This Sentell’s Intel rep on Georgia football recruiting has the latest with 4-star Cole Crawford. He ranks as the nation’s No. 19 LB and the No. 279 overall prospect for 2026 on the 247Sports Composite. The Rivals Industry Ranking has him as the No. 15 LB and No. 253 overall.
Cole Crawford has now seen Georgia play back-to-back weeks in Athens and Knoxville. The 4-star junior LB/TE target said that Georgia was still his leader.
“You’ve got some close schools in there, but Georgia, yes, they are still the leader,” Crawford told DawgNation.
That was what he also said this summer.
If we’re being honest, that was probably what Crawford said in 2024 and 2020 and even back in 2016.
He lived in Middle Georgia in 2016. His father was on a Houston County coaching staff that sent future Bulldogs Jake Fromm and Trey Hill to Athens.
His family circle has had him “brainwashed” on the Dawgs from an early age.
The feeling has been reciprocated. Georgia’s Todd Hartley was poking fun at him recently for making the trip to Tennessee. Crawford was also at FSU to see Alabama go down.
Those are the two other schools hanging around on the top shelf of his recruitment.
“Alabama recruits me as a slash LB/TE,” he said. “Tennessee recruits me just as a linebacker. Georgia recruits me as both.”
Crawford, a pure “football player” in every sense of the term, likes going to big games while he can. He’s been on the field for crowd storms recently in College Station, Knoxville and Tallahassee.
“We find the best games and we try to go,” Crawford said. “We love to watch football. I’m a Georgia fan, but I love to go watch football. It’s awesome to go rush the field. People don’t get to do that often, but we did it three times last year.”
He’s a rabbit’s foot for an upset, it seems. As we all know, he almost saw one last Saturday evening in Knoxville.
DawgNation was able to catch another memorable on-field moment for Crawford before a game last season. Georgia was going into their locker rooms after warm-ups and Georgia coach Kirby Smart pointed to the 4-star junior in the crowd.
That’s usually reserved for elite targets and 5-stars in the current class. Not prospects two years away from their time as a priority recruit in the on-deck class.
Smart pointed to the 4-star from Cartersville out for a few reasons.
He’s a coach’s son with a high football IQ that could be an SEC tight end or LB. He’s ranked at LB, but the future for the 6-foot-3, 225-pounder looks likely as an H-back or TE type. He’s also a long snapper who could do that in college.
Smart also pointed to Crawford because their families know each other through baseball seasons. Crawford, a two-sport athlete himself, is a baseball prospect in his own right. But his younger brothers are on the same elite travel ball circuit as one Andrew Smart.
He sees the Smarts a lot.
“It happens every time I go to East Cobb [Baseball park] and watch my little brother,” Cole Crawford said. “Whenever I have time to go up there during the summer, if I’m not playing baseball or something like that, I always see him up there.”
He was already in Knoxville. Crawford plans to be at the Alabama and Texas games in Athens this fall. He will be in Tuscaloosa when the Vols head that way later this season.
“I’m going to those three,” Crawford said prior to the Georgia-Tennessee game. “Because those three are going to be really good.”
TE or LB? What does Cole Crawford want to play?
He doesn’t get a lot of balls thrown his way at Cartersville. That’s because the Purple Hurricanes have two excellent receivers who can clock a 4.4 in the 40.
Any OC worth his call sheet would feed the ball to those two. When teams start scheming Cartersville with coverage over the top of those two, then he’ll get some targets.
Crawford makes his living now at LB and as a short-yardage runner on Friday nights. He was named the Defensive Player of the Week for the Hurricanes after a thrilling 38-35 win against defending Class 3A state champion Calhoun earlier this week.
What does he prefer to play? That’s a tough question, but Crawford makes it sound easy.
“I do not have a preference at all,” he said.
Most recruits just pore into their position on one side of the ball when they go to a college game. But Crawford is not like most recruits when it comes to football.
“I try to study everything I see,” Crawford said. “How quick those guys are. Like, CJ Allen is so fast. They play really fast and really physical. [Ethan] Barbour’s skill set is so so good, which sucks what happened to him.”
“He was contributing day one in Athens. Started his first game. If you watched him at Milton, he was so good. With his hands out in space. Then blocking. I saw him against Marshall and it was really good. He sticks his face in there.”
When the Dawgs faced Austin Peay, he made the trip with the Cartersville. tight ends coach. They got soaked running back to the buses during that trip.
His high football IQ is derived from his father, Ryan. Ryan Crawford came up on the Conrad Nix coaching tree at Northside-Warner Robins. He was also an assistant at Houston County with Von Lassiter and later became the head coach of the Bears.
His father is now the head middle school coach in Cartersville.
“We like to watch football,” Crawford said. “We like to sit there and actually analyze and watch it and see what’s going on. See what type of stuff we might can say to our offensive coordinator. Like ‘I like that right there’ and something like that. We enjoyed the first half and all the move stuff they do with the tight ends and how good the defense is.”
Hartley is his primary recruiter for UGA.
“When people call me a football player, that’s a compliment,” Cole Crawford said. He told me to catch and he relates this to baseball. He told me to catch in baseball because someone is always going to need a catcher. Like someone is always going to need a long snapper in football. The more things you do, in my opinion, the more chances you have at the next level. Well, at any level really."
He knows why he’s a college prospect now at tight end.
“I’d say my physicality and blocking,” he said. “Whenever I do get a chance to get the ball, I don’t drop much, but I will make a play. I’ve gotten really good at yards after the catch and I’ve tried to explain my skill set to our offensive coordinator, but whenever we’ve got two dudes like we do outside, it is pretty tough. Yards after the catch. Being able to be athletic in space. Then being really physical at the point of contact is what helps me.”
He‘s also keenly aware of why he’s a college LB prospect.
“I see things really well,” he said. “I read guards really well and just knowing the situation. Watching film. Knowing where to be and when to be there. Then I’m learning to play with my hands a lot better on defense. I’m normally just sticking my head in there and trying to run through people, but I’m playing a lot smarter with my hands now, getting off blocks and making tackles. I’ve got to constantly be able to improve at the stuff to be able to play in the SEC.”
Check out his early junior film below:
Cole Crawford: He loves the Dawgs, but what’s his timetable?
Crawford, who’s the son of a football coach and a former college softball player, said this summer at the Under Armour that he had no idea when he wanted to make his commitment.
He was in that “I’ll know when I know” club, but that has evolved recently.
“I’m playing in the Under Armour game next year, and the Under Armour guy texted me,” Crawford said. “He was like, ‘Would you think about doing a commitment on television or something like that?’ which I never thought about because my Dad would kill me if we did something like that. He’s not real big on that, but if it is at the Under Armour All-American Game, it is something different. That may be a timeline, but if not, then maybe kind of how [UGA commit] Brady [Marchese] did it, or go to a few officials, and we’ll see after that.”
Marchese, the 4-star Georgia WR commit and his teammate at Cartersville High, committed to UGA in March of his junior year.
Crawford spoke very highly of the Dawgs this summer at the Future 50.
“They are recruiting me pretty heavily right now,” he said. “It has always been my dream to play at Georgia and that would just be a dream come true.”
He also said at that time that both Alabama and Tennessee were “coming after him pretty good” in his recruitment. Not much has changed there.
Have you seen this week’s “Before the Hedges” weekly recruiting special on YouTube yet? Check it out below.
SENTELL’S INTEL
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