Want to attack every day with the latest Georgia football recruiting info? That’s what the Intel will bring at least five days a week. The play sheet for Friday calls for a pretty big Easter Egg that would belong in the director’s cut for the Jamaree Salyer UGA commitment hype video for the DieHards network.
Jamaree Salyer committed to, and signed with, Georgia. That was a big deal on Wednesday, and perhaps you have seen the commitment video below.
Thanks to all for their support of a great concept that was brought to DawgNation by a member of Salyer’s camp. We took that idea and ran with it from there.
It has been received well, with more than 150,000 views so far across social media and all of the DawgNation and DieHards channels.
It was a very fun script re-write, but I want to commend Salyer for his acting chops. And I guess I have to give him a script credit, as well, for his improv line during production.
While we were filming, the script called for a shout out to Zamir “Zeus” White. That’s because the mash-up of Salyer’s personal first practice story meshed with a riff off Suge Knight’s famous acceptance speech at the 1995 The Source Magazine Awards.
“I’d like to tell Tupac to keep his guards up,” Knight said. “We riding with him.”
Of course, that line of dialogue lent itself nicely to this. Especially after White’s recent ACL tear.
“I want to tell my boy Zeus to keep his offensive guards up,” the nation’s No. 1 offensive guard says in his video. “We riding with him.”
But there was a moment in the shoot where this question was presented to Salyer.
“Is there anyone else you’d like to send a shout out to in this video?”
Salyer responded. Quickly.
He added his own lines of recognition to future 5-star UGA signee Cade Mays. He also had one for Nolan Smith.
Smith is a 5-star defensive end committed to Georgia. He wanted to add a few bags of cement to that commitment of the nation’s No. 6 player for 2019.
So Salyer came up with this:
That was all him. He’s not just a 5-star player. He’s a highly intelligent student.
I bet DawgNation hopes that Smith will pay attention to what Salyer and the 2018 squad will have to offer to make sure that commitment stays locked.
Smith noticed. He had a strong reaction to the class that UGA signed this week.
“Rings in the future,” he said.
3 home-run quotes from UGA’s 5-star signees
There was a lot of press for the 2018 class on Wednesday. So much that it is worth repeating what three of those 5-star recruits said about what is happening at Georgia.
We’ll let Salyer step up to the mic first.
“I think the Auburn game [the SEC Championship Game on Dec. 2] was really big,” Salyer said. “Just seeing Georgia become an elite team. That was a big game for them. Georgia has always been good but Georgia has now crossed that elite threshold. There’s no looking back now. So everybody has to realize that. Alabama [and] Nick Saban has to realize that. Gus Malzahn has to realize it. Everybody has to realize it.”
Salyer said he thinks other on-the-fence recruits will see that about Georgia.
“You are either going to hop on the train or you are going to get ran over,” he said.
Brenton Cox, the 5-star defensive end who de-committed from Ohio State, also spoke about why he chose Georgia over Alabama.
“It just felt like home,” said Cox, from Stockbridge, Ga. “I would rather put on for my home state than go somewhere else and play hard for them. Hopefully, championships will be coming for Georgia someday soon.”
He added to that.
“I feel like we are building a foundation,” Cox said. “Everybody who comes to Georgia [now] wants to be great.”
Five-star quarterback signee Justin Fields was asked to share his message with the rest of those potential targets on the first day of the early signing period.
“You see what we are doing,” Fields said. “You see what we are building, so you might as well go ahead and join it. I guess that would be my message to them. Of course, I will text them. That’s what you guys [the media] don’t see. I would just say, ‘Come and join the squad.'”
Tuck this away when it’s time to start thinking about 2019
Georgia has the nation’s top-ranked recruiting class (per the 247Sports composite team rankings) in 2018 and 2019.
Kirby Smart is locking down every 4-star and up for 2018 so fast that we won’t have a lot to dissect about that class come January.
That will mean a larger focus on the Class of 2019. When that time comes, I want you good people to remember the name Kardell Thomas. He’s fond of UGA and was intrigued by the Bulldogs as they rose to the No. 1 spot in the nation earlier this season.
Thomas, an offensive lineman, is committed to LSU but it sounds like to me like that is far from firm.
Thomas all but said so in his DawgNation interview after his unofficial visit in November.
Well, there has been a development or two in regard to that. LSU lost its line coach, Jeff Grimes, this month as he moved on to BYU, where he will be the offensive coordinator.
How will that affect the way that Thomas views LSU?
“My view is still the same, but it will say it did shake my commitment,” Thomas told DawgNation. “I questioned it actually. I almost de-committed. My mind is still in the air with ‘I want to de-commit,’ but at the same time I want to see how the new coach comes in and does.”
Thomas really liked Grimes. He put Georgia’s Sam Pittman up there with Grimes in a key group of line coaches recruiting him who have gained his respect.
Grimes’ departure sparked the de-commitment of 5-star offensive lineman Kenyon Green. Green was the highest-rated member of the 2019 class for the Tigers and was committed to LSU for more than a year. He rates as the nation’s No. 9 overall prospect for that cycle.
Thomas checks in at No. 23 overall and has been doing some thinking. First off, he said he had zero worries about coming into a program and trying to compete with the likes of current and future UGA stalwarts at the guard spot such as Solomon Kindley, Trey Hill, Netori Johnson, Jamaree Salyer and Justin Shaffer.
He’s a competitor. That will make him better.
If Georgia has a chance to stack up more 5-star recruits in 2019 than the six it already has for 2018, then a player such as Thomas could be part of that effort. He said the Bulldogs’ recruiting success this week opened his eyes, but he also had a hunch about all the big things on the way.
“I knew they were getting those guys,” he said.
Miss any Intel? The DawgNation recruiting archive will always be here for you to chronicle all the zigs and the zags for the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class.