This Sentell’s Intel rep on Georgia football recruiting has the latest with 3-star 2024 OT signee Jahzare Jackson. “Big Jah” ranks as the nation’s No. 44 OT and the No. 560 overall prospect for 2024 on the 247Sports Composite. The On3 Industry Ranking has him as the No. 56 OT for the last cycle.
Ok, DawgNation.
Time for full disclosure. It appears that previous reporting on Georgia football signeee Jahzare Jackson didn’t exactly get his size right.
He’s not 6 feet, 10 inches tall.
That had to be some kind of sensational reporting bulljunk, right?
Right.
He’s actually 6 feet, 11 inches tall. That’s the word according to longtime area OL trainer Kevin McAlmont.
McAlmont got to train Jackson extensively over the last month when the viral NBA Draft hopeful decided to make the move to college football.
“Man, this man is probably pushing seven feet tall,” McAlmont said. “He’s really 6-foot-11. I know sometimes we kind of go high on the height sometimes but he’s really truly 6 feet, 11 inches and he’s 330 pounds, man.”
That’s the same vibe DawgNation got from 2025 IOL target Cortez Smith. Smith is one of the nation’s top OLs and lists Georgia among his finalists for his July 20 decision.
What was it like the first time he saw Jackson while training with McAlmont?
“He’s huge,” Smith said.
Smith saw him up close over the last month. The 6-foot-3-plus and 315-pounder is the nation’s No. 6 IOL for the 2025 cycle.
“Jah definitely is fun to work with he’s got a very high competitive ceiling,” Smith said. “He’s a monster in the making.”
There was a picture that Jackson took on his official visit with Georgia luminaries such as Tate Ratledge and 2024 NFL first-round pick Amarius Mims. There was also 6-foot-8 freshman OT Nyier Daniels there.
“Jah’s taller than all those guys.” McAlmont said. “He’s taller than all those guys. Not even close.”
The height is great, but an offensive lineman’s bread-and-butter is his hands, his length and his feet.
“Man, the length itself is undescribable,” McAlmont said. “It is some long arms, man. Pass pro he is going to affect how guy’s rush him. You are either going to go inside right now or you are going to go all the way around the hoop. Once he gets that timing and the hands down and playing longer than what he is supposed to play it is going to be very exciting to see.”
“His feet, man. As you see on all the video, his pass pro is probably way above what is supposed to be at this early stage in his development of his game, man. He played football in eighth grade but his feet are like very very good for an offensive lineman.”
“Run blocking feet can be a little better. But like I said, he hasn’t played football since the seventh or eighth grade. We are trying to really cram what he can learn and had to learn in about a month.”
Here’s a few questions we asked McAlmont directly about “Big Jah” and his game.
DawgNation: Is he tough? It takes a different mentality to play football than basketball. Does he have the mentality of a grinder and the mindset to play at less than 100 percent? Because, well, that’s football.
McAlmont: “He’s not a regular freshman. He just turned 20. So I feel like he’s worked out in Florida and went to IMG Academy over his career. I feel like his work ethic and being in the heat is not a big factor here. I feel like his biggest transition is just being physical. He’s already a physical basketball player, but I think the transition of him transitioning over to football is going to be fine.”
DawgNation: With that size, how would he hold up to a bull rush right now?
McAlmont: “Yeah, we’re working on bull rush, man. The thing about him is he can sit his hips down. This is not an average 6-foot-11 football player. Guys this tall do not get in a three-point stance. They do a lot of two-point stance because it is harder for him to bend but this kid can actually get in a three-point stance with ease anytime and really get deep in his hips if he needs to. That’s the thing with him and I feel like the hardest thing for him is really getting into the work ethic of football practice. when the body is sore. But like I said, he played OTE [Overtime Elite AAU basketball] so the grind of basketball is different than football but I feel like the work ethic is not going to be a problem for him as he makes that transition.”
DawgNation: Have you ever seen an offensive lineman in better shape?
McAlmont: “Maaaaaaan, look. When coach Stacy [Searels] saw him at camp two weeks ago, it was hot that day. I was there. He did a whole camp in the heat. He didn’t know how the camp process worked. The stations. The one-on-ones with the coaches and the one-on-ones against the defense. Then he did an extra workout after that and was looking for some more work afterward. He wasn’t even tired. I feel like he showed that day he went to camp at Georgia that he’s a different type of person coming in. His work ethic, yes. But he’s older. He’s more professional. He’s more mature. That’s like a good thing for him.”
DawgNation: What kind of feedback did you get from coach Searels about Jackson?
McAlmont: “Man, coach Stacy was excited. That’s just something we haven’t seen before. Yeah, we’ve had Amarius Mims. He’s a 340-pound body. But we haven’t seen a guy this tall two or three inches taller and no bad weight. I’m not saying he’s better than Amarius Mims but right now he’s an Amarius Mims 2.0 or 5.0, man, and that’s scary.”
DawgNation: He was bound to be good at pass pro already. But how are you going to teach the run game to a guy with this size?
McAlmont: “Really for him man with the run game Georgia doesn’t really run an outside zone scheme. So really for him it is just like getting that second step in the ground. Getting that power step in the ground and not taking a long big step and learning how to use the ground and being anchored to push out and push guys. You think about it he’s 6-foot-11 and he’s got to bend but when he gets hands on you, his separation from you to him is going to be ginormous. That’s all because of his length.”
DawgNation: Is this like being blocked out of your rush lane by a bookcase? Maybe one on roller skates? How would you describe it?
McAlmont: “Man, it is like. Man, I don’t know. It is hard to describe it, man. He’s long. Think about run blocking and he’s got a guy in front of him. He can get on you so fast. For me playing football at a high level as a freshman or in college or in high school, the hardest guys I had to block were guys that were 6-foot-6 and 6-foot-7 with 37 or 38-inch long arms. They could get on you right now on the defensive line. I can’t imagine on the offensive line him just sticking his hand out. Yeah, he’s going to get knocked down but him being able to replace it with speed and length and feet and not leaning it is going to be a good thing to see, man.”
That was some good stuff. But the GOOD stuff is this quote right here.
“I’ve seen a lot of lineman,” McAlmont said. “I’ve seen a lot of big and tall lineman in the NFL. Like [NFL Hall of Famer] Jonathan Ogden. 6-foot-8 and 6-foot-9. I think the Steelers had a guy for them that was like 6-foot-10 or 6-foot-11, he played tackle for them for like six or seven years. I forgot his last name, but I feel like Jahzare is a generational athlete. He’s a generational athlete for his size. That’s what I tell him. I tell him ‘You are going to make $200 million dollars playing football for your size and your length’ and ‘You’re going to get developed to go up’ because he’s not going to get worse. He’s got the type of mindset that he’s going to get it right and he’s not going to mess it up and he’s like ‘Coach, let me get another rep’ and ‘Let me get that right’ so that’s the type of guy he is.”
“He’s a generational player, man. I know football. I’m not shooting wind. I know linemen. With him going to Georgia, think about what the weight room is going to do to him. The weight room aspect. Going to put more girth on him. More girth than what he already is. His speed. He’d probably run a 5-flat in the 40 right now his stride is so long.”
“Man, this is a generational athlete, man. I’m telling you right now. Generational athlete.”
McAlmont said he had Jackson for a month. Training him. He said he picked up a lot, whole lot, in just that one month of time.
He feels that he will start with the basics of offensive tackle first. But he says the advanced stuff like tackle-eligible fades in the end zone and setting up on the defensive line to block kicks are all within the realm of possibility for this remarkable size athlete.
“Like coach Stacy says, it is going to be very fun to see this process play out,” McAlmont said. “And even if this doesn’t do everything this year, he still has three years. I feel like him being professional and playing OTE basketball, he’s going to want to be great. He’s going to be motivated to be great. That’s the way his Mom raised him. That’s the way his uncle raised him. His uncle is the one that really pushed the workouts and said to dog him out. Those are the things about him that is going to make him want to get better and to continually get better.”
But we also had a good way to frame up the scouting discussion on Jackson. That continues below.
Jahzare Jackson: The one reason he will be great in Athens
What’s the main reason why he will make it at Georgia?
“His length and his size,” McAlmont said. “His power and explosion.”
If he’s starting at the end of the 2024 season at Georgia, will that be a surprise to McAlmont?
“No,” he said. “That’s the goal. I’m not going to lie. I’m not going to say starting but that’s the goal. If he can figure out this run block stuff - and I haven’t went live with him yet in run blocking - but if he can understand the scheme and where to get his head placed and the hand placement I promise you man he is going to be with the 1s and 2s. He’s going to be around there with them. He’s going to be the guy that whoever slides or slacks or falls off, he’s going to jump right in.”
There’s that matter of a wingspan that was measured at 7-feet-plus inches to contend with there.
What’s the plan for Jackson at Georgia? Jackson shared what he heard from the Georgia staff and coach Kirby Smart in a social media clip after his commitment announcement.
“He’s got these laminted papers, you know,” Jackson told his social media team. “These laminated papers have got the whole list of who got drafted in the past year. The players that got drafted from Georgia are in red and the rest are in black.”
“He was kinda just showing me like ‘Hey son we’ve got five dudes that went in the league. First round. He was kind of just explaining to me like you stay here for two years. You’re going to develop your first year and then you’re going to start your second year.’ He was like ‘I can’t stop you from going to the league you’re going to get a good grade and have the potential to go to the league’ and then also like he was letting me know he was going to get on me. He was going to be on me. He was going to coach me hard and he wasn’t going to treat me no differently from any of his players.”
Jahzare Jackson: The one reason he might struggle in Athens
McAlmont called Jackson a “generational player” over and over.
What’s the antithesis of that rosy outlook? What if he isn’t that? What if the transition from AAU basketball to SEC football is too big a gulf for even a 6-foot-11 athlete to manage?
“It is going to be hard for him not to make it,” he said. “Because his mindset is he’s got a ‘Dawg’ mentality. The league he played in basketball was the top basketball players in the world. Like from high school. So I know he’s been around top talent.”
“The reason why he might not make it? Man, maybe an injury. I’m not going to put that on anybody. But maybe an injury holds him back for a couple of weeks at at time. At a place like Georgia, if you don’t show that promise at the beginning they are going to let you go and let you play catch up and when the season goes along is when you will get your reps. The earlier that you show that you can play with the big dogs at Georgia, the faster you will play.”
McAlmont said unequivocally that Jackson is ready to be a pass protector in the SEC right now because he will force guys to rush different ways.
The run game will be the litmus, he said.
He’ll need to see how he bends and how he drops his hips against the other SEC defensive lineman that are on scholarship at Georgia. He wants to see how he gets to the second level on linebackers. That’s what he hasn’t seen out of him yet.
He viewed the ability to train Jackson as a way to check his own oil and worth as a trainer in this industry.
“When his Momma inboxed me and said she had a son that needed to get some work in, I was like ‘Man, this kid is a dinasour’ but the thing about it that made it so great is how he got into a three-point stance really shocked me more than anything.”
“I coach linemen. So I know big guys can’t bend. Big guys don’t have good feet. Big guys don’t like to drop their hips but he doesn’t have any problems with any of that at all.”
“He can always get more loose and more flexible but for him to be 6-foot-11 and bending like he is right now. He’s 6-foot-11 playing like he is 6-foot-2.”
SENTELL’S INTEL
(check on the recent reads on Georgia football recruiting)
