Devonte Wyatt, Quay Walker, Lewis Cine on playing with talented first-rounders at Georgia

The Georgia Bulldogs had a very successful night at the 2022 NFL Draft, setting a new draft record with five defensive players taken in the first round. That broke a previous record held by Florida State and Miami, who had four in 2006 and 2004, respectively.

Travon Walker was the first Georgia player off the board, as he was the No. 1 overall pick by the Jaguars. Jordan Davis then went No. 13 to the Eagles, and Quay Walker and Devonte Wyatt went to the Packers at No. 22 and No. 28 overall. Lewis Cine rounded out the first round, going No. 32 overall to the Vikings.

Following the draft, Wyatt, Quay Walker and Cine opened up on what that kind of success meant for their fellow Georgia stars.

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“I mean to be honest, it was fun to me just to watch all your guys make plays,” Wyatt said. “Playing with that many people with Jordan, Travon, Quay, Lewis, Nakobe, it’s just amazing because you’ve never seen that much talent on one team, or definitely on a defense.”

Cine: Georgia’s brotherhood led to NFL Draft success

For Walker, he believes that the way that head coach Kirby Smart runs the program helped the players out when it came to having success in the draft. The Bulldogs defense was dominant, but the preparation was a big part of that.

“I just think just the way that we prepare, that Georgia prepares us, the way our program is trained helps us get to the next level,” Walker said. “Where we’re supposed to be, what we always have been a certain standard that we apply ourselves to on and off the field. That just helps, as you can see by me being the third guy and not gonna be the last.

“For me, it brought the best out of me because it’s a lot of guys that’s good. So for us, it was always a race to the ball, no matter what it means. It’s kind of, by the guys we have, you want to get that in the hurry. Just say for instance somebody’s running the ball, you want to make sure you get down in the hurry-up, whatever the case may be. But playing with a group of guys that I played with, it’s something that I wish probably wouldn’t have ended so fast. But overall, just a great thing playing with a great group of guys like that.”

In Cine’s eyes, Georgia’s success in the NFL Draft went beyond the play on the field. The Bulldogs were a tight-knit group on defense and played for each other, allowing the tremendous success that we saw last season.

“I think it’s the whole brotherhood aspect that we had on our team,” Cine said. “We were not just doing it for ourselves, we were doing it for the guy right next to us. We knew each other’s why’s, we knew each other on a personal level so it made it easy to just play ball. And loving each other for every play we made.”