Why 5-star Georgia football commit Ellis Robinson IV will be so tough to flip

Sentell’s Intel is about the latest Georgia football recruiting info. This rep has the latest with 5-star commitment Ellis Robinson IV. He ranks as the nation’s No. 1 CB and the No. 3 overall prospect for 2024 on both the 247Sports Composite scale and The On3 Industry Ranking.

Ellis Robinson IV was back in Athens last month. He also plans to be back at UGA for the Missouri game on Nov. 4.

When Mr. Robinson comes to town, it is a big deal. It doesn’t matter if he’s been committed for eight months. Robinson made his first trip to Athens this season for the Kentucky game last month.

That’s not the easiest thing for him to do. While his parents reside in Connecticut, he plays for national boarding school powerhouse IMG Academy. His Ascenders play a national schedule and a lot of times that means traveling on late Friday nights or Saturdays after games.

Robinson is now the highest-rated commitment for the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class. Robinson’s overall ranking for both the 247Sports and On3 blended algorithms is the highest in the 2024 Georgia football class.

That’s a big reason why DawgNation deemed him to be the most important recruit in the stands the last time DawgNation filled up Sanford for a home game.

“I love it,” he told DawgNation that weekend. “The atmosphere was crazy. Definitely a stadium I can see myself playing in for the next three years. The light show is always great. Everyone in the stadium gets loud.”

The nation’s top CB prospect also took a visit to check out the Miami-Clemson game last Saturday. Robinson did so with members of his IMG Academy team. He had planned that trip for a while and let the UGA staff know well in advance he was planning to be at that game.

It will be supremely hard to flip Robinson, but nothing is ever certain in today’s NIL world.

While Robinson remains locked in with the ‘Dawgs, we realize that the cornerback coach at every D-1 school in the country would consider giving up at least a couple of fingers if they could sign Robinson. (We’re joking. Kinda.)

It is also no joke that a lot of collectives would gleefully crack open the vault, too.

We will detail a moment in this post that sounds like his family’s zeal to see him at UGA is quite substantial. The current plan for him to join the ‘Dawgs in December for bowl practices sounds as likely as the fact that cocktails will be raised in Jacksonville this weekend.

It remains this reporter’s opinion that Robinson stands to be the most talented cornerback prospect the ‘Dawgs have signed during the Kirby Smart era. Especially in terms of overall skill level coming in.

That’s saying a lot given the respect that must be paid to past ‘Dawgs like Eric Stokes Jr., Tyson Campbell and Kelee Ringo. Not to mention current corners Daylen Everette, AJ Harris, Julian Humphrey and Kamari Lassiter.

Robinson could start at some point in his freshman year. That’s what he continues to show in his senior year. The 1-on-1 battles he had with the nation’s top WR prospect for this class, Jeremiah Smith, do well to support that opinion.

Miami is the only other school besides UGA that the Robinson family is in contact with these days.

The coaches at Alabama and Miami pressed the hardest to budge Robinson, but he very much remains quite content with all things Athens.

Especially after his latest visit.

He traveled to Athens with both of his parents. The UGA recruiting staff gave the Robinsons a front-row seat in the west end zone recruiting bleachers.

“It feels great being back home in Athens,” Robinson told DawgNation after the visit. “They never fail to make me feel back at home here. I’ll be back up for the Missouri game, too.”

Robinson stands to be an early graduate of IMG Academy in December. He will enroll early in January of 2024.

We want to share a specific moment centered around this picture flush to the left.

5-star CB Ellis Robinson IV was back in Athens earlier this month for the hyped matchup with Kentucky. The expression he had on his face heading into the fourth quarter says a great deal about his happiness level with his commitment to UGA. (Jeff Sentell/ DawgNation) (Jeff Sentell/Dawgnation)

What did his parents say when they saw that picture?

“I would just say that he is home,” his father Ellis Robinson III said. “He knows that’s home and I think he’s just so excited for the college experience and he’s just looking forward to getting on the field and being a ‘Dawg.”

“He just looks so happy and at peace,” his mother Nicole Robinson said. “Just looking at him he’s just ready. I can see him. The wheels are turning like ‘I can’t wait to experience this and be a part of it’ he just looks like he’s ready. He’s really ready.”

“He looks so happy. Just so happy. You know when they were doing the lights at the fourth quarter he just looked at me and he’s like ‘Ma, this is LIT’ and he’s like ‘I love this’ there.”

It left a lasting impression on their family.

“Just looking at his face and talking to him in that moment with the lights going he was just like in awe and like “I am ready’ to be there,” his mother said.

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5-star CB Ellis Robinson IV is the highest-rated commitment in Georgia's 2024 class according to the 247Sports Composite scale. He was back in Athens for the Kentucky game on October 7, 2023. (Jeff Sentell/ DawgNation) (Jeff Sentell/Dawgnation)

Why it will be so hard to flip Ellis Robinson IV from Georgia football

DawgNation is working on an extensive profile of Robinson for a later date. It affords the great opportunity to share many vibrant details about his personal story and athletic journey.

We’ll park most of that for a later publication, but we’ll pull one nugget out to show just how well UGA has recruited Robinson.

He committed to UGA on the traditional National Signing Day for the 2023 class. That was the first Wednesday in February. It is not well-known that he was a silent commitment to Fran Brown and Kirby Smart before that.

Like six or seven months prior to that.

When his mother Nicole was asked what she likes so much about the ‘Dawgs, her reply stands among the top one percent of the things we’ve written about from what parents had to say about the program.

“It is very important that people see him not as a football player but as a person,” she started off with her answer. “Ellis is very loving. He is especially that way with me.”

His father Ellis saw an opportunity there to chime in.

“He’s a Mama’s Boy,” his father said. “You can just say that.”

“He is a Mama’s Boy,” Nicole Robinson said. “He may not see it, but when he’s home he is right next to me on the couch. He’s going to the store and grocery shopping with me. He is just so connected. So for me, it is really important to me that the people that are going to nurture him and push him to the next level there, that he be connected to them not just as a football player, but just as a young man.”

“For me about Georgia, I love the fact they are very big with building a relationship and connecting with him on a spiritual level. That means giving him encouragement when he is struggling.”

His mother pointed to the knee injury Robinson suffered during his junior year. Robinson played through a torn meniscus for several weeks during the heart of his recruitment last fall.

“Georgia did not forget about him,” she said. “They called. They wanted to pray with him and encourage him. I remember being in the car. Me and my husband and Ellis. On the way to the procedure. They called and they prayed and when we hung up that phone I said to my husband ‘You know what? That did it for me. They did not forget about him. What he was going through was important and they supported him’ and I just loved that.”

When Fran Brown came to see Robinson and current freshman corner AJ Harris play on September 23, 2022, the 5-star junior was playing with two tears in his meniscus.

He entered his junior season with those tears and decided to play. Both his parents asked him what he wanted to do, but Ellis wanted to play rather than miss a big chunk of his junior year with that surgery.

Ellis told his father he wanted to play with it for as long as he could.

Robinson ended up tearing his meniscus completely the week after that Cenral-Phenix City-IMG Academy game. When that happened, he missed all but the last game of his junior year.

Georgia Director of Recruiting Administration Christina Harris led the prayer with the Robinsons on that phone call. Fran Brown was also on that call.

Ellis then received calls from everybody on the Georgia staff from Kirby Smart on down.

It might come as a shock to some, but the Robinsons didn’t get the same treatment from a lot of schools that had been recruiting him hard. His father had to remind some programs he was out with knee surgery and then all of a sudden, they stopped calling.

It made an impact.

“I told somebody that a lot of schools dropped the ball on that,” his father Ellis Robinson III said. “That was huge for him and it was huge for us as parents.”

The Robinsons told DawgNation that their family has received name, image and likeness (NIL) offers in the millions up to this point in his recruiting.

But that’s not what the family has prioritized in their son’s recruiting process. What Nicole felt during the prayer during that phone call on the way to her son’s surgery is what has always mattered the most.

“That just sealed it for me,” his mother said. “That’s how they are as genuine people. Yes, they can develop him and all of that in the football sense. But at the end of the day just as a person they’ve shown they are really invested in him and that is huge for me. Huge.”

That “absolutely” won Nicole Robinson over to her son becoming a ‘Dawg.

“They did a phenomenal job,” she said. “They keep doing a phenomenal job.”

5-star CB Ellis Robinson IV is the highest-rated commitment in Georgia's 2024 class according to the 247Sports Composite scale. He was back in Athens for the Kentucky game on October 7, 2023. (Jeff Sentell/ DawgNation) (Jeff Sentell/Dawgnation)

What does Ellis Robinson III like the most about Georgia football?

Robinson’s father doubled down on a lot of the values his wife Nicole expressed so well with her answer to that same question.

“There are men in place at Georgia that I really trust,” Ellis Robinson III said. “That’s another thing in the recruitment process. You can’t trust everybody. What they say and things of that nature. But we trust Fran [Brown] 100 percent. We have a great relationship and we trust [Will] Muschamp.”

“Kirby is the type of coach that seems like guys want to play for him. I’ve been in locker rooms as a player where you actually want to play for your coach. I think that’s a great thing. He’s a player’s coach. That kind of separated him a little bit from Nick Saban.”

“What we got from Kirby and how we felt in sitting down and talking to him was just a little different. It was just a little easier. I don’t know. It could be the difference in age between him and Nick. That’s something that was huge for me and my wife as well. Just how comfortable Kirby made us feel when we sat down with him.”

Georgia has presented the Robinsons with a detailed plan for how Ellis can get his degree in three years and be ready to enter the 2027 NFL Draft. It would not be a surprise to see Robinson getting reps against Clemson next year in the season opener as part of that plan.

“I’m really happy with the whole package they have and possess at Georgia and then they also have a very good business school as well,” his father said. “That’s something that he is interested in. He wants to own his own business one day. There are just a lot of boxes that they check but just the people there and the personalities that we have met at Georgia are perfect for him and his personality.”

“That’s what separates Georgia from a lot of the places we have been. That is those relationships in the building that we’ve built.”

Have you subscribed to the DawgNation YouTube channel yet? If so, you will be able to see special 1-on-1 content with key 2024 prospects like Daniel Calhoun, Dwight Phillips Jr., Dylan Raiola and Sacovie White.

SENTELL’S INTEL

(check on the recent reads on Georgia football recruiting)