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Dominick Blaylock offers option for depth as he gets more comfortable

Palmber-Thombsby:Palmer Thombs•08/15/22•

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Tony Walsh/UGA Sports Communications

Georgia has long needed wide receivers to step up. That was the case this spring after the departure of George Pickens, Jermaine Burton and others from the 2021 roster. That remained the case after the Bulldogs didn’t land one out of the transfer portal this summer. And that remains the case this fall with head coach Kirby Smart putting an emphasis on the fact after Georgia’s first scrimmage of the season on Saturday.

Sure, Adonai Mitchell, Ladd McConkey and Kearis Jackson provide Georgia with a strong starting lineup. None of them missed time last season when that couldn’t have been said about others. But it’s still important to establish depth after the top three in case injury happens. Well, in its effort to do so, Georgia is now dealing with injury at wide receiver as Arian Smith suffered a high ankle sprain that will require surgery and cause him to miss some time, making it even more important that others emerge. One name that has been mentioned some, but maybe not enough, junior wide receiver Dominick Blaylock.

Blaylock has had his own battles with injury, missing all of the 2020 season to a torn ACL after the same injury cause his 2019 season to be cut short. Recovering from that, he didn’t make an appearance on the field until late in the 2021 season. He caught two passes for 11 yards, but Georgia is hoping that as Blaylock continues to get more comfortable, he can potentially return to his pre-injury form when he hauled in 18 passes for 310 yards and five touchdowns, second on the team that season, in 2019.

“I can’t imagine getting hurt and getting reinjured two years… Probably a lot of times question whether or not what if I do all of this again. What if I do all of this and it happens again? I’m sure every day, anybody that has ever played basketball and you roll your ankle, you don’t jump for a month. Imagine tearing your ACL and then you do it again. How long is that going to take to recover on the mental side, forget the physical side, and just being able to get out there and go,” Georgia offensive coordinator Todd Monken said about Blaylock last week. “Over time he has. Gotten to the point where he feels more and more comfortable. He’s always been a crafty route runner. He’s probably more crafty than he is fast. He has a knack. Some guys just have a knack for getting open and making plays and contested catches and you can see that every day that he is out there.”

With Arian Smith sidelined for the foreseeable future, that knocks one option out of the group of possibilities for Georgia looking to establish that wide receiver depth. Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint is still around, as are some of the younger guys like Dillon Bell and Jackson Meeks, but if Dominick Blaylock can return to his 2019 form, he might be even more than just a rotational player for the Bulldogs in 2022.

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