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Georgia preseason camp the site of competition before the competition

On3 imageby:Jake Rowe•08/18/23•

JakeMRowe

Oscar Delp
Georgia tight end Brock Bowers (19), Georgia tight end Oscar Delp (4) during Georgia’s practice session in Athens, Ga., on Tuesday, March 28, 2023. (Tony Walsh/UGAAA)

There are scoreboards on the Georgia practice fields. There’s a two-sided one outside and there’s another inside the “House of Payne” indoor facility. It looks like a normal scoreboard but it doesn’t keep score, at least not the vast majority of the time. It’s job is to keep up with practice and how much time is left within each period of the workout. Still, without an official score being kept, the competitions are ongoing.

As the Bulldogs have put it in the past, every player on the practice field is competing for a piece of the pie, even if that piece is just a crumb. Starting positions, on offense, defense, and special teams — are the biggest pieces of that pie. Then there are spots in the rotation and specific roles in specific packages that need to be earned. Georgia wants to play as many players as it can.

Lastly, if players can’t break through in those areas, they want to be the first guy in during mop-up duty. Every on-field snap offers a potential two-fold benefit. It’s both an opportunity to get better and a chance to impress. It isn’t much different during camp.

“I feel like it is very competitive,” Jalon Walker, a sophomore linebacker, said on Thursday. “Having that opportunity to be on the field for myself, I take every day not with a grain of salt. I take every day with pride. I take everyday knowing that you don’t know when your last snap is. And I take every day with a hard working, positive attitude so that when I have that opportunity, I can seize it and attack it.”

Getting on the field for the back-to-back National Champions isn’t easy. Georgia has stacked elite recruiting classes since Kirby Smart arrived in Athens and even with early departures to the NFL and losses to the transfer portal, the Bulldogs are considered by many as the most talented team in the country.

There are programs who can absolutely hang with Georgia when it comes to the best 22 players. When it comes to 23 through 50 or 60, however, the Bulldogs tend to start pulling away, oftentimes with haste.

The players didn’t just start competing with the start of camp — take the tight ends for example. According to Oscar Delp, a sophomore who served the No. 3 tight end for Georgia a season ago, his position group tried to see who could put on the most weight this offseason. He didn’t reveal the winner, but that small-group battle served to keep them sharp for what was to come.

“It’s really just whoever makes the most plays and gives us the best chance to win is who’s going to be out on the field,” Delp said. “So, I mean, it really pushes the wide receiver group and the tight end group and the running backs just to make plays. He’s going to put the 11 best out there. He doesn’t care. It’ll also change I think game week for game plans and certain things, but it’s really just the 11 best are going to play. So it just kind of pushes every unit to kind of play a little harder and make bigger plays and make kind of a name for your room and why you should be out there on that field.”

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