This Sentell’s Intel rep on Georgia football recruiting shares a recruiting insider’s look on gameday leading up to the big SEC clash with Alabama.

There are many times when the Bulldogs line up that they know without little doubt that they have better players than their opponent.

It happens almost every game since Kirby Smart got Georgia rolling right in 2017 and 2018. Stacking up elite recruiting classes is part of the formula that has enabled Smart to build Georgia into the national powerhouse it is today.

Recruit better players. Coach them hard. Win games. That’s the norm.

Except when the Dawgs face Alabama. That’s different. Smart built Georgia based on what he learned working alongside Nick Saban for almost a decade at Alabama.

Saban’s no longer in Tuscaloosa. The retired future Hall of Fame coach is an ESPN analyst, among other vocations.

Does that mean Georgia now has more talent than the Tide? Not quite.

Check out how closely these two teams stacked talent over the last four recruiting cycles.

It is close. Really close.

The only clear edge for really any team here would be the fact that Georgia has retained more of its top 200 overall signees over the last four years. The classes each team has signed across the previous four cycles are the players who will be competing on Saturday night.

That’s something, but that data is affected by the fact that Alabama lost a lot of transfers after Saban’s retirement.

Bud Elliott of 247Sports publishes a “blue-chip” ratio every summer that indexes how well each of the country’s top programs has recruited to build their rosters. His formula is centered on the notion that a program needs to sign a certain threshold of 4 and 5-star players to win the national championship.

Elliott’s ratio has gained steam over the years, including being featured in the revival of the EA Sports College Football video game franchise. His blue-chip ratio for each team this season still gives the edge to the Tide.

The numbers indicate that 89% of the Alabama roster consists of 4 and 5-star players. The remaining 11 percent of the team is made up of 3-star, 2-star or players that did not have a star ranking in high school.

Again, these two teams are very close.

The one statistic that points to Georgia finally gaining an edge in talent has emerged over the last two recruiting classes. That’s the class that Saban recruited in 2024 that DeBoer had to hold together and the first class that he signed after his first full recruiting cycle in December of 2024.

The 2024 and 2025 classes mark the first time that Georgia’s recruiting class was ranked higher than Alabama’s since Smart took the job at Georgia in December of 2015.

Smart’s Georgia teams have only had a higher-rated class of recruits four times across his 10 seasons at Georgia. We’ve seen two of those instances happen over the last two years.

The matchup tonight will feature two programs that have, between the two of them, claimed the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class eight times in the last 10 years.

Watch the game tonight. Soak up all the talent on display and if by some chance a freshman or sophomore Bulldog makes a game-changing play, then there’s another way that following recruiting shows up in a big-time ballgame.

Have you subscribed to the DawgNation YouTube channel yet? If so, you will see special 1-on-1 content with key 2026 prospects like Jared Curtis, Lincoln Keyes, Brady Marchese and Kaiden Prothro.

Have you seen this week’s “Before the Hedges” weekly recruiting special on YouTube yet? Check it out below

SENTELL’S INTEL

(Check on the recent reads on Georgia football recruiting)