked Georgia since I was young. That’s when I used to see them ‘whup’ people running the football and the defense they played was good, too.”
  • “Coach [Dan] Lanning is a really cool guy. I’ve already talking to coach Lanning. Coach Scott. I’ve talked to a lot of them. They are all really cool people.”
  • They show a lot of love,” he said. “I know that I am young and stuff and have got to go through all of this but you don’t understand if you get to talk to their coaching staff like I did then you would know why people pick Georgia. You can ask my coaches about it. They way they play, how they get up and support their team with their stadium and stuff I just really like it.”
  • The Georgia staff is just way different. They tell me things straight-up and they don’t sugarcoat anything. I like that. I just like people keeping it real with me like that. They do things different and it just clicked right away like when I wanted to make this my dream school. I was like ‘this is the place’ with all of that.” 

This is going to sound a little too much like a recruit who’s on his way to creating his own commitment edit and sending it to the school of his choice to see if he can share it with the world.

Is that overdoing it? Maybe. But not by the length of Leblanc’s 6-foot-5 inch frame. He said he was only about a quarter of an inch shy of the 6-foot-6 mark, too.

“When I started high school I was 225 and now I am already 245,” LeBlanc said late last month.

LeBlanc said he has still yet to see Georgia, but plans to when the campus reopens for unofficial visitors. He said the first school that he plans to visit once that happens will be Georgia.

Interested now? Then please read on.

Derrick LeBlanc was really excited to pick up an offer from the University of Georgia recently. He called it his dream school. (Courtesy photo)/Dawgnation)

Why Derrick LeBlanc also really likes about UGA

LeBlanc has gained offers from Notre Dame and Oregon since his late May offer from the Bulldogs.

He’s already started to figure out what he is looking for.

“I’ve already started to cut down schools off my list that don’t have the stuff I like,” he said. “You have got to have my major. I don’t do all that where if they don’t have my major or are good in my major I make them a maybe and I’ll just cut them them some slack. But no, if you don’t have what I need I automatically cut them out. I’m starting to get all these schools in the country and get to see what I want.”

“The things I want are a good strength coach. Coach [Scott] Sinclair is really good at Georgia. I do my research on a lot of schools. Georgia has my major I want which is sports medicine. They have a good environment at Georgia. The graduation rate is high. They are getting their players drafted. I like the scheme and all that. I like how the drop their defensive ends in coverage sometimes. I just like Georgia a lot in general with everything.”

He does sound like a 2021 prospect. Not a 2023 recruit.

“When a school offers me, I start immediately doing my research,” LeBlanc said. “I have my checklist in my room and if they don’t have the stuff I like then I will cross them out. I just already know the schools I want to visit so far.”

When Georgia offered, he didn’t need that go-to checklist. He said he had already done his due diligence on the Bulldogs prior to the offer. It was, as he said, a dream school for him growing up.

Which schools have what he likes? He mentioned it was Georgia, LSU, Ohio State, Auburn, Tennessee and Florida.

LeBlanc is fortunate enough to play a position for a high school program that has sent former defensive linemen off to Virginia, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest. He said that college coaches come to watch the drills that the Osceola staff puts its players through and take those back to the college level.

He’s already working to enroll early.

“The mission is to be in the league,” he said. “That means hard work. It means you have got to be coached hard. You have got to be coachable. You have to do big things with that. Just listen and good things will come.”

The fact that coach Kirby Smart is a defensive guy is not lost on LeBlanc.

“The thing about Georgia is it like family,” he said. “They make you feel like you are at home which is really good for me.”

The Bulldogs also offered his teammate on the Osceola defensive line at the same time.

“We both got offered by them,” LeBlanc said. “John Walker is my teammate. He and I basically have the same amount of offers and he is a 6-foot-4 defensive tackle. He’s already 285.”

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