NFL Draft Remains Georgia's Best Recruiting Pitch

National Championships and prospective NIL deals are great, but Georgia's best recruiting pitch is sending players to the NFL Draft.

“Recruiting is the lifeblood of college football.”

We’ve all heard that proverb regarding college recruiting a million times. It’s absolutely true, even in the day and age of NIL and the Transfer Portal, recruiting the best talent to your school remains the best and most consistent path to success. 

Sure, you can build teams through the Transfer Portal, like Michigan State has tried to do, but it’s volatile. Typically, the best players in the country go to the best teams, and once you’re on the best team, you don’t leave unless there’s someone there that’s better than you, typically.

With all the changes to the inner dynamics of the sports, how do teams stay ahead of the pack when it comes to recruiting? The simple answer you’ll hear most people put out there is money. NIL deals, collectives, bag men; money is king, right? Maybe in some cases, but for the high-end players, the dudes that you hear about from the time that they’re 7th graders, one of the biggest factors remains NFL development.

Can you take the 5-star athlete and mold them into the First Round pick they’ve always been told they should be? Can you take the 3-star that no one gave a shot to be a P5 athlete, much less an NFL guy, and develop him into a Draft pick? NFL > NIL, if you will.

They’re fair questions to ask. Per ActionNetwork.com, Bryce Young was the top-NIL earner in college sports in 2022, with an NIL Evaluation of $3.2 million. That’s a lot of cheddar, but in comparison to 2021’s No. 1 pick Trevor Lawrence’s $23 million signing bonus, it seems almost insignificant.

That’s where Georgia, under Kirby Smart, has taken massive strides. Smart isn’t just a great college football coach, he’s an elite talent developer. For a long time, the biggest “NFL factory” resided in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and while Nick Saban is still an outstanding producer of professional football players, Kirby Smart and his staff aren’t far off.

From 2017 - 2019, Alabama landed 11 5-stars per 247Sports, while Georgia landed 15. Of those players - excluding transfers - Alabama had 6 selected in the First or Second Round of the NFL Draft. Georgia had 5. Bama hit at 55%, while Georgia hit at 33%. 

Now, to be fair, Georgia still has 5-stars from those classes that have yet to enter the Draft & four who transferred (including 1st-rounder Justin Fields), but Bama still owns that “Factory” title.

Georgia can catch up in a hurry. The Bulldogs signed four 5-stars in the 2020 class: Kelee Ringo, Broderick Jones, Jalen Carter, and Darnell Washington. All four have received First-round grades.

The trajectory of Georgia’s NFL production has skyrocketed since Smart’s arrival, and it’s only going up. We all know about Georgia’s historic run in the 2022 NFL Draft, but when you look back over the last few decades, the change in Athens has been truly incredible.

Georgia has had more First Round picks in the past three years than they had in all of the 1990’s. Staggering.

In the new era of college football, Kirby Smart and Georgia can still rely on maybe the most powerful recruiting pitch there is: If you come to Georgia, there's a very high probability that you end up in the NFL. Fully guaranteed contracts hit just a little different than NIL deals.

Other Georgia News:

• Way Too Early Look at Georgia's 2023 Receiving Corps
• Adonai Mitchell Enters the NCAA Transfer Portal
• UAB Takes Key Staffer Away From Kirby Smart and Georgia

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