Dawgs Get Crowell...Dream Team Complete?

Making a statement: "My heart was at Georgia," said Crowell.

With the signing of Isaiah Crowell yesterday at 1:30 p.m., Georgia beat out Nick Saban and Alabama for the #1 (or 4 depending on what website you trust) running back in the country and may have completed their "Dream Team" recruiting class. However, one HUGE prize is still sitting out there waiting to sign. 340-pound, junior college defensive tackle John Jenkins will sign his letter of intent to play at Georgia, Florida, Miami, or Oklahoma State Saturday at 1:00 p.m.

Since Crowell capped off an already stellar group of players, most analysts and recruiting websites seem to have Georgia's 2011 recruiting class as a Top 5 class. Not only might Jenkins bump the Dawgs up a bit in the rankings (for whatever they're worth), but his mammoth size is something Georgia's defensive line could really use since transitioning to the 3-4 defense (sort of) under under Defensive Coordinator Todd Grantham.

Richt, Bobo, Grantham, Garner, etc. all deserve a TON of credit for building (what on paper appears to be) Richt's best class and holding it together after such a disappointing season. Skimming the Georgia blogs yesterday, it appeared that Richt has either won over or silenced most of his critics...for now. No doubt, he's still got to win games next year (at the very least 8 and probably 9) to keep his job, but it's nice to see most of the Dawg Nation united behind such a good guy and (recently) under-appreciated coach.

Quick summary of what the few recruits Georgia was still targeting (that I listed over the weekend) decided to do yesterday. For perspective, remember that the Dawgs signed 25 recruits yesterday, 13 of which were 4 or 5-star guys according to Rivals and almost all the rest 3-star guys (and other sites listed some of those 3 star guys like Turene as 4-star). All that's to say that getting or missing on most of these six didn't make or break this class, although Crowell certainly made it A LOT more exciting:

Crowell: signed with UGA. Hopefully he's a little more Knowshon than Jasper.

Jenkins: signing somewhere Saturday.

Pagan: signed with Bama. It sucks to lose one to Saban, but like I said the other day, we already had a couple of top notch DEs, so this doesn't surprise or sadden me too much.

Richardson: signed with Tennessee. It's where he was originally leaning and he flirted with the Dawgs at the last minute. I really would have liked to get him as the OL is one consistent weakness in recent years that our staff seems satisfied to primarily address with depth rather than 4 and 5-star guys. This was the only 4-star OL (according to Rivals) that we were pursuing. Other sites list some of our OL signees as 4-star guys though, so maybe he wasn't as crucial as I thought. Let's hope.

Turene: signed with UGA. He had been a USC commitment until just recently and the Dawgs' class got even better with him. A 3-star guy according to Rivals, other sites have him as a 4-star guy, so his signing might be a bigger deal than I thought it might be the other day. We needed linebackers and we got several that are projected to be very good.

Roberson: signed with Florida. I understood him to be the longest shot on the list, but he apparently gave Georgia a look. Already having the #1 and #3 cornerbacks in the country on our commitment list probably didn't help us land Roberson, the #2 cornerback in the country. It would have been a nice bonus to add him, but the Dawgs were not counting on him to address a need that the other two corners we signed shouldn't be able to handle (not to mention some of the "athletes" we signed will probably be defensive backs themselves).

So, of the six guys I mentioned the other day, the Dawgs have already landed two of the four most important with a chance to bring in one more (Jenkins) on Saturday. I never thought Pagan or Roberson were all that necessary given the similar players we'd already lined up, so the only miss on this list that I really wanted is Richardson. It will be interesting to see how Ray Drew and/or Sterling Bailey match up with Richardson when we face Tennessee over the next few years. Obviously, I hope they own him.

Again, like I said the other day, the Dawgs should be thankful to just land a couple of the six on this list. They've already done so in Crowell and Turene. Adding Jenkins is almost as important as getting Crowell since he should hopefully be able to make an impact pretty quickly (like Crowell hopefully will). All in all, this appears to have been a fantastic class that can still get even better. That it came after a 6-7 season makes it all the more remarkable. Go Dawgs.