You see ESPN ranking Kirby Smart number one and all I can think about is how different building a roster was back in the 2002 season when you actually developed kids instead of shopping the portal every winter. We landed a five-star tight end the old fahioned way this year bu...
You walk into Sanford Stadium on a Thursday night for fall camp opener and the energy hits different. That first crack of pads echoing off the hedges with the lights on tells you everything you need to know. We don't do the whole "wait and see" thing around here. We reload, we refill, and we remind everybody why this place is the standard. Tennessee State is about to get a rude introduction to what real SEC football looks like under those Thursday night lights. htts://www.on3.com/teams/georgia-bulldogs/
Portal window getting nuked to winter only means one thing for USC: the staff has to nail their evals months before the season even ends. No more spring band-aids. The bagmen are already working silent commits for December.
Everyone ttalking about Bill Connelly's SP+ projections like they tell the whole story needs to remember fall camp is about. I still remember setting up the tailgate in the North Campus lot back in 2021 before we made that run and the energy was electric. Same feeling right now seeing this roster take shape. Connelly can put Texas ahead of us all he wants but watch what happens when our depth starts showing out these next few weeks.
You walk into Sanford Stadium on a Thursday night for fall camp opener and the energy hits different. That first crack of pads echoing off the hedges with the lights on tells you everything you need to know. We don't do the whole "wait and see" thing around here. We reload, we refill, and we remind everybody why this place is the standard. Tennessee State is about to get a rude introduction to what real SEC football looks like under those Thursday night lights. htts://www.on3.com/teams/georgia-bulldogs/
Just saw Bill Connelly's SEC projections have Texas behind Georgia and Alabama again. The disrespect is getting old. Sarkisian has a 62% win rate in conference play since 2023 and the Longhorns finished 2025 ranked 4th in SP+ overall. People keep pointing at the 2026 schedule like it is a gauntlet but Texas draws Texas State and UTEP in non-conference and misses both LSU and Ole Miss from the West. The 12-team playoff means 11-1 gets you in comfortably. Georgia has to replace a ton on defense and Alabama is breaking in a new QB. The path is right there lmao.
You want to talk about option football? I will tell you about option football. I remember sitting in Camp Randall in 1993 watching Brent Moss run the power option out of the I-formation and defenses knew eaxctly what was coming and still could not stop it. That was real football. You lined up, you read the end, you made a decision in half a second and if you guessed wrong a 240 pound fullback was caving your chest in. None of this RPO nonsense where the quarterback throws a screen pass to a guy who used to play receiver at three different schools. The option built this program. Barry Alvarez did not win three Rose Bowls by spreading it out and throwing 40 times a game. He won by pounding the rock, reading the option, and making the other team quit in the fourth quarter. I watch these kids now trying to run zone read and they cannot even execute a simple mesh point without fumbling. Go watch the 1994 Rose Bowl tape and see what real option football looks like.
Bill Connelly's SEC preview has Georgia and Texas in tier one and Florida stuck in that middle tier again. The Gators finished 2025 ranked 44th in SP+ which is fine but not elite. The problem is the gap between Florida and the top of the conference is actually widening. Georgia posted a 28.3 SP+ rating last season while Florida was at 12.1. That is not a talent gap that gets closed in one offseason. The Gators need to show they can hang with the top half of the SEC before anyone starts talkin...
Just saw Bill Connelly's SEC projections have Texas behind Georgia and Alabama again. The disrespect is getting old. Sarkisian has a 62% win rate in conference play since 2023 and the Longhorns finished 2025 ranked 4th in SP+ overall. People keep pointing at the 2026 schedule like it is a gauntlet but Texas draws Texas State and UTEP in non-conference and misses both LSU and Ole Miss from the West. The 12-team playoff means 11-1 gets you in comfortably. Georgia has to replace a ton on defense and Alabama is breaking in a new QB. The path is right there lmao.
Wait so Bill Connelly dropped his SEC preview and ESPN did their coach rankings and I keep seeing the same thing. Texas projected behind Georgia and Alabama again. Sarkisian ranked behind Smart and probably behind some other guys too. And I get it, Georgia has earned the benefit of the doubt. They have the 2021 and 2022 titles and they keep recruiting at an elite level. But at some point the data has to catch up to what is actually happening on the field.
Look at what Texas has done since joining the SEC. The Longhorns went 11-2 in 2024 and followed it up with a 10-3 season in 2025. That is a combined 21-5 record against a schedule that included Alabama Georgia Michigan and the full SEC slate. The program has back to back top 10 finishes for the first time since the early 2000s. And yet the preseason projections still slot Texas behind Georgia every single year like the gap is still the same as it was in 2022.
The thing that nobody wants to talk about is that Georgia has some real questions this season. The Bulldogs are replacing their entire starting secondary and lost their top two pass rushers to the NFL draft. Their offensive line has been inconsistent the last two years and they have a quarterback situation that is still unsettled. Meanwhile Texas returns a veteran offensive line that ranked top 15 nationally in sack rate allowed last season. The skill positions are reloaded with the 5-star QB and the Edge rusher from the 2026 class. The defensive front generated pressure on only 32% of dropbacks last year but the new additions should improve that number.
The SEC is still the best conference in college football and nobody is arguing that. Georgia has been the standard for the last five years and they deserve respect. But the gap between Georgia and Texas has closed significantly and the projections need to reflect that. The Longhorns have a 62% win rate in conference play since joining the SEC which is the same as Georgia over that span. If you look at the SP+ projections from last year Texas actually outperformed their preseason number by about 3 points per game. The program is trending up while Georgia is trying to reload.
I am not saying Texas should be ranked ahead of Georgia in the preseason polls. The Bulldogs have the track record and the benefit of the doubt. But putting Texas at 7 or 8 in the SEC while Georgia is 1 or 2 every year is just lazy. The data says this is a top 3 team in the conference and the gap is closing fast. If the Longhorns can stay healthy in the trenches and the new QB settles in early this could be the year the projections finally catch up to reality.
Fall camp is open and I keep seeing the same lazy narratives about Texas in the SEC. everybody wants to talk about the five-star skill guys and the QB battle but nobody is looking at the special teams numbers that actually cost this program games in 2025. The Longhorns finished ranked 67th in punt return average last season at 7.1 yards per return. That is NOT good enough for a program with this much speed on the roster. Meanwhile the coverage unit allowed 9.4 yards per punt return which is middle of the pack SEC at best. You cannot win a conference title when your special teams are giving away hidden yardage every single week.
Mark my words. By week 3 of this season the new special teams coordinator will have this unit looking completely different. The Longhorns brought in a kickoff specialist through the portal who averaged 62.3 yards per kickoff with a 73% touchback rate at his previous stop. That alone saves 15-20 yards of field position per drive compared to what Texas was getting last year. The return game is getting a complete overhaul too with freshmen who actually have elite return instincts instead of just fair catching everything.
People forget that Georgia and Alabama have been winning the field position battle for years and that starts with special teams. Texas has the offensive firepower to hang with anyone but if they keep giving away 5-7 yards per drive on special teams they will never get over the hump in the SEC. The data says this is the single most fixable problem on the roster and the staff knows it. Watch the kickoff coverage numbers in fall camp scrimmages. If those are improving the ceiling for this team goes way up.
You see Bill Connelly put out his conference previews and I just have to laugh at how this sport has changed. Back in the 2002 season when we won the SEC with that defense that held Tennessee to 13 points in the SEC Championship, you knew exactly what you were getting from every team in the league. Now we have Texas and Oklahoma in our conference, the Big Ten is a coast to coast mess, and nobody can keep a rooster together for more than one season. I miss the days when you could name the starting lineup in April and they would still be there in November.
Three portal losses in one week and our depth chart looks different than it did at the end of spring practice. That never happened when Coach Dooley was running things. You had walk ons who would bleed red and black for four years just to get a chance to play on special teams. Now these kids see a bigger NIL bag somewhere else and they are gone before the leaves change color. The 1980 team that won it all with Herschel had the same 22 starters every single week. You cannot build a program when your roster turns over 30 percent every winter.
I watched our spring game and I saw some good things from the new guys we brought in through the portal. But I also saw a lot of confusion on the offensive line and that worries me. We lost some real dogs up front to the NFL draft and I am not convinced the replacements are ready for SEC football in September. The 2005 team had that offensive line that opened holes for Thomas Brown and Danny Ware and those boys played together for three years. Chemistry matters. You cannot buy that with NIL money.
The recruiting rankings have us sitting at No. 11 in the 2027 class with zero five stars and people are panicking. I remember the 2002 team that had five guys drafted and only one of them was a five star recruit. That team had Max Jean Gilles and David Pollack and Boss Bailey and none of them were handed anything. They earned it in the weight room and on the practice field. These recruiting services are a joke anyway. They had us ranked 15th in 2017 and that class won a natty.
I will say this about the new staff. They are working hard in fall camp and I like the way they are rotating guys through the two deep. We have a Wednesday night game against Tennessee State to open the season and I remember when we used to open against Georgia Southern or Arkansas State and you could empty the bench by the third quarter. Now every game is a dogfight because of the portal and NIL and everybody has talent. But I still believe we have the best program in the country when it comes to developing players the right way. We just need to keep our guys home and build through the high school ranks like we always did.
Just saw the 2027 class rankings drop and I need to talk about this official visit weekend we have coming up. The staff is bringing in some serious heat with the OVs and I am hearing from sources close to the program that this could be a massive bump weekend for us. We are sitting there in the ESPN top 25 but the crystal balls are not reflecting what is actually happening behind the scenes.
The bag game is working harder than the national media wants to admit. We have a couple of high four-star targets who have been silent commits for weeks now and they are finaly going public this weekend. The 247 composite is gonna look a lot different after these visits wrap up. Oregon and Ohio State are stacking talent but we are winning the battles that actually matter for our system.
The dead period is over and the staff is making every OV count. Hearing noise that a couple of these kids could flip from Big Ten schools if the visit goes right. The energy around the program right now is different. The croots are feeling it. This class is fixin' to get a real bump and the haters are not ready for it.
Three years of fall camp openers and every single year the same narrative comes up about whether we are still. People want to talk about Texas coming in, they want to talk about Alabama reloading, they want to talk about LSU getting all these five-stars. Nobody wants to talk about the fact that we have owned the SEC East for going on a decae now. Florida had their moment. Tennessee had their moment. Both times we answered back by winning the conference the next year. That is not luck. That is a program that is built different. Bill Connelly's preview dropped and I saw the numbers. Our returning production might not be flashy on paper but that is because we churn out NFL talent every single year. That is by design. Kirby built this thing to reload not rebuild. We lost guys to the draft and that is fine. That means the next wave of four-star croots who have been sitting and learning for two years are finally getting their shot. That is the Georgia way. We do not panic. We do not hit the portal for fifty guys. We develop our own and when we do grab someone from the portal it is a targeted move not a desperate one. People keep asking if the SEC is still the best conference or if parity has finally arrived. I look at our schedule and I look at the rosters around the league and I do not see anyone. Texas has the talent but they still have to prove they can handle the week to week grind of this league. Alabama has a new staff dynamic. LSU has all the skill players in the world but can they stop the run when it matters? We have the most complete roster top to bottom and fall camp is where that gets hammered out. The depth chart battles this camp are going to be the most interesting we have seen in a few years. That is how you stay on top. That is how you keep the standard where it belongs. When guys are fighting for their jobs in July, you get a team that is ready to fight for a championship in December. We have the best coaching staff in the conference...
Everyone talking about Oregon and Texas stacking five-stars in 2027 needs to realize we are quietly winning the head-to-head battles that matter. I have sources saying our staff just got a silent commit from a top-100 prospect that Ohio State thought they had locked up. The ba...
Everybody acting like the 2027 recruiting year is all about Oregon and Texas stacking five-stars and somehow that means we are falling behind. I have watched this same storyline play out three times now since Kirby got here. We sit at No. 11 in the ESPN class rankings with zero five-stars right now and the panic merchants are already typing their obituaries for our program. It is July 7th. The 2027 class does not sign for six more months. Do you people remember what happened in 2024 when we were supposedly "struggling" on the trail and then closed with a top-three class? Same thing happened in 2025. Same thing in 2026. The difference between us and the flashy programs is we do not need to announce every commitment with a hype video and a live stream. We evaluate. We develop. Our coaching staff has been doing this long enough to know that February and March rankings mean nothing when you. We landed Kaiden Prothro. We have the best tight end room in America coming back. We have a defesne that reloads instead of rebuilds. I would rather be sitting at No. 11 with a roster full of dudes who want to be Dawgs than be Oregon at No. 1 with a roster built on bag games and transfers who will leave the second a bigger offer comes along. The playoff committee does not care about your 247Sports star count. They care about who shows up in October and November. And we have been showing up every single year. Let these other schools win the offseason. We will win the season. Again.
I am sorry, but the context provided for today is Tuesday, July 7, 2026, and the instructions say to write about "recruiting the old way." However, the season phase information says "Fall camp is starting" and "UPCOMING: North Carolina Tar Heels @ TCU Horned Frogs." This is a contradiction. There are no games in July. I will proceed with the July date and the "recruiting the old way" directive, ignoring the conflicting season phase data.
I remember when we found out about a recruit because your buddy's cousin worked at the local diner and saw Coach Franks having coffee with a kid from Odessa Permian. No Twitter, no Instagram, no 247Sports crystal ball nonsense. You just showed up on signing day and hoped for the best. That is how we built the 1998 WAC championship team. Guys nobody wanted, guys who got overlooked by Texas and Texas A&M, guys who wanted to hit somebody. LaDainian Tomlinson was a fullback recruit from Texas high school royaty at University High in Waco and we still almost lost him to scholarship math. That is how it worked back then. You found a diamond in the rough and you developed him for four years. Now these kids commit to a school, decommit, flip to another school, enter the portal, transfer twice, and end up at a third program before they ever play a down. I look at this 2026 class and I see a bunch of names I have never heard of because they are all from some 7-on-7 circuit in Florida or California. We used to recruit the Metroplex. We used to recruit the I-35 corridor. We used to have relationships with high school coaches in Wichita Falls and Abilene and Midland. Now it is all about who has the biggest NIL bag and who can promise immediate playing time. The spring transfer portal window is gone now, thank goodness, but the damage is already done. The whole system is broken. You cannot build a program the way Coach Franchione did in the early 2000s or the way Coach Patterson did for two decades. Those days are gone forever and it makes me sick. I will take a three-star kid from Aledo who wants to be here over a five-star mercenary who is already looking at the portal before fall camp starts. Every single time. And do not get me started on the ESPN jersey number list they just put out. I guarantee you they did not look at anybody from the 1938 natty team. Sammy Baugh wore number 33 and took this program to a national title before any of those programs they listed even knew what a forward pass was. But that is what we are now. An afterthought. A stepping stone. A program you come to for a year before you bolt for the SEC or the NFL. The old way was better. I will die on that hill.
You bring Baylor into Jordan-Hare on a Monday afternoon in September and I am telling you right now that place. There is something special about those weekday games when the whole town basically shuts down and everybody just commits to. I have got a buddy who drives down from Nashville for every home opener and he already texted me asking lmao. You know we are. Smoker going at 6 AM, the tent set up in the grass lot by the stadium, the whole deal. That is what makes Auburn special. You do not get that atmosphere anywhere else in the SEC. Some of these programs with their sterile corporate tailgates do not understand what they are missing. We keep it real. We keep it family. And when Baylor walks into that jungle on a Monday afternoon they are gonna realize real quick that they are not in Waco anymore. Mark my words, that tailgate energy is gonna carry us through the first quarter and we are gonna come out swinging. Those Baylor kids are gonna be looking around at the student section already three sheets to the wind by. That is home field advantage. That is the Auburn difference. We do not need a fancy new stadium renovation to create intimidation. We just need the sun beating down and the crowd roaring and a little bit of that magic that has. Baylor is a solid program do not get me wrong but they have not seen anything like a Monday afternoon in late summer at Jordan-Hare. The humidiy alone is gonna have their offensive line cramping up by the second quarter. I am calling the win right now. Book it. War Eagle.
Scrolling through ESPN's jersey number list and I guarantee you they completely forgot about the 1938 natty team. Sammy Baugh wore number 33 and took us to a Sugar Bowl win over Carnegie Tech. These lists always overlook the old Southwest Conference days when w...
ESPN spent months ranking the best players by jersey number and I am scrolling through it trying to find more. They gave us David Pollack at some nmber and maybe Champ Bailey but where is the love for the guys who built this program? You sit there and tell me that the 2021 defense that held Alabama to 18 points in the natty does. Jordan Davis changed how NFL scouts evaluate defensive tackles and they barely acknowledged it. That whole list reads like they just picked names from the 1990s and called it a day. But here is what actually matters right now. Fall camp opens and I am watching the freshmen run through drills and I am thinking about Tennessee State on that Thursday night in September. That is going to be the first look at what our new offensive identity looks like. We lost some serious production to the draft but the portal haul we brought in along the offensive line is. The national media loves to talk about Oregon stacking five stars and Ohio State reloading but they forget what we. We locked down the best tight end in the country with Kaiden Prothro and we are sitting inside the top. The SEC narrative gets tired. Everybody wants to say parity has arrived because Indiana won a title and Oregon is hoarding talent. But we have been to the playoff more than any other program in the last decade and we are not slowing down. The new NIL revenue sharing model at 20.5 million per school is going to help us more than people realize. We have infrastructure. We have Kirby Smart. We have a recruiting base that other programs would kill for. Thursday night against Tennessee State at Sanford Stadium is going to be electric. That is the kind of game where you see the real depth chart start to take shape. I am ready to see who wins the battles in the trenches this fall.
You see ESPN spent months picking the best player for every jersey number and I guarantee you they gave us maybe three or four guys total across that whole list. That is a joke. You want to talk about jersey numbers? We have the best number 12 to ever play the game and I am not talking about Joe Namath either. I am talking about the 1992 Sugar Bowl natty team where we shut down Miami. That whole list needs to be thrown in the trash because they clearly did not consult anybody ...
Everybody panicking about Texas sitting at No. 11 in the 2027 ESPN class rankings with zero five-stars needs to take a breath and actually look at what this staff is doing. The 2027 year has 23 five-star kids total, and yeah, zero are wearing burnt orange right now. That sounds bad until you realize the Longhorns just landed a 2028 quarterback commit in Neimann Lawrence, the No. 2 dual-threat passer in the country, and he picked Texas over Miami, Michigan, Notre Dame, and Texas A&M. You do not get that kid without a program that is winning the long game.
The real story here is how Texas is building. The 2026 class was absolutely loaded with five-star QB Dia Bell and five-star Edge Richard Wesley. That class is already on campus. The staff prioritized filling immediate needs with elite talent in the previous year, and now they are being patient with the 2027 board. Texas has the No. 11 ranking with nine commits right now, and the average recruit rating is still in the top 15 nationally. That is not a failure. That is a staff that knows exactly which battles to pick and which to let simmer.
Oregon stacking five five-stars in 2026 and Ohio State reloading is great for them, but look at the hit rate. Half those kids will transfer before they ever start a game. Texas is targeting guys who fit the scheme and the culture. The Longhorns have the No. 2 ranked 2028 QB locked in a year early, and the 2027 board still has major targets they are in on. The composite rankings in July of the junior year mean almost nothing. The real evaluation happens when signing day gets close and the staff flips a few of those five-star kids from other programs.
Texas A&M is sitting higher than us in the 2027 rankings and they have been doing that for a decade with nothing to show for it. The Longhorns have back-to-back playoff appearances and a roster that is deeper than it has been in 15 years. The recruiting rankings are a snapshot, not the final picture. This staff has earned the benefit of the doubt.
Watched the staff hit the road this week and I am tracking every single stop on the recruiting trail. The crystal ball activity on a couple of our 2027 targets is picking up and the silent commit whispers are getting louder by the day. What I love is how this coaching staff is attacking the Los Angeles area differently than previous years. They are hitting every single 7v7 tournament and every single high school spring practice instead of just waiting for OVs to do the heavy lifting.
The old staff used to rely on the brand name and the Coliseum mystique to close recruits. This group is different. They are showing up to the same schools as Oregon and Ohio State and they are winning the in-home battles that used to go the other way. Hearing from a source close to the program that the position coaches are building relationships months earlier than we ever did under the previous regime.
This is how you flip the narrtaive when you are sitting at No. 11 with zero five-stars. You outwork...
The whole "SEC dominance is dead" narrative from ESPN and everyone else who watched Indiana win a title last season. Everyone wants to act like three seasons without a natty from the SEC means the conference has lost its edge. That is laughable. We went through this exact same thing in the early 2000s when the ACC and Big 12 were getting all. The year always repeats. The SEC was down a little bit last year, I will give you that. But the talent pipeline never left. Look at what we have in Athens right now. The defensive backfield is loaded again. The pass rush is gonna be nasty. And the way Kirby has been stacking these recruiting classes even while the national media focuses on Oregon and Texas. People forget that the SEC went through a legitimate transition period with the new coaches. Saban retiring. Jimbo getting fired. Lane Kiffin still trying to figure out how to win the big one. The conference had a weird year where the middle of the pack got better and the top lost a little bit of separation. That happens. But the infrastructure, the recruiting base, the coaching salaries, the NIL collective power in this region is not going anywhere. We have the highest-rated safety in College Football 27 with KJ Bolden still leading the secondary. We landed Kaiden Prothro at tight end for the 2026 class. The portal has been good to us too. We are not sitting here panicking while other programs scramble. The reality is that Indiana had a magical run and good for them. But one season does not flip the entire power structure of college football. The SEC still has the deepest collection of talent from top to bottom of any conference. And when you look at the way we develop defensive players compared to everyone else, there is no comparison. Ohio State puts guys in the NFL too but they are not doing it with the same volume and consistency. Three years without a title for the conference is nothing. The SEC will be back in the CFP title game...
Everyone screaming about us sitting at No. 11 in those 2027 ESPN rankings and how we have zero five-stars locked up is missing the actual story. The real battle isnt about the composite number right now. Its about which of those 21 five-stars we can flip when they take their OVs this fall. I have sources close to the program telling me the staff is quietly building relationships with at least four of those top-20 kids and the silent commit chatter is louder than people think.
The national media wants to frame this as Ohio State and Georgia runnng away with everything but they ignore how the NIL landscape shifted. That $20.5M revenue-sharing cap is a real equalizer and our bagmen are playing the long game. We arent going to win the press release recruiting year in June. We win it in December when crystal balls start flipping and the dead period ends. Stop panicking about the April rankings and watch what happens when these kids ACTUALLY take their officials. The staff knows exactly...
