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Georgia football winners and losers following 2025 roster reset
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Georgia football winners and losers following 2025 roster reset
The window to declare for the NFL draft has closed. As has Georgia’s window to have players leave via the transfer portal.
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Loser: The offensive line. Ratledge and Truss exhausted eligibility. But Dylan Fairchild and Jared Wilson made a choice. And apparently it wasn't difficult for them to decide that they didn't want to stay in Georgia's current OL room.
so the passing game will be the strong suit; if so there needs to be some serious improvment in blocking to facilitate that approach. Will the Robinsons ever play at RB?
I wouldn't count 'Roster Retention' as a winning category...just yet. First, I consider losing Wilson as a major setback, so we didn't come out of the first transfer portal unscathed. And remember, there is another limited transfer portal in late April. Our guys can't transfer within the SEC, but they can certainly move to other conferences. The B1G is looking very good right now considering how well they have done in the playoffs. Penn State bringing back Allar, their stout RB room, and other key pieces.
Rusty Mansell said Wilson wanted to lineup as a D-end, stick his hand in the ground and just rush the passer, didn't want to play in space. WHy couldn't we work with him? Of course you know money is usually the main thing.
Here's the thing, with NIL and the transfer portal, college football in general will be a mess. They are young, ignorant kids - they don't have the experience to understand that the grass isn't always greener. A lot of them don't come from great home environments where a dad told them to stick it out and work. They will jump for the closest shiny offer. To make tough, resilient football players, you have to experience hardship to grow. If a kid doesn't get to play the way he wants, he's gone. He never grows. This situation is going to hurt football everywhere. Even the NFL won't get the kids with training like years past. And mark my words, Coaches will get real tired of this mess. Saban got out, because he could see it coming. I've noticed that Nylon Green is transferring again. This current situation isn't as good for the kids as everyone thinks.
4-3 DE and 3-4 DE are very different in their primary responsibilities. 3-4 OLB is not that different than 4-3 DE but they don't rush the passer on every down. UGA plays mostly 3-4. I am not sure why unless it is because there are more LB sized players than there are DE sized (think Travon Walker, Mykel Williams) players to stock the roster with. I guess (?) having 4 read and react players (clean LB's) is an advantage over having 4 players (DT, DE) immediately engaged with the OL.
3-4 also seems to spread out the defense which may help in this era of spread formations on offense. In modern CFB being able to play in space is an advantage. Being a 1 dimensional pass rusher may be a bad career move. Going toe to toe with big, strong, agile professional OT's on every play is a tough way to make a buck. Remember Chase Young the all world 4-3 DE at OSU? He has just about washed out of the NFL.
As of right now, UGA will be more reliant on young players on the DL than at any point in the CKS era. 1st or 2nd year players (Ogboko, JJA, Griffin, Gibson, QJohnson, NJohnson, JThomas) will have to step up and be rotational players in'25.
Winner: Donte Williams 🤣🤣🤣🤔🤔🤔 You’re joking, right!?
I’d agree with offensive line being a Loss, but for a different reason. If I never see another member of that unit again I’m ok as we were horrible there, sometimes it’s easier to start from scratch than re train.
if say we lost at o line because Stacey searles is still on staff
@reddawg1 The only way to "work with him" would have been to switch UGA from a 3-4 defense to a 4-2-5. Which is something that UGA should consider on its own merits. The 3-4 defense was created to defend I-formation and old school pro-style offenses (think 70s - 90s) and updated in the 2000s to defend the west coast offense and Tom Brady. It isn't suited for defending spread offenses that have ditched fullbacks, tailbacks and true TEs for slot WRs, third down backs and inline WRs. Example: the X WRs - Mike Williams, 6'5" 235 lbs - and RBs - LenDale White, 235 lbs - for those Pete Carroll early 2000s USC teams are playing TE and LB now. (Yes, Brock Bowers is a WR in that era because he is shorter and smaller than Williams, Dwayne Jarrett, Calvin Johnson and a lot of other split ends back then.) Tailbacks Cadillac Williams - 220 lbs - Ronnie Brown - 235 lbs - and Brandon Jacobs - 265 lbs - from that 2003 Auburn are playing LB and DE today. You no longer need 3 LBs, let alone 4, in an era where 3rd and 2 is now a passing/RPO down. The 3-4 was for the era when teams would call counter and sweep running plays on 3rd and 4.
Note that all 4 teams in the semifinal run the 4-2-5, where several ran the 3-4 in the past. In particular, Notre Dame's DC Al Golden was a longtime 3-4 guy. It is one of the reasons why Saban, the guy who made the 3-4 popular (again) on the college level in the first place, retired. His early Alabama title teams had 360 lb. DLs and LBs that were 255, 260 and 270! He tried to adapt by playing the guys that he used to recruit at LB at DE and that he used to recruit at safety for LB, but still couldn't defend those spread guys in space, with that 52-49 loss to Tennessee that knocked a team that had 10 NFL draft picks out of the SEC title game being the best example.
But UGA should not make that switch to accommodate guys like Damon Wilson and Bear Alexander. It actually is a good idea to play 3-4 in college because it prepares you to play both 3-4 and 4-3 in the NFL. But Wilson and Alexander were 5 star recruits who wanted to enter the draft and be 1st round picks after their 3rd year. Neither was going to put up the stats to be 1st round picks by then. If UGA is going to stick with the 3-4, where guys are going to have to sit on the bench for 2-3 years in order to add the muscle and learn the 2 gap skills to be effective in that scheme, they are going to have to do a better job identifying kids willing to stay in Athens for the long haul in recruiting. Recruiting more in-state kids like the staff did this year is a great start. But yes, the staff is also going to need to try to find transfer portal kids who can play in the 3-4 scheme too.
@jdatl3 Meh. The NIL and transfer portal aren't as big a change as scholarship restrictions and Prop 48. Went from being able to carry almost 200 guys who could barely read and write to 85 kids who have to make satisfactory academic progress to keep their scholarships.
Good news: starting in 2025, teams will go back to the old 1978 limit of 105 players, as well as go up from a 25 scholarship max to 30. That's very bad news for Group of 5 and FCS schools, but it will mitigate the transfer portal and NIL issues for the programs that learn how to rely more on very good college players as opposed to kids who are using the NCAA as an NFL minor league. That is what Notre Dame is doing right now under Marcus Freeman for both high school recruits and transfer portal kids. From watching them on TV, lots of their portal kids in particular came from similar private schools i.e. Duke, Miami, Stanford or other ACC schools like Clemson and had mediocre stats, which meant that they know that they aren't going to the NFL. So they transferred to Notre Dame to get master's degrees to set themselves up for $200k salaries in corporate America after they are done with college football. In the past, Notre Dame had a limit to the number of kids that they could carry on scholarship because tuition there is so expensive - they were nowhere near 85 - but now NIL is taking care of that. They'll be able to fill up their 105 slots with 21-23 year olds raided from their ACC brethren (which now include SMU, Stanford and Cal in addition to Duke, Wake Forest, Georgia Tech and Miami) plus other "nerd schools" Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Purdue, Baylor etc. easily. They are ahead of a game that UGA is going to have to quickly learn how to play.
@benzone "Notre Dame had a limit to the number of kids that they could carry on scholarship because tuition there is so expensive - they were nowhere near 85" - I don't follow your logic. If you said ND was not a preferred destination for non-affluent walk on players, because of the tuition (among other) costs, that would make sense.
IF ND was self limiting the number of scholarships awarded to CFB players, as has been discussed by ND defenders, it would be because the admission "standards" expected of an accepted ND freshman student was not attained by incoming freshmen football playing applicants.
My understanding of the 105 scholarship limit (and I may be wrong) is that yes the scholarships go up from 85 to 105 (or possibly more IF scholarships can be split like w/baseball). BUT 105 is now the total number of football players in the program. All on scholarship. No more walk on players. All those walk on and scout players that teams like UGA used in practice to double reps by using 2 fields/simultaneous practices will either disappear or be part of the 105 total.
Coaches are complaining that they will no longer have enough players to adequately practices during the season when injuries mount. This alone could force a change to the way UGA has traditionally practiced.
Damon Wilson signing with Missouri hurts!! Etienne leaving as well.
The biggest loser is all Georgia fans who will apparently have to put up with Mike Bobo another year. Yeah, he's Kirby's best bud, but really, at this level, is friendship more important that one notch above mediocre? Is that fair to the fans who have grown to expect Georgia playing at its highest level? Bobo has never won anywhere he's went. He is what he is. No creativity at all. Why won't Smart admit that?