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Brock Bowers named top 10 player headed into 2023 by On3

Palmber-Thombsby:Palmer Thombs•02/20/23•

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Brock Bowers
Photo by Tony Walsh

On3 released its ranking for the top 10 players in College Football for 2023 on Monday, and the two-time defending National Champions have one of them on their team. Tight end Brock Bowers has been one of the best players in the sport the last two seasons. Entering his junior year, there’s no reason to believe that’ll change.

As a freshman in 2021, Bowers led Georgia in receiving with 56 catches, 882 yards and 13 touchdowns. He added another score on the ground, carrying the ball four times for 56 yards. Bowers came out of the gate strong with a team-high six receptions in the season-opening win over No. 3 Clemson. He followed that up with a huge performance against UAB, turning three catches into 107 yards and two scores including an 89-yarder. Two weeks later versus Vanderbilt, Bowers had a hat trick with two receiving scores and a touchdown on his first career carry. For that he was named SEC Freshman of the Week.

Bowers continued to dominate the game in his first season on campus, going for 101 yards and two touchdowns in a ranked matchup against Kentucky, two touchdowns in back to back games to close out Georgia’s undefeated regular season versus Charleston Southern and Georgia Tech and a then career-high 139 yards on 10 catches in the SEC Championship Game against Alabama. While the Bulldogs went home with their first loss of the season that day, Bowers found the end zone, his third straight of five consecutive games with a touchdown to end 2021. Not surprisingly, he earned SEC Freshman of the Year from both the AP and coaches as well as National Freshman of the Year from numerous organizations.

The Napa, Calif. native carried the momentum of his impressive freshman season into an equally outstanding sophomore year. In fact, Bowers totaled more yards from scrimmage with a total of 1,051 rushing and receiving yards combined. He caught more passes (63) and took home the John Mackey Award as the top tight end in the country while also being up for both the Rotary Lombardi Award as the nation’s top lineman and the Biletnikoff Award for the top receiver. He once again finished as Georgia’s leading receiver.

After a somewhat slow start to the season, Bowers broke out with five catches for 131 yards and two touchdowns against South Carolina. He also had a rushing touchdown just one week before putting up a pair of scores on the ground versus Kent State including a career-long 75-yarder. It took four more weeks before Bowers was back in the end zone but it came in a big way against Florida when he had a career-high 154 receiving yards with an impressive touchdown grab, keeping his eye on the ball that bounced several times off of the Gator defender. Bowers closed out the season with touchdowns in five of the last seven games including three in the last four. That included a score in the National Championship Game when he turned a season-high seven grabs into 152 yards in the 65-7 win over TCU.

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