Sentell’s Intel is all about the latest Georgia football recruiting info. This rep has the latest with 3-star DL Michai Boireau. He ranks as the nation’s No. 72 DL and the No. 710 overall prospect for 2024 on the 247Sports Composite ratings. The On3 Industry Ranking has him as the nation’s No. 62 DL and the No. 720 overall recruit.
Michai Boireau was in Athens on Saturday. He was in Kirby Smart’s office before the game.
The coach of the back-to-back national champions told him where he saw him playing in a future defense.
“Just telling me that he needs me,” Boireau said. “He needs a big guy, a big anchor, in the middle of the defense.”
Defensive line coach Tray Scott had Boireau picked out with a handful of other DL commits and priority targets at the game. He met with all of them and took them around the stadium.
“He told us this could be something great,” Boireau said. “But then also after the game he called me and he asked me if I could see myself coming in and making a difference at Georgia.”
What did Boireau say to that?
“I told him yeah,” Boireau said. “He was honestly just trying to show me something that I did not see when I was looking at the team.”
Can he see himself playing at Georgia?
“Yeah,” Boireau said.
If that doesn’t sound like he’s a remaining priority for the 2024 class, then maybe nothing will.
“The visit was great,” he said. “Good experience. I got to talk to Coach Smart and Coach Scott about the future. I got to watch how everything is going now D-line-wise. Defense wise. The visit was great.”
Boireau spent his time watching the waves of defensive tackles the Bulldogs used against South Carolina. He noticed there were good football players in there. Great potential players.
Yet none of them looked like he does. A true knock-the-center back on every play. The classic two-gapper DT tackle for the middle of another championship Bulldog defense.
That way they can play with six in the run game and shut it all down.
The ‘Dawgs just don’t have many 6-foot-4-plus and 365-pound defensive tackles on the roster.
“Not big guys out there that can anchor the middle of the defense,” Boireau said.
Nobody does. Freshman DT Jamaal Jarrett would be the only one who could do that in the future for the ‘Dawgs. Boireau also went down to the locker room after the game.
He said it added to an overall great experience.
“Although the game didn’t go - I guess you can say - how they wanted it to they did come out with the win,” Boireau said. “You did see the energy. Everybody was happy. There were no guys with their heads down. Everybody was like excited.”
Boireau said that Smart’s message carried a lot of weight.
“I know the program he is running right now can put me where I want to go into the next level,” Boireau said.
What was the big thing he learned on the visit?
“It showed me that there was love from Georgia,” he said. “It also showed me there is a big chance that I could come in and make a difference.”
Check out his junior film below.
Michai Boireau: A little more background Intel here
Boireau decommitted from Florida this month. He took just two official visits over the summer to Florida and Georgia. While he said the UGA official was “more exciting” than the Florida OV, he felt he was wanted more by the Gators.
He also committed for the wrong reason over the summer, he said.
“So basically my commitment was really based off the pressure of recruiting,” he said. “I wanted the pressure to stop so on my first official visit they showed me so much love I said ‘I’ll just go here and stop everything’ and as time went on, I knew I committed too early and I didn’t weigh out my options. So I backed off. I de-committed and now I’m starting from scratch.”
The thing is when he did commit to the Gators, the Bulldogs never let up with their recruiting pitches. The intensity of that messaging actually increased.
The Saturday visit was either his second or third gameday visit in Athens, he said. He was at the thrilling Tennesse game last fall in Athens.
The ‘Dawgs offered him during his freshman year, but from then to the end of his sophomore season he didn’t really communicate with the staff all that much.
Creekside coach Maurice Dixon has had a unique view of Boireau’s process.
“The first time I saw him he was like 12 years old,” Dixon said. “I was like this is the biggest 12-year-old I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Boireau was already 6-foot-3 and 265 pounds back then. Dixon said the thing folks don’t get about Boireau is his athleticism.
“If he disciplined himself to play around 335 pounds, there’s not a position on the defensive line that he can’t play,” Dixon said.
Dixon then rattled off plays that reinforced that take. He was defending against a counter play in the spring. Boireau was lined up as a ‘5′ tech on the outside shoulder of the offensive tackle.
“I saw him shoot underneath and pin the A-gap and then he got flat,” Dixon said. “Then he tackled the running back maybe two yards in the backfield. I also saw him in the Rising Seniors Game catch an interception on a screen.”
Boireau didn’t house that pick, but it took about four or five guys to bring him down.
“He’s a big jumbo freakish athlete,” Dixon said.
Teams have pretty much abandoned running inside on Creekside this fall. They are running a lot of wide zone plays and just throwing the ball. They don’t want to mess with Boireau in the middle. He’s been frustrated by that because that takes him out of the game.
Dixon also said he could see Boireau playing for Georgia.
“I always thought he was going to be a Georgia guy,” Dixon said. “From when he first got here. I just felt like they were showing him the most love in the process when he first got there. That’s what we teach the kids here all the time. We teach them to choose [the schools] who love you.”
The Gators fell in love with him when they saw him in person this spring. They had seen the film and then got to see Boireau up close.
“Then they watched him practice and they were like ‘Oh my god I’ve never seen anybody in my life move like that before and be that big’ and with Georgia, it was he had to go down there when school got out [to camp] to prove to them that he’s still that guy.”
What’s next for Michai Boireau?
Check out the pictures below.
This young prospect is massive and he’s just 17. He will be a college freshman at 17 and won’t turn 18 until May.
Boireau realizes he made his recruiting decision too early back in the summer.
“He saw that Georgia kind of fell off a little bit and he saw when Florida was there and they were texting him every morning and it was consistent communication,” Dixon said. “They were consistently showing love and when he went on that visit to Georgia he thought they were just putting on. They were just putting on a show because they knew they needed him then.”
The Creekside senior wishes he had taken another summer official visit to Michigan. He will look to take a visit to Auburn soon and wants to get up to Ann Arbor as well.
Ole Miss is now a contender and the Gators are still in the picture.
He does realize that he made his decision too soon over the summer and will now withhold his public commitment decision until early signing day in December.
He wants to be very sure with his next and final commitment.
“I don’t have anything planned yet but there is a chance that later on, maybe soon, that I will be going down to Auburn,” he said.
How will he approach the final months of his recruiting process?
“Still taking things slow,” he said. “But also narrowing down my options to the schools that I know that I can come into and make a difference from the schools that haven’t really shown me that much love.”
Of all those schools, he said he knows the least about either Michigan or Ole Miss. Those are the schools he needs to really do his research on and go see.
What about the school he feels like he knows the most about?
“Probably Georgia,” he said.
Academics are going to be a factor. He wants to study mechanical engineering in college.
“It is a lot of Math,” he said.
It also meshes well with his love for cars.
“My current passion has been my passion for a long time,” he said. “People don’t know this about me but I like cars. The mechanical engineering thing comes from my love for cars. Wanting to know how cars go. I just want to know everything that I can about cars.”
The dream car would be a 1969 Dodge Charger. The color would have to be matte black.
His father played defensive line at Miami. Michael Boireau played with the St. Louis Rams and the Minnesota Vikings in the NFL. That has sparked a very big goal for his own career.
“I want to be the most dominant defensive lineman in history,” he said.
He has been dominant so far at the high school level. Creekside’s coaching staff calls him the most dominant player in GHSA Class 5A football.
“I’ve literally had somebody say they are not going to block me in the game,” Boireau said. “They literally went out of their way in the game to not block me. They were not even trying to.”
That 3-star ranking doesn’t reflect his value to the ‘Dawgs. That’s a nod to the recruiting industry not valuing the impact of an anchor “Zero” tech over the years. There was some of that with Jarrett last cycle.
The other factor there was Boireau has rapidly changed his body over the last 12 months. He went into the 2022 season weighing 390 pounds. He played a lot of that year at 380 pounds but dropped down to 360 pounds over the summer.
The plan for “Mount Michai” is to enroll early. That’s what his coaches call him.
Boireau’s DawgNation Conversation is embedded below.
SENTELL'S INTEL
(check on the recent reads on Georgia football recruiting)
