This Sentell’s Intel rep on Georgia football recruiting has the latest with 4-star North Oconee EDGE Khamari Brooks. He ranks as the nation’s No. 14 EDGE and No. 117 overall prospect for 2026 on the 247Sports Composite. The On3 Industry Ranking has him as the No. 15 EDGE and No. 100 overall.
The good stuff about North Oconee 4-star EDGE Khamari Brooks is starting to pile up like two weeks of the family laundry.
UGA all-time great David Pollack has already raved and raved about Khamari Brooks. He’s shared a classic story about Brooks that goes back to youth league ball.
That’s impressive.
The 6-foot-4, 230-pound Brooks has now been a key cog in two state basketball teams and a football team for his Titans. He was an impactful two-way player for North Oconee last fall on both sides of the ball. He can run the point and play shooting guard. The guy’s junior basketball season highlight tape even stretches past the 11-minute mark.
That’s an athlete. So much we must remind ourselves that he’s being prioritized by UGA to play a Nolan Smith and Jalon Walker-ish role in the defensive front.
Brooks caught touchdowns last fall as a big-play receiver and took over the state title game against Marist on the defensive side. He totaled up eight tackles, 2.5 TFLs and one sack. He also had 52 receiving yards and caught a TD.
That’s getting it done on the field at the highest level.
His step-grandfather, Charles “CJ” Junior, was a receiver on Georgia’s 1980 national championship team. And that’s not even the most famous “DGD” in the family.
That honor would go to his great-uncle Horace King. King was an athletics pioneer in the SEC as one of the “First Five” black players at Georgia.
It means he also checks the “legacy” box as a big-time target in Athens.
Brooks has moved through his recruiting options at a pace that Zachariah Branch and Dwight Phillips Jr. would endorse. He was quickly down to a final three in January, and now he’s down to a final two. That’s Alabama and Georgia.
That shows he’s taking a very hyper-focused and mature approach to his recruitment, too.
When we reached him for the latest update on his recruitment, he somehow found a way to enhance his stock even further. Brooks was able to answer a few of our questions while he was doing his own laundry.
“My mom started making me do my own laundry when I was in middle school, maybe,” he said. “So I’ve been doing my own laundry for a long time.”
Khamari Brooks: What’s the vibe for him now with UGA?
Brooks made a point to take in the latest UGA scrimmage on Saturday before he went on his spring break beach trip.
“It is right down the road,” he said. “I can get there when I need to.”
He’d already seen Georgia recently prior to that visit.
“I will be up there a lot, to be completely honest with you,” Brooks said. “So every time I go up there, it is just trying to pick up something new. Just the way they practice, you know? Just different techniques that I can use for myself. Every time I go up there, it is a different thing you see that you may not have seen the last times, that you learn something new that you are able to implement to your life and your game.”
What has he learned most recently about the Dawgs?
“The hard work that they do,” he said. “Just a different passion. Just the passion and energy that coach Kirby coaches with is very different from a lot of the other places that I’ve went to from being at linebacker schools and watching them practice.”
“I’ve seen many things they really hone in on. When they are pressing blocks and things like that, really just getting your hips into it and just different things when it comes to block destruction and the way that coach [Chidera] Uzo-Diribe coaches you individually is really a great thing to see.”
That’s a young man that knows about the finer points of hots and colds and the delicate and permanent press cycle one minute, then it is about block destruction the next.
It is important to highlight the work of Uzo-Diribe in this recruitment.
“The things that he means that he just says to me and tells me,” Brooks said. “The things he says that he knows I can become if I put in the work if I go there. I feel like he’s definitely made me feel like a priority because he calls me and talks to me almost every day. He makes me feel like a priority every time I talk to him.”
What keeps his mind on Georgia?
“The best thing I like about the Dawgs, I would say, is kind of being for myself here,” he said. “I don’t want to be a person that is all ‘I, I, I’ here, but I would definitely say the way they play defensive end position is very similar to what I play in high school. You know? The different techniques that they do is almost, you could say, a direct copy of the way I play in high school. Our coaches talk to them and take advice from them a lot, and they apply it to our scheme here at North.”
“That definitely the thing I like the most [about Georgia] because I feel like my transition wouldn’t be as hard as some others maybe because I kind of already do the exact same things that they do.”
How does Khamari Brooks feel about Alabama?
Brooks was able to cut down to just a handful of schools very quickly in his process.
“I would say I could kind of really cut it down because I was able to see what ‘the real’ was and I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of, you know, how recruiting goes.”
“You wanna go with a school that shows they really want you, not a school that’s trying to give you, say, the money and all of this. I want to go to a school that is really going to be the best fit for me. So I feel like those three schools that I really brought it down to were schools where I really fit in when it comes to the culture and how the people around them act like kind of very much like me but at the end of the day also being a fit being on the football field physically with all those other great athletes.”
Brooks said that Georgia and Alabama are his top two schools.
“They are kind of neck-and-neck for me right at the top,” he said. “Separated from all the others.”
Why is Alabama in it? The reason has to do with a former Georgia Bulldog linebacker. That’s Alabama assistant Christian Robinson.
“My relationship with coach C-Rob,” he said. “I feel like that relationship never stopped from the day that he offered me or the day that Coach DeBoer offered him. He and I talk very constantly, and you know he went to Georgia, so he understands it being one of my top schools. He also makes me feel like a priority, too. He calls me very very often, and the way they play on the field out there is very similar to the way I play here, too. Where I am able to do all the things like drop into coverage, play on the line and they do a lot of different things with their ‘Wolf’ position and that’s the thing I really like about them, too.”
He said that Robinson and Uzo-Diribe are the best relationships he has with college recruiters.
How does he compare those two great programs?
“I would definitely say their practices are different at the end of the day,” Brooks said. “The energy at those two practices are definitely different. I’ve been up to Bama. I think I went last week. I won’t say there isn’t much passion and energy, but there isn’t as much constant go. Coach DeBoer is not on the mic up there like Kirby is down at Georgia. Those are two things that are definitely different at those two programs.”
Fire. Passion. Energy. Brooks says the continuity in Athens leads to that.
“They give off some of that every time at practice,” he said. “That’s kind of the standard he’s built around there for the last seven or eight years now. That’s the culture he’s built there, and they know that’s the standard they all have to reach.”
What’s next for Khamari Brooks with his recruiting process?
Brooks has cut the Clemson official visit from his schedule. He will take those two vital OVs to Georgia (May 30) and Alabama (June 6) later this summer.
But he will see a couple of other schools outside that Top 2. He’s made plans to take officials to both Texas and USC. He’s not sure if he will wait until after all of his OVs before he makes his commitment.
Of course, Brooks wouldn’t be as dialed in as he is without thinking about an approximate timeline. The man is tearing through this recruiting process like it was an offensive line made of off-brand Legos.
“It will definitely be before the season,” he said. “That’s where I am right now. I’m not sure when. It might be a couple of days before the season or it might mean next month. I will say it will definitely be before the season starts because I want to be able to focus on my team.”
Georgia does have an advocate here in freshman WR Landon Roldan. He grew up playing with Brooks, and he’s going to be a sounding board for him to learn everything he would ever want to know about the program.
“I think we’ve known each other since sixth or seventh grade,” Brooks said. “He texts me periodically, and that’s kind of one of my best friends also. So, you know, he’s always texting me about ‘You know this is the place for you’ and ‘This is where you fit’ and ‘We need you here’ so he’s definitley a part of that recruitment up there also with coach Uzo-Diribe to text me a lot and tell me that’s where I need to be.”
Check out Brooks on the film during his junior year.
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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