Why Georgia's 2021 outlier 'COVID baby' class could spur the 'Dawgs quest for a three-peat

NASHVILLE — Georgia is the preseason favorite to win a third-straight national championship, and while the Bulldogs will have to buck nearly 90 years of history to pull off such an incredible feat, there is a slew of reasons why they just might become the first program since Minnesota to do so. 

Kirby Smart is the best head coach in America. The program has unparalleled buy-in and investment. The Bulldogs are deep and talented. They’re also the best at evaluating and developing players, as evidenced by their “COVID baby” recruiting class in 2021. 

“We signed 20 high school players the COVID year, and 17 of those 20 are still in our program,” head coach Kirby Smart said. 

“That’s hard to find anywhere in the country. They didn’t get to go on visits. They didn’t get to go on official visits. These guys are the core leadership group of our team.”

A strong foundation of Georgia’s 2023 football team hails from a crop of recruits who built relationships with coaches over Zoom and submitted workout videos as part of the evaluation process. While many consider the COVID class a wash for this very reason, the Bulldogs had an absurd hit rate compared to even the most typical cycles. 

Of the 17 players still on the roster, eight project as surefire starters for the two-time reigning national champs. Several others could emerge as starters this fall, too, while nearly all are part of the Bulldogs’ two-deep.

Notables like tight end Brock Bowers, defensive backs Karmari Lassiter and Javon Bullard, right tackle Amarius Mims and inside linebackers Jamon Dumas-Johnson and Smael Mondon are among the best players on Georgia’s team in 2023. 

One of the three members of the 2021 class who is no longer in Athens is wideout AD Mitchell, who caught a touchdown in all four playoff games the last two years but transferred to Texas this offseason to be closer to his daughter. 

“We recruited the right people,” Smart said. 

“I’m proud of the fact that 17 of 20 guys are still in our organization from a COVID year in which we didn’t get to host an official visit. They didn’t get to go and do unofficial visits, and we’ve retained those guys because we’ve invested in them as freshmen. We’ve invested in them as sophomores. They’ve seen kind of return on investment for older players that stuck around.

“They watched a Quay Walker not start sophomore year but start his junior year, and then go a first-round pick his senior year. So they’ve seen a lot of evidence of the success, but they’ve also seen the buy-in of the leadership. I challenge anybody to dig up that COVID class, and that’s been a really good — and you know what we evaluated that class on? Love of the game and being selfless. Like that’s not hard. It’s hard to find, but it’s not hard to evaluate.”

It was for most programs, but clearly, not for Smart & Co., at Georgia.

So how’d they do it?

How Georgia recruited and evaluated its 2021 ‘COVID baby’ class

Three years ago, UGA essentially tested prospects on their willingness to prove they were all-in by having them film home workouts. The idea was to weed out the recruits who weren’t committed enough to “take the time to actually set up their phone and video themselves doing these exercises,” Smart explained. 

If they did?

“It meant they gave enough of a (blank) to really care,” Smart told On3. 

Bowers, who has become the nation’s best tight end, thought all the videos were “to make sure we weren’t getting fat and lazy over the COVID break,” but they were more intentional than that.

“The barometer for taking kids in that class was for us to shoot out a video and say this is how we want you to work out. We want to see you do this workout,” Smart told On3. 

“Javon Bullard pops up in my head because he couldn’t go anywhere else, so he was set up at home in his backyard doing drills. I’m like, “This guy is in the weeds out there doing drills. If he’s willing to do this there’s a good chance he’s a good fit for our program.”

Smart also pointed to Lassiter, who was a fringe 4-star recruit from Tuscaloosa who has developed into a potential 1st Round Draft pick with the Bulldogs. During the recruiting process, Lassiter had offers from Alabama, Auburn and others, but with a family full of Peach State natives, he pinned for a scholarship from UGA.

“That guy must have sent us 800 videos of himself during COVID because he wanted to prove he was worthy of a Georgia scholarship, and he earned that,” Smart said. 

“Georgia was one of the last schools to offer me. I was like, ‘What’s up with these guys?’ I had all the others I wanted except for Georgia,” Lassiter said. 

So I was like, ‘I’m going to do whatever I can to get this offer.’

And he did. So did Bullard, a 3-star not ranked among the Top 500 prospects nationally. Dumas-Johnson is an All-SEC standout who wasn’t a Top 250 prospect, either. 

Yet they all bought into Georgia’s creative recruiting approach, and it’s worked out for all parties involved. 

“Most of the kids bought into that and said, ‘I’ll do it. They weren’t stuck on the rankings,” Smart said. 

“It was a unique class.”

And it could be the difference in Georgia’s unique quest for a three-peat. 

There are plenty of reasons why the Bulldogs could go back-to-back-to-back, but make no mistake, there are just as many reasons why they won’t. 

Be it complacency. Injuries. Bad luck. Hell, basic history. 

And yet, in a sport where the Bulldogs already have so many advantages over their counterparts, an 85% retention rate — with the majority of that group developing into future NFL Draft picks — on a recruiting class most other programs missed on or have recruited over could be what tips the scales this fall.

Even compared to their biggest challengers, Georgia is an outlier.  Alabama, which signed the No. 1 overall class in 2021, and Ohio State both lost six players each off their 2021 classes. That’s not bad, but that’s not cutting into Georgia’s margin for error. 

While other programs have had to fill holes via the transfer portal or future recruiting classes because of misses during the COVID class, Georgia was able to evaluate, develop and retain a group that just might be an outlier for more than one reason by the end of the 2023 season.