This Sentell Intel rep on Georgia football recruiting has the latest from Georgia receivers coach James Coley about what the 2025 group of signees will add to the Bulldogs’ position.

Receivers.

That position group is on the very short list of things Georgia football needs to do to return to the standard of winning national championships.

That was readily apparent watching the Dawgs drop passes at an alarming rate in 2024. Forget making a man defender miss or cooking DBs with extra crispy routes. Fans were trained for the bare minimum of just catching the ball.

The Sugar Bowl broadcast cited 36 dropped passes this season.

Oof.

The Bulldogs might have added at least one more drop to that tally by the end of the game. How in the name of Larry Munson does a national recruiting juggernaut like Georgia allow it to get to that point?

That’s a story. Just not as good of a story as what Georgia is doing to fix the matter. There’s news today that short-term help is on the way from the transfer portal.

Georgia added former 5-star receiver Zachariah Branch to its roster on Sunday afternoon. The former USC Trojan is electric in the open field. DawgNation should expect him to provide a big-play threat similar to what former speedster Mecole Hardman Jr. added to the offense a few years back.

The Dawgs are also in hot pursuit of Texas A&M transfer portal WR entry Noah Thomas. Thomas was in Athens this weekend. There’s a link between Thomas and receivers coach James Coley. Coley was on the staff at A&M for four seasons from 2020-2023.

The 6-foot-6, 200-pounder has great speed. He doesn’t have a perfect reputation when it comes to catching the ball, but he did snare eight touchdowns for a team that didn’t have great QB play this past season.

Thomas caught 39 passes, but he was also the only A&M receiver with more than two touchdowns catches this fall. Georgia had five players with at least four touchdown catches.

Dominic Lovett had the team high in touchdown catches (six) this past season. Branch and the potential addition of Thomas at “X” is good, but that’s not enough.

Georgia has seen a major dip in recruiting elite receivers out of high school. The program hasn’t gotten much production from the nine receivers it signed across their last three recruiting classes.

Add it all up. The season stats for the nine high school receivers Georgia signed across its last three years of recruiting tallied up to 88 combined catches in 2024.

Oof.

There are now only four left on the active roster in Athens. Bell was the only one who got significant run for the Dawgs in 2024 among that nine. His 43 receptions make up half of that 88-catch total.

That’s why the big plays were consistently missing at the receiver spot. Georgia’s last four waves of recruiting was non-existent save for Bell. Most were somewhere else. That’s why key transfer portal entries like London Humphreys, Dominic Lovett, RaRa Thomas and Colbie Young were expected to form the core for Carson Beck this season.

That’s the not-so-good news.

The better news is that Coley signed a class of wideouts this year that was the highest-rated since the 2020 cycle. This group features the two highest-rated wide receivers the Bulldogs have signed since 2020.

That’s a Woof, not an Oof.

Here’s a quick breakdown:

What did Coley feel this group will add to the room? That was a fun conversation at Sugar Bowl Media Day in New Orleans. He enjoyed breaking down this group.

“First of all, you want to sign the best players you can sign,” Coley said. “That’s what we all say, but you want to fill a need.”

Georgia clearly had needs in this class.

“You want to get length,” he said. “You want to get speed and we want to get toughness and then get guys who can get open and catch the ball. So that was the main focus. Who loves football and who has talent and can then play and then play at a high level that Coach Smart wants that can win championships.”

“That’s what we went after. Those type of guys. I knew that we had a number that we had to get. So I figured, heck, let’s go get the best five with that number.”

What were the biggest boxes this class checked?

“We brought in the ability to get open because of the confirmed speed by these guys,” Coley said. “Then I think at wideout you have got to be able to make contested catches in this league in the SEC and then when you play in the playoffs the coverage is going to be even better because you are going to be going against NFL players.”

“You got to have an NFL player in your room. So I look at it like, is this guy going to play in the National Football League? Do I feel he has the talent to do that because he can get open, catch the football and have a high football IQ?”

Coley has great people skills. That’s what makes him an ace recruiter. Smart is like that, too.

It was different for him in the class when he got a commitment from the Taylors and the Wileys in this class. That wasn’t so much a fist-pump moment. Even while trying to dispel the negative recruiting about Georgia throwing the ball. Or developing NFL receivers.

Then there is the facts that receivers are considered a “diva” position and the 5-star receivers seek more NIL dollars than every before.

“It’s really not about getting them,” Coley said. “It’s really about ‘Man, this room just got better’ here. Do you know what I mean about that? You’re fired up about being able to coach someone now. If you’re doing it right, that you already know is going to be great to be in a foxhole with.”

Coley has long had the “Change the Game” catchphrase around the program. He might have earned himself a new one over the last cycle.

His efforts helped “Change the Room” with the 2025 class plus Branch. The potential addition of Thomas would really start to stack the room with more of those NFL guys.

Have you subscribed to the DawgNation YouTube channel yet? If so, you will see special 1-on-1 content with key 2025 prospects like Ethan Barbour, Ryan Montgomery, Elijah Griffin and Justus Terry

SENTELL’S INTEL

(check on the recent reads on Georgia football recruiting)