This Sentell’s Intel rep on Georgia football recruiting has the latest with 5-star DT Elijah Griffin. He ranks as the nation’s No. 1 DT and the No. 4 overall prospect for 2025 on the 247Sports Composite. The On3 Industry Ranking has him as the No. 1 DT and at No. 6 overall.
Savannah Christian Preparatory head coach Baker Woodward has been at the school for seven years. He arrived right at the same time sixth-grader Elijah Griffin did.
That’s a long time frame given that the 5-star DL will now enroll early at UGA in January.
Griffin picked up his first offer from Georgia football in September of his eighth-grade year. Given those extended timelines, it is safe to assume there would be some crazy stories.
Some #$%* stories at that.
There was a good one a couple of years ago when an SEC recruiter took a look a Griffin and made a rather interesting statement.
It was about how Griffin was already crushing the eyeball test like Shohei wallops belt-high fastballs.
“I can’t remember the school,” Wooward said. “He would be like ‘Coach he would be the best-looking d-lineman that we have on our team now. Now.”
“Are you serious?” Woodward replied.
“Seriously,” that coach told him.
“Okay,” Woodward said.
That’s not just that one coach.
“Several people have said that,” Woodward said. “It has been said that he would be one of the best looking DLs on their team now. They say ‘right now our defensive line guys don’t look like that’ in terms of body and frame.”
Then there would be the times that the coaches could stop by and see Griffin on visits. They’d see him in the walls or the weight rooms or the hallways.
We feel obligated to remind that Savannah Christian is indeed a parochial school. Woodward said the mission of the faculty is “to prepare kids for real life, to honor God and to develop the Glory of God” every school day.
That somehow left the mind of some college coaches when they saw him. Those first reactions went something like:
“Bleep bleep.”
“I ain’t never seen a kid that big at that age.”
“#$%*”
“Insert another Grandma will wash your mouth out with the whole bar of soap line here”
Woodward then had to chime in.
“Hey, you can’t talk like that in here,” he’d say.
It goes to show how special of a prospect Griffin in. These are the men who scour the nation to find players of his caliber every day of their lives.
But then they see him. Then they lose their minds.
“We are a Christian school,” Woodward said. “We don’t use any language, but I’ve heard some language.”
Stuff like that is why Griffin is a 5-star.
“It is just how large and wide this kid is,” Woodward said. “Then you can’t run at him. If you run away from him, he runs you down. If you get the ball out of your hands and you are the wide receiver waiting on perimeter blocks, he runs down the line of scrimmage and makes the tackle on you. That’s what sets him apart for someone who is 6-foot-5, just under 300 pounds and can run under a 5-flat in the 40.”
“That’s just scary.”
The young man with an Old Testament name feels like an Old Testament recruit. It has felt like it has gone back that long in recruiting years since he was first offered by UGA.
That eighth-grade offer came when he was on the middle school team. He went straight from middle school football to varsity. There were no freshman or junior varsity team reps there.
It made sense. Griffin was already over six feet tall when he was in the sixth grade. He was 6 feet, 2 inches in the eighth grade and already moving really fast.
“Running like a 4.9,” Woodward said. “Playing well over 200 pounds. It was like this kid is still growing.”
UGA was his first offer. Penn State came in with his second scholarship. That was a year later when he was just 14 years old and already a 280-pound prospect.
“Then off his ninth grade film came like almost all the offers that he got,” Woodward said. “Everybody ended up offering him. If they didn’t offer, it is because they didn’t know about him. Or it is because they knew they weren’t going to get him.”
There’s so much to share here about Griffin. But Woodward made one statement that he wants everyone to be sure of with the media blitz of the 5-star’s recruitment today.
“The main thing I’d like everybody to take away is he made a decision to come to Savannah Christian,” Woodward said. “He made a decision to come to this football program and to this school and he never looked back. He never second-guessed himself. He knew he took the time to make the proper decision and he never looked back.”
That was his stance while numerous offers from bigger high school programs in larger media markets tried to get him to come play for their team.
“Once he got here, he wasn’t just satisfied with going to our workouts and going to our practices and just doing our home work for our school,” Woodward said. “He made the additional effort to go get a trainer. To take advantage of everything our school offered and then used all the outside forces to give him the chance to be the best version of himself. He wasn’t satisfied. That goes against human nature, right? Once we get stuff as humans, once we get stuff we want to take time off. We want to take off and rest. Well, he hasn’t. He’s continued to grind and our guys on our team see that. One of the best honors on our team is to be voted team captain and he’s been voted team captain two years in a row.”
“He’s not satisfied with mediocrity. There’s one of the best things you can say about him.”
That all started at home for Team Griffin.
Elijah Griffin: The family behind the 5-star
Woodward also said a lot with a simple statement about Griffin.
“He’s probably one of the most mature kids I’ve ever met. Again, that’s just a testament to his family and the people that raised him.”
That’s not just because his mother is now a police officer in their community. It is because of everything she did in her life until today. His mother got pregnant with Elijah while she was still in high school.
“She worked too hard for me not to be great,” Griffin told AJC Sports this summer. “She sacrificed a lot for me just to be in the position I’m in. I mean that’s my Mom. I love her to death.”
Moms and football. Those ties to their sons always run deep and still do. But there’s something extra where among Team Griffin.
When the 5-star says his mother “sacrificed” for him, he means it.
“Had me at 17,” Griffin said. “The age I am right now. So I mean, imagine having a kid at 17? That takes a lot and for her to do it by herself means a lot and she worked her tail off. She still is [working her tail off.] So you know I love her to death. That’s my why.”
Woodward noticed that special relationship with his mother early on.
“She has cared for him greatly,” Woodward said. “She has put things aside. When you are that young you want to launch your career. You want to start your career. But you have a mouth to feed. You have someone to love that’s your responsibility. She’s done a great job with that. She’s very successful in her career at the same time she’s raised a great young man.”
“But also at the same time, she’s given him the tools she needs to be someone independent if she can’t be there. She’s done a really good job.”
Woodward has noticed little examples of that every day for the last six years.
“I remember picking him up for 5:30 because we had a 6 a.m. practice,” Woodward said. “And the kid has already got a Tupperware with like two scrambled eggs. Some bacon. He got up, with his mom was still at work, he got up and cooked his self his own breakfast. How many 14, 15-year-old kids can do that when their Mom is not home?”
“So his mother has done a good job raising him but she’s also allowed him the independence to grow into a man as well. She’s done a heck of a job with him.”
There was also a godmother that also played a significant role in his life and his grandmother Edna.
We can’t forget his grandmother Edna.
“She is of the classiest women I’ve ever met,” Woodward said. “She’s done a great job. Both of them have done a great job with him.”
Elijah Griffin: How his stat line could be a lot better
Griffin stared the first snap of his freshman year. It has allowed him to pile up 282 tackles, 86 TFLs and 41.5 sacks in his varsity career.
The funny thing is those stats could be a lot better.
“Without a doubt, he would have just huge stat games if we played people that were playing the way they would in the college or the NFL,” Woodward said. “In the NFL you are dropping back all the time. Throwing the ball. Outside zone. Things like that. In college, you are dropping back. He would probably be leading the country in sacks if he played teams that did that.”
“People know we have the best D-line in the state. So they are not dropping back. They are throwing the ball as quickly as they can. Or they are trying to read us or trap us. That’s why you don’t see him have those crazy stats. He’ll still have five tackles in a game with four tackles for a loss from a defensive tackle’s standpoint.
Griffin has either played a three technique or lined up at nose for the majority of his high school career.
“You don’t see a defensive linemen in the NFL typically having five tackles and three tackles for a loss,” Woodward said. “You can see how good he is when we are playing these teams that try to throw it more. All he’s getting right now is double teams. He’s getting read, he’s getting trapped and he’s still coming away with really good statistics. Then the other thing is if we are winning, which we have been by a lot for the last couple of games, he’s not even playing four quarters.”
“You don’t see him with a big stat line until we get into these competitive four quarter games.”
SENTELL’S INTEL
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