Big commit from Elyiss Williams is another mic drop moment for Georgia football TE coach Todd Hartley

Want to attack every day with the latest Georgia football recruiting info? That’s the Intel. This rep highlights the remarkable run of tight end recruiting under Georgia assistant Todd Hartley over the last five years in Athens.

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Todd Hartley was named the tight ends coach at the University of Georgia on January 14, 2019. He returned to his alma mater after two separate stints on the football staff. The first was as an undergraduate student assistant and then he served as the Director of Player Personnel under Mark Richt in 2015.

Hartley followed Richt to Miami and came home to Athens after Shane Beamer left for Oklahoma.

Then he started recruiting. And coaching and developing a whole lot of talented Bulldogs.

The commitment today from 2025 5-star Elyiss Williams is the latest twirl of the bat for Hartley for the ‘Dawgs.

If we wanted to find another baseball metaphor, that 2019 hiring date began a run of Barry Bonds production. While we are watching the Masters, the mind drifts to compare it to the “Tiger Slam” during the peak years for the great Tiger Woods.

It is now at the point where the names Hartley did not sign draw just as much attention. Like a mishit from Jon Rahm might this week.

Let’s check the Hartley timeline here. We’ll include his last year recruiting tight ends for the Hurricanes and then extend it out.

This stretch run of elite TE recruiting from 2018 now into the 2025 class is staggering.

Year	Player and 247Sports Composite rankings	Position ranking	Overall national ranking
2018	4-star Brevin Jordan (Miami)	No. 1	No. 33
2018	4-star Will Mallory (Miami)	No. 8	No. 211
2019	3-star Brett Seither (UGA)	No. 33	No. 730
2020	5-star Darnell Washington (UGA)	No. 2 ATH	No. 23 overall
2021	4-star Brock Bowers (UGA)	No. 3	No. 105
2021	5-star Arik Gilbert (UGA) - Transfer portal	No. 1	No. 5
2022	4-star Oscar Delp (UGA)	No. 2	No. 100
2023	4-star Pearce Spurlin III (UGA)	No. 2	No. 76
2023	4-star Lawson Luckie (UGA)	No. 8	No. 143
2024	5-star Landen Thomas (UGA)	No. 1	No. 22
2025	5-star Elyiss Williams (UGA)	No. 1	No. 13

Count them all up. Hartley’s recruiting run since 2018 has included:

9: TEs ranked among the nation’s top 10 prospects at their position
7: TEs ranked among the nation’s top three prospects at their position
4: 5-stars
4: TEs ranked No. 1 nationally at their position

To put that feat in the proper perspective, here’s the number of times since 2020 that the nation’s top programs have signed or earned a commitment from one of the nation’s top 10 TEs.

Alabama: 0
Auburn: 1
Clemson: 2
Florida: 0
Georgia: 7 (Does not include Darnell Washington)
LSU: 2
Miami: 3
Michigan: 1
Notre Dame: 4
Ohio State: 1
Oklahoma: 1
Oregon: 2
Penn State: 3
Tennessee: 1
Texas: 0
Texas A&M: 3
USC: 3
Washington: 3

That Hartley TE recruiting spree doesn’t even include the recruitment of 5-star TE Darnell Washington. While Washington played tight end exclusively at UGA, he was rated as the nation’s No. 2 ATH when he signed in the 2020 cycle.

As stated earlier, there have been a few misses in that stretch with recruits that Hartley truly prioritized. Former 4-star Theo Johnson played high school ball in Canada. He chose Penn State over UGA in the 2020 cycle.

There was also former 5-star Arik Gilbert in 2020. Gilbert shocked the recruiting industry (and his mother) by choosing LSU over Alabama, Clemson, Florida, Georgia and others.

Yet the Bulldogs were able to bring Gilbert back a year later via the transfer portal in the 2021 cycle.

There are also the cases of 5-star Duce Robinson and 4-star Walker Lyons in the 2023 cycle, but there was a pro baseball career and a Mormon mission to take into account for there.

Not to mention the fact that UGA had already signed two of the nation’s top 10 TE prospects in the cycle. Those were the two egacies Lawson Luckie and Pearce Spurlin III.

Luckie is already turning a lot of heads so far in spring drills.

Hartley has also coached those blue chips up at an elite level. Those two factors have helped accelerate his salary scale in Athens. There was a reported pay bump in the summer of 2022 that saw his annual compensation rise from $450,000 to $650,000. His contract was also extended through the 2024 season.

That should become an annual thing with Hartley guiding the tight ends at his alma mater.

Todd Hartley: How does he recruit so well for Georgia football?

How does he do it?

Luckie told DawgNation last year that the reason Hartley recruits so well is he is just so “persistent” and “relentless” when it comes to a prospect he wants to coach.

“He just never lets up,” Luckie told DawgNation.

This DawgNation story about the recruitment of Oscar Delp sheds more light on what Hartley does for the ‘Dawgs.

An excerpt:

“He was huge,” Delp said of Hartley. “He was definitely the huge recruiter in it. The relationship I have with him compared to other coaches is not really comparable. I’ve got a really good relationship. He would talk with my parents all the time. He would talk with me. Everyone.”

Alabama tried. Clemson tried. South Carolina tried. Michigan was the first program to post a “Delp Wanted” sign for their program. They spoke to him first and offered first.

South Carolina, his mother’s alma mater, came in hard at the end. Shane Beamer and his staff were great. The pitch somehow included a local business putting Delp’s name up in marquee lights in downtown Columbia.

“When I went to South Carolina for my gameday visit, I saw my name painted on kids in the student section,” he said.

The Gamecocks gave Delp and his family a bit of pause. Even when he’d pretty much set his mind on choosing Georgia before all of his visits. He had to take those visits, though.

Mary Delp, his mother, might have been joking when she said she basically created a human being to help her Gamecocks be great and win football games.

None of that really mattered. Hartley got Georgia in the door, then quickly surged out to the lead group and never looked back.

“Todd Hartley is just amazing at recruiting,” his father Chris Delp said. “He could write a book on it. We dealt with like 30 Power 5 programs. There aren’t a lot of guys like him. There is just one Todd. He’s the best.”

Hartley now has reeled in another elite talent in the 6-foot-7 and 235-pound Williams.

This one didn’t really require a masterclass in recruiting. Williams is from Georgia. There are seven tight ends up on that chart up above that grew up in Georgia or played high school ball in Georgia.

“I grew up on Georgia Bulldogs,” Williams told DawgNation on his commitment day on Saturday.

Yet Hartley’s touch hasn’t been isolated to Georgia. He was able to sign Bowers out of California and Williams out of Nevada.

Bowers wasn’t one of the highest-rated recruits on the Hartley resume, but he will wind up being the standard for all that will now play the position at UGA.

Hartley’s reputation coaching tight end now extends nationwide. The same thing for the Georgia brand as the back-to-back national champions.

The appeal is only going to get better with the NFL pedigree and development results set to take place over the next year.

Washington should hear his name come off the board among the top 40 picks in the NFL Draft later this month.

Bowers will be a no-doubt first-round pick in the 2024 NFL Draft.

Add in his experience coaching David Njoku (first-round pick in 2017) at Miami and that resume looks pretty strong.

It will only get better with the likes of Delp, Luckie, Spurlin, Thomas and Williams in Hartley’s room over his next five years in Athens.

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