This Sentell’s Intel rep on Georgia football recruiting has the latest with 4-star Seth Williams at Lakeside High in Atlanta. He’s the nation’s No. 38 S and the No. 450 overall prospect for 2027 on the 247Sports Composite. The Rivals Industry Ranking has him as the No. 85 S and No. 832 overall.
The stars are beginning to align for Lakeside safety Seth Williams. The one-time Clemson commitment just picked up his fourth star from 247Sports.
That was overdue. Given the fact that he has more than 50 offers with his 6-foot-3 and 186-pound frame. Williams has plus length. That was evident on Wednesday at Georgia State’s 7-on-7 camp. He had six interceptions.
Williams told DawgNation yesterday that he’s basically down to Clemson and Georgia. He’s got a July 3 commitment in mind. He also said he was likely done taking any more official visits.
Florida is trying to get him to change that. While his Lakeside Vikings will be at UGA tomorrow for its 7-on-7 event, the Gators want to pick him up afterward to bring him to Gainesville for another official visit.
That’s not the only school. Auburn, LSU, Ohio State and Texas Tech all reached out on Wednesday, trying to get in the mix. Those schools are telling him he could take an official during the season. There would be no need to shut it down.
That seems like a lot of buzz for a 3-star. The recruiting rankings are currently playing catch-up with all these power programs.
It is a good thing that Georgia has valued him as a top-of-the-board target for some time. Williams told DawgNation recently that he hears from an on-field coach at UGA every single day.
That’s usually been Nickels’ coach, Andrew Thacker. Every day. Thacker will reach out to his entire family.
He thought about it for a minute, but then said nobody recruits him like Thacker. Not to that depth and frequency. He said it feels like a “family member or an uncle” type of connection.
“Thacker always tells me that I am one of those kids who just play with that chip [on their shoulder] that they need,” Williams said. “He always tells me to never get complacent.”
His interest in UGA has a lot to do with the development history of Georgia safeties coach Travaris Robinson.
“Being able to be developed as a player and somebody who’ll pull the best out of me,” he said.
He’s a relationships guy. With UGA, he said, “Those bonds are strong.”
“Relationships are built with time, and I feel like Georgia has been recruiting me for a while,” he said. “It has just been that time. All that time.”
The weekly DawgNation.com “Before the Hedges” program is available as an Apple podcast.
Seth Williams: Why Georgia is making him a priority
Williams offers plus-length for his position. There are verified track times showing him running an 11.16 in the 100, but he’s said he’s clocked times in the 10.8-10.9 range. He’s physical, too.
What really stands out here is that he’s just wired right. These days, we meet many athletes who play because they are good at it and are incentivized to do so.
Would they still play football if it were just a regular career? Williams would.
“Trust me, there’s nothing wrong with working a nine-to-five,” he said. “But I was just never one of those kids. I was like what if I don’t make it? Or I have to go work at McDonald’s? Or drive a truck? I realized I’d grow up with regret every day if I couldn’t play football. It was just this mindset like ‘Hey, bro, if I could just go play football and be able to live like a regular person, I would do it’ because that’s how much I love the game. Being able to go out there with the same brothers that you put the work in with every single day and make big plays. Make your family proud.”
He said he would play football even if it paid him less than six figures per year.
“That’s perfect,” he said. “As long as I could live comfortably and then do the thing that I love the most, then I’m completely fine with that. If we’re being completely honest, playing football is not a regular job, but I’d rather do something I love the most than something I will grow and live with the regret of not playing the game anymore because I didn’t try my hardest.”
The dream is the league, but it is a natural progression for him.
“When you are playing park ball, you want to play in middle school,” he said. “When you are in middle school, then being that star player was always the dream. When you go from middle school, playing on Wednesdays, then you are like, okay, I don’t really want to play on Thursdays when I get to high school. I want to play on Fridays. It was always a goal.”
He’s always trained with this thought: What do I have to do to be ready to play one day later in the week next season?
“Once you’re good on Fridays, then you’re trying to go to Saturdays,” he said. “While you are working toward Saturday, you are not really competing against the other high school athletes. You are competing with the kids on the next level because that’s where you are trying to go. So once you look at it like that, it just changes your mindset. It is like a click in your mind. You either get that you have to have that type of determination, and you get it, or you don’t.”
There will be no de-recruiting needed here.
“It takes that bad workout,” he said. “It takes that, ‘Coach, I can’t do it no more,’ and then that right coach is going to tell you, ‘Hey man, is this what you want to do? Or is this not what you want to do with your life because you can leave,’ so sometimes it takes that I-can’t-really-do-it-feeling, but then it builds. It is like a callus. You have to do it to get better at it. You keep going. It makes it even more fun. You remember those days you really had to work through it.”
Georgia has told him that learning the playbook will be the hardest part of the transition.
“It is only hard when you don’t want to do something, or you don’t love it,” he said. “It’s not hard to eat your favorite food every day, is it? It would never be hard. So for me, it can’t really be hard. That’s something I love to do. I love to play the game of football. I’d do anything to play the game of football.”
He listed off all the things he’s missed out on because of training: Birthdays. Funerals. Reunions. Vacations. But then he said, “I wouldn’t change any of it” because he did it for football.
“When it all falls down, you’ve got the girlfriend that cheated on you,” he said. “Or that friend group that is just leaving you out. At the end of the day, you know what is never going to leave you? Them cleats. That ball. Whatever you have to do to work. It takes discipline to really put in the work.”
It has been a path.
“Whenever I make a decision, it is like, what would that do for me and my career?” he said. Where would that put me? If I keep eating this, how would that make my body feel for football? When you start thinking about stuff like that, it just changes the perspective. I really love this game. I want to protect my future in it.’
With a mindset like that, maybe the Dawgs needed to have two coaches calling him every day. Not just Thacker.
Seth Williams is down to two schools
Williams was committed to Clemson for a time, but there’s a belief around his recruitment that the Georgia offer led him to step back from that initial commitment.
He wanted to visit a few new schools that had offered, but he couldn’t do that as a Clemson verbal. That’s the traditional rule for Dabo Swinney. When he looks back on that decision, he acknowledges a misstep when he committed back on March 24 to the Tigers.
“Some things in life you just rush,” he said. “When we’re making decisions in the moment, I just felt like it was best in the moment.”
That was when his recruiting process started to take off. He decommitted on April 9.
The Dawgs did make a move for him during his weekend official. The program’s “honesty” was what really impressed him.
“It was everything you might think it was,” he said. “Georgia is the University of Georgia for a reason. They produce great players. They’re a great school. Great coaching staff. They’re just great all around. When you’re able to go on campus and really see that. The players that they bring it to compete with and be around those guys. You’ll understand why they produce guys like KJ Bolden and Malaki Starks.”
Those visit highs are over. But the feelings have not dipped.
“I still feel the same,” he said on Wednesday. “Usually, it goes down. You become level-headed, but I still feel the same about Georgia. I can say the same for Clemson also.”
He said the decision will be “really really tough.” Clemson treats him “like a family.” That’s the big draw there. He can check off many coaches he knows well on that staff.
“Just be able to come in and produce early on in the ACC,” he said. “Just be able to connect that Atlanta-to-Clemson pipeline.”
He still might take an official to Florida this weekend. That’s an option to monitor here.
Check out his junior film below.
