But that trio weren\u2019t the only ones to come up during SEC Media Days. <\/a><\/p>\nThere were plenty of Bulldogs who came up over the course of the media tour on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
Some of the names aren\u2019t all that surprising. We know big things are expected of safety KJ Bolden and defensive lineman Elijah Griffin. <\/p>\n
But there were some less-heralded names to the Georgia fan base that are now worth paying attention to following Tuesday. <\/p>\n
Below is a running list of what Smart, Stockton, Bobo and Wilson had to say about 10 Georgia players. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Kirby Smart on Gabe Harris: <\/b>\u201cGabe\u2019s been doing good. He\u2019s similar to Drew. It was a very significant injury. Those two were the two biggest missing pieces for us towards the end of the year and made it really tough. But he\u2019s out there doing everything now. He did not do anything in the spring. and we need him to have a big year. But, yeah, he\u2019s on a load-management deal, so he\u2019s not like out there every day doing everything. But he\u2019s healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kirby Smart on Khalil Barnes:<\/b> \u201cYeah, we when we went in, we had to find a starter. We had to find someone that could play multiple positions and start in our secondary. We were losing a lot of experience there. We were young there. We had some good young players up and coming, but we needed a veteran. He\u2019s a kid that grew up, you know, in the shadows of our stadium, known his Dad for long time when I was a player. And you know, we probably messed it up when he was coming out and didn\u2019t do a good job. And he went, grew up, played well for Clemson. They\u2019ve said nothing but great things about him, and we\u2019re excited for the opportunity to take a kid on that played in a very good defensive system that we\u2019re excited to watch play for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kirby Smart on Gentry Williams: <\/b>\u201cIntelligence, well coached. You know, when you take guys from a Brent Venables defense, you know what you\u2019re getting. You\u2019re getting a guy that understands, leverages, coverages. A lot of similarities to us defensively, teaching wise, and that that\u2019s shown that he\u2019s you know he\u2019s played. He\u2019s got experience. He\u2019s got play experience, and that\u2019s what we were searching for. Some guys that could be competitive, compete for starting jobs, come in and help us, and you know, God forbid, you never know what kind of injuries you have during a year. You got to have the ability to have six to seven defensive backs who\u2019ve got play experience. So he\u2019s got that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Drew Bobo on Juan Gaston and Dontrell Glover: \u201c<\/b>Dontrell Glover, Juan Gaston, all those guys, I think they\u2019re big pieces. Getting them just a year of experience, especially as freshmen, is just really good for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Drew Bobo on Isiah Canion: <\/b>\u201cI definitely think we\u2019re more capable of being explosive. Isiah Canion has been a great addition for us. I think he\u2019s looking really good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Drew Bobo on Zykie Helton:<\/b> \u201cYeah, he\u2019s really athletic, just strong, heavy-handed, can play really hard. He\u2019s a really good player. Obviously, just coming in as a freshman, he\u2019s got a long way to go, just learning the playbook, stuff like that, learning different defenses. I\u2019m really excited to see what he does.\u201d<\/p>\n
Raylen Wilson on Elijah Griffin: <\/b>\u201c I mean, his growth in the weight room has been crazy, just bench pressing and squatting. Just his leadership role, he\u2019s been taking that pretty seriously. He\u2019s going to be a good leader for us this year as a young guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gunner Stockton on Thomas Blackshear:<\/b> \u201cI think Thomas, I call him T. Black. He\u2019s a really good guy. Just seeing his growth and being able to throw. He\u2019s been doing a great job. He\u2019s from Savannah, so it\u2019s pretty neat to see him and just how much he\u2019s grown. He\u2019s a great guy. Just seeing him work this offseason, if it\u2019s throwing seven on seven or in the weight room, just seeing all the work he puts in. He\u2019s been doing a great job.\u201d <\/p>\n
Raylen Wilson on KJ Bolden:<\/b> \u201cKJ, he\u2019s been bringing the safeties along well, just trying to teach everybody the defense, teach everybody the checks back there on the back end. I feel like he\u2019s doing a pretty good job just trying to help the young guys come along. He\u2019s stepped into another leadership role, being an older guy. I feel like he\u2019s taking that pretty well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Georgia opens the 2026 season on Sept. 5 when the Bulldogs take on Tennessee State. If Georgia is to achieve its championship goals, it\u2019s going to need all of the players discussed above to have strong seasons. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 It\u2019s of no surprise that Kirby Smart had a lot to say about Drew Bobo,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":952894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[43],"tags":[12955,1318,24286,1317,1315,1316,62,5540,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-952893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-alabama","tag-football","tag-georgia-football","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports","tag-uga","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116966389626098172","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=952893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/952894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}