This Sentell’s Intel rep on Georgia football offers a look into the path of Georgia senior receiver Will Taylor.
Cambridge High School has two of its former receivers turning heads at Georgia.
The first, true freshman Craig Dandridge, is the team’s leading receiver. Dandridge was a top-100 overall prospect in the 2026 class who’s flashing clear NFL potential, along with remarkable composure and competitive character.
Then there’s the other guy. The one nobody saw coming.
Except maybe Will Taylor.
Taylor, now a senior, came to UGA as a preferred walk-on in 2023. He received one college offer from Furman, but that wasn’t committable.
He planned to go to college for academics. Until Georgia called at the 11th hour and invited him to join the team as a preferred walk-on.
Flash forward four years. That was the player his teammates were raving about after the Arkansas win.
“Will Taylor came a long way, but the crazy thing is, since I got here my freshman year, man, Will Taylor has been a Dawg on the scout team,” junior safety KJ Bolden said. “He makes us so much better on scout team. We just knew that guy’s time was coming eventually. Whether it was special teams or offense, we just eventually knew his time was coming.”
“He works really hard. He runs his routes hard. He just does everything hard. You wouldn’t expect Will to be a walk-on the way he goes out there in practice every day. I’m so glad he’s earned this opportunity to go out there and show it because he’s been doing it.”
Chris Cole, another former 5-star, backed up Bolden.
“I’ve seen him make the most craziest plays since I’ve been here,” Cole said. “Out of every player here. These catches he makes in practice, it was no surprise to me that he’s getting a better role. He’s definitely earned it throughout what he does in the offseason and then to now.”
Taylor saw action in one game as a sophomore. He got in two games last fall. He’s now seen action in all three games this year, including receiver snaps during the first half in the last two weeks.
Taylor followed a trail near and dear to Kirby Smart’s heart. Scout team. Special teams. Then the travel roster for the SEC opener.
That all started with one core trait.
“Toughness,” Smart said on Saturday. “He’s one of the better wideouts. I mean, we don’t go out there and say, ‘What is your star rating?’ We go out there and say, ‘Who wins in one-on-ones, who blocks well and who can execute their assignments. This guy’s as talented a player as we’ve got, and he was under-recruited, and he makes plays every day at practice.”
“I love watching him. He’s a competitor and he’s really been a great special teams player.”
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Will Taylor: The other UGA part to this story
Taylor’s tale has a UGA wrinkle: Former UGA great Reggie Brown coached him at receiver at Cambridge High.
“I’ve always known that Will had the ability to be out there on the field and contributing whether it was special teams or lining up at receiver,” Brown said. “For me, he’s a great receiver. Honestly, I think his catch radius is one of the best I’ve seen. His ball skills are one of the best I’ve seen as a high school player. You just put it in his area and he can make a catch and he can make a play.”
Brown saw Taylor make one-handed catches look natural in high school. That’s what Cole meant.
Taylor was an All-State receiver. He piled up 78 catches for 1,414 yards and 18 touchdowns across his junior and senior years. He averaged 18.1 yards per catch.
When the Bears needed a play, the ball was going to Taylor.
“It was just natural and never seemed forced,” Brown said. “He was smooth and could always just make the play. No matter whether the corner or the safety was the better athlete or not, he was going to come up with the ball. That’s one of those innate abilities that’s hard to coach. You can coach it, but if the kid already has it, that is an A-plus plus.”
This feel-good story reminds one of former fan favorite Dan Jackson. “Dirty Dan” took the walk-on path, but worked his way into the playing and starting rotations and made a ton of plays.
Taylor doesn’t have any stats yet, but that doesn’t mean he’s only capable of great special teams play.
“I think he gets in the end zone, man,” Brown said. “If he’s allowed to stay on the field, he’s definitely going to get in the end zone. If they give him an opportunity to catch the ball in the end zone, it will be caught.”
Taylor had a growth spurt during the pandemic school term. He shot up six inches to 6-foot-1 during the 2020-2021 school year. He had recruitable size. The only thing he lacked was that elite top-end speed.
Brown said Taylor was a 4.6 guy in high school. He was fast and quick for a big kid, but not fast fast. He’d shed DBs at the top of his routes with a quick twitch to gain separation.
The Cambridge staff believed if they found him a spot, he would work his way onto the field and eventually play. Even at Georgia.
“Nobody would talk to him,” Pickens County coach Craig Bennett said, who was his head coach at Cambridge at the time. “I don’t want to name any programs, but lesser programs than Georgia in terms of levels and where they are at. I’m talking I-AAs, Group of Five, Division IIs and they wouldn’t touch him. I’m sitting here going, ‘Guys, this is crazy’ and ‘Ya’ll are crazy ’; it is probably the most frustrating recruiting process I’ve been through as a head coach.”
“It was like to the point where he was like he was just going to go to school. It was a two-week period after that Georgia called and said they really liked him.”
Georgia compared him to Ladd McConkey. Bennett called Taylor’s father afterward with that sliver of hope.
“He was like, ‘Coach, that is a scam’ and ‘it is not real,’ but Bennett had a connection in Athens and vetted it was all on the level.
Bennett remembers him as “calm” and “cerebral” but plugged into the team. He noted how receivers often come over to the sideline and tell their coaches how they were open on that series.
“Will would come off and say, ‘Hey, coach, I think we can do this or this,’ and it may not have been about him,” Bennett said. “He was just looking at the defense and thinking that we could do this or this will work.”
“He made me a better coach because I learned to say I’m going to listen to these guys that do it the right way and can look at a defense and go, ‘Man, we can get this route’ even if it meant the ball wasn’t coming to him.”
When No. 47 starts making plays as the weeks go by, this story will keep getting better. Bennett said he “100 percent believed” that this was how it would go for Taylor at UGA.
Bennett said Taylor worked for and deserves all of this. That’s how he impressed Smart.
“I’m just really happy for the kid,” Brown said. “He just kept chipping away. Some kids quit before they get that chance and he didn’t. So kudos to my buddy.”
