This Sentell’s Intel rep on Georgia football recruiting has the latest with 4-star wide receiver CJ Wiley. He ranks as the nation’s No. 25 WR and the No. 210 overall prospect for 2025 on the 247Sports Composite. The On3 Industry Ranking has him as the No. 32 WR and at No. 244 overall.
Find a state championship football coach. See what he has to say about one of his guys. That still goes a long way in 2024.
No matter what all those rankings and ratings and tweets and Instagram stories say.
When Milton’s Ben Reaves Jr. was asked to name what stands out the most about rising senior receiver CJ Wiley, he had a lot of places where he could go with his reply.
Reaves could have pointed to the eyeball test. Wiley cuts a towering figure with all of his 6 feet, 4 inches and 196 pounds.
Or he could have played the production card. Wiley racked up 68 catches for 1,473 yards and 14 (!) TDs last fall for the Class 7A state champion Eagles. (Wiley led all 7A GHSA receivers in yards.)
He could have pointed to Wiley’s genes. His father, Chuck, played in the SEC for LSU and for several NFL teams, including the hometown Atlanta Falcons. He then went back to LSU to pick up his Master’s degree.
His mother also ran track at LSU.
Reaves called an audible with all of that. He pulled out a story that only the hard-working coaches on the Milton staff would know and love.
“This was the moment that I fully went all in on CJ Wiley,” Reaves said. “We have a JUGS machine. He texted me one weekend in early August. He said ‘Hey Coach can I have the code to the shed? I want to come in on Sunday and get some work on the JUGS’ so I gave him the code to the shed.”
It became a thing. The Milton staff would come in on Sundays. They’d see him out there working.
“What was great was while Dad was feeding the balls into the JUGS machine then Mom had got a pad or something and was giving him the business with that pad,” Reaves Jr. said. “Making him catch with contact. They are both out there working with him. Fully invested.”
The first of those Sundays came when Wiley had transferred. He was trying to prove himself after coming over from Alpharetta.
He was working on that. Every Sunday.
“There came a time when he scored three touchdowns in a game,” Reaves said. “He was blowing up. So much success. I want to say the weather had even changed a little bit. It was cold and I look out there that next Sunday and he’s still working on the JUGS machine. He never missed a Sunday.”
That wasn’t all of it.
“You just always talk about how energy and good habits can be contagious,” Reaves said. “By the end of the season, other receivers were following him out there every Sunday to get some work as well. The fact that his work was not tied to his level of success. It wasn’t he had a bad game and he needed to get on the JUGS. Whether it was he had zero touches or three touchdowns in a game, he was out there working every single Sunday regardless of what was going on. That’s when I went all in on him. When you get a dude like that who then works like that regardless of the highs and lows of the season or his career and he just shows up to work day in and day out that’s when I knew he was going to be as good as he wants to be.”
Add it all up.
That leaves another impression on the Milton coach’s mind when it comes to Wiley.
“Total package,” Reaves Jr. said. “Just the total package. I don’t even mean just on the football field. Total package as a human being. A student. A family member. Just a guy that from my point of view and everything I know about him and have come to learn about him just does things the right way. Just 5-star in every sense. Can’t say enough good things about him on the field but it speaks volumes that he’s the same way off the field as well.”
Check out what Wiley did on Martin Luther King Day earlier this year.
What led him to do that?
“I try to be a good person on and off the field,” Wiley said. “That matters to me. It feels like I am doing a good deed for the community that I live in.”
If that wasn’t enough for a prospect to check every box when it comes to what the Georgia football program hopes to sign, there are two other elements to share.
The first is he’s a protege of former UGA receiver great Terrence Edwards.
The second is that he’s all over the track this spring. Wiley just clocked a PR of 11.0 flat in the 100 meters. That time is only going to keep ticking down as it gets warmer in April and May.
He can play all over the field. Wiley can play at “X” and move around. He’s a good enough route runner and has the speed to run some of those shorter routes in the slot or the middle of the field.
“I like posts, go routes, comebacks and stops,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of routes that I like to run.”
But his junior tape shows off a lot of going deep and coming down with deep balls for explosive scores.
CJ Wiley: There’s a little more to unpack here on this WR prospect
Wiley recently saw his recruiting ratings spike from On3. His pure On3 rating now lists him as the nation’s No. 10 WR and the No. 86 overall prospect.
That mindset to exceed starts at home. The Wiley family does not play about when it is time to play. Wiley’s older sister has signed to play college volleyball at Georgia Tech.
“For one, he’s got two amazing parents that have done a great job of raising him and his sister,” Reaves Jr. said. “Both of them were collegiate athletes so they know what it takes to play at that level but also how to stay humble. How to be a good student. How to be a good community member as well. They definitely pushed him in that direction but he has a servant leader mindset. You can’t ask him to do anything for you if you need something and he’s going to say no to you. He’s going to find a way to help you out if he can and make it happen. Whether he wants to or not, that’s just how he was raised and how he is wired.”
His mother, Jay, ran track at LSU.
“She’s arguably the fastest one in the house,” Reaves Jr. said. “Depending on who you ask. ... I say that as a joke because I bet his Dad would definitely disagree.”
She pours that SEC knowledge into her son.
“I’ve seen her many a days on the weekends with him on the track just working on running form and burst and things of that nature,” Reaves Jr. said.
Wiley will be a big catch for one lucky receivers coach. He released his picks for his top 10 schools over the weekend on his social media. Those teams in the running for Wiley are:
- Alabama
- Auburn
- Colorado
- Georgia
- LSU
- Michigan
- FSU
- Southern California
- Texas A&M
Wiley has a rare skill set. It isn’t easy to find a big-body guy who can catch that can get on top of and run past a defensive back.
He said the “Dawgs have been recruiting him “really hard” during this cycle.
“I don’t think Georgia has truly had that type of guy since George Pickens,” Reaves Jr. said. “If you just look at just body type and size. I could be wrong. I hope I’m not disrespecting them because Georgia has had some great receivers. Not just a big-body receiver. But a receiver that can also run by you and that also has an unbelievable catch radius.”
Newly rehired Georgia receivers coach James Coley made contact with Wiley the day he was back with the ‘Dawgs.
What did he think about that hire?
“Coach Coley is a good coach,” Wiley said.
He’d been recruiting Wiley since he was at Texas A&M.
“He told me I’m going to continue to recruit you and still build this connection,” Wiley said.
CJ Wiley: What does he like about Georgia football?
Wiley was a teammate with Georgia TE commit Ethan Barbour growing up. Barbour, who is still at Alpharetta, gave him that “C4″ nickname for his first initial, his jersey number and a knack for explosive plays.
Barbour said that he was one of the two playmakers he hoped to see the ‘Dawgs sign the most. That was Wiley and Westlake receiver Travis Smith Jr. in the 2025 class.
“It would be overpowering if I played with Travis on the same team in college,” Wiley said. “You can’t really stop two big dudes on the field at the same time like that.”
He also added that an offense would be “unstoppable” if they could get add that type of duo with Barbour over the middle at tight end.
The Bulldogs offered Wiley after a game visit during his sophomore year. Former coach Bryan McClendon offered him because of the way he got off the ball and how he ran his routes with precision.
Edwards has been training him since he was in middle school.
“He’s really developed me well,” Wiley said of Edwards. “He taught me how to get in and out of my routes and gave me a lot of keys to put into my routes and stuff.”
Wiley went up to Athens for “Junior Day” in January.
“It was pretty cool,” Wiley said. “I got to talk with Coach [Kirby] Smart. He came by our school the day before and said ‘We want you’ and ‘You fill in our all boxes’ and stuff. That felt pretty good.”
It was a weekend for nothing but “takes” in the facility that weekend.
“It meant something to be there with all those top guys,” Wiley said. “It just felt like that once you put in all that really hard work, then you are going to get the results.”
Wiley said Georgia was “up there” in terms of his top schools.
He was thinking he’d like to make his decision over the summer before his senior year. With his 3.4 GPA, he’s got his eye on a college major that involves working with computers.
“I want a school that can give me a good major,” he said. “A coach that can develop me on and off the field and a good connection with the coaching staff and the players and a winning team.”
He studied a few college receivers last fall. That group included Rome Odunze of Washington, USC’s Brenden Rice and Georgia’s Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint.
Those picks were selected technicians who bring some of the same elements to their game that he does.
“I just see how they get off the ball and how they run routes,” Wiley said. “I watch how they look at defenses.”
Check out Wiley’s “DawgNation Conversation” below.
SENTELL'S INTEL
(check on the recent reads on Georgia football recruiting)