The stats of UGA in the Metro ATL:
Jeff Sentell at Dawgnation.com and RedmondLonghorn at Football study hall have both recently done some deep dives into how the Atlanta Metro area recruiting. Both of these articles are really interesting and they show some pretty stark trends. To start with, it’s clear that UGA does do better in the rest of Georgia than it does in the Metro area.
According to Redmond’s research, the Metro area produces more blue chip recruits than the rest of the state. You have to go back to 2014 to find a year where the rest of Georgia produced more players with 4-star ratings than from Atlanta. Between 2006 and 2011, that same thing happened 3 times. However, since then, 2014 has been the only year where the rest of Georgia has exceeded the Metro area and the gap is getting wider.
There is no doubt that towards the end of Mark Richt’s time in Athens, things had gone wrong for UGA in Atlanta. In 2 of his final 4 recruiting classes, he only signed 1 blue chip player from Atlanta. Things have changed since Kirby Smart arrived however.
In 2017 he signed 8 blue chip players from Atlanta and 8 from the rest of Georgia. In 2018, things were a little off, but Smart still signed 5 guys from Atlanta compared to 7 from elsewhere in the state. That class was more of a nationally recruited class than 2017 but the figures were still nicely balanced. Crucially however, Smart signed several of the top ranked guys in that group. In 2018 he signed 4 of the top 10 players from Atlanta and in 2017 he signed 5.