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Georgia

A youth movement has arrived at Georgia ahead of 2025 season

Jeremy Johnsonby: Jeremy Johnson07/17/25JeremyO_Johnson
KJ Bolden/Georgia
Photo by Jeremy Johnson.

Georgia has continued to recruit at a high level in the dust of back-to-back national championship seasons in 2021 and 2022.

If the Bulldogs want to defend their SEC Championship title in 2025, they will need many of the players recruited in the last two classes to be reasons why.

Georgia had the No. 1 overall class in the 2024 Industry Football Team Recruiting Rankings. Kirby Smart and staff followed that up with the No. 2 overall class in the 2025 Industry Football Team Recruiting Rankings.

Those young players make up 54 percent of Georgia’s roster in 2025. Smart touched on how important their youth will be this fall as he spoke to the media in Atlanta during SEC Media Days this week.

“Our team is going to be comprised of 54 percent first and second-year players,” Smart said in his opening statement. “Very big change for us.”

Georgia featured a long list of older players in its program over the last few years. Those players were coincidentally playing key roles on the offensive and defensive lines. Xavier Truss, Nazir Stackhouse, and Warren Brinson had all been at Georgia for longer than four years.

Players like Mykel Williams, Malaki Starks, Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins, Smael Mondon, Dylan Fairchild, Chas Chambliss, and Dan Jackson had three or more years of game experience under their belts.

Replacing the in-game experience is going to be the challenge this fall for Georgia.

“I thought last year was probably one of the most veteran teams I’ve been a part of,” Smart said. “You guys know the COVID class has kind of aged out, so we had multiple players that were in their fifth and sixth year last year, especially across the offensive and defensive lines. We had a tremendous group that all went out kind of at the same time, aged out at the same time, and so we’re going to be really young, especially on the offensive and defensive lines.”

Youthful energy beginning to take hold at Georgia

Smart can see the upside that comes with some new faces and voices beginning to take the lead in Athens. It’s a bit of a fresh start.

“What do you get with that? You get youthful exuberance,” Smart said. “We’ve had practices that have been spirited. We had a great spring practice that we talked about the words fire, passion and energy.”

Georgia returns some experience from some youthful faces. CJ Allen and Dayle Everette were in Atlanta with Smart this week. Both have two years of starting experience. Freshman All-American KJ Bolden is also looking to be more of a leader, as well as running backs Nate Frazier, Roderick Robinson and tight ends Oscar Delp and Lawson Luckie.

Georgia opens the 2025 season with Marshall on Aug 30. at Dooley Field at Sanford Stadium.

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