Georgia football: 30 greatest players of the Mark Richt era

• SEC Champion (2002)
• 3x First-Team All-American (2002-04)
• 3x First-Team All-SEC (2002-03)
• 2x SEC Player of the Year (2002, 2004)
• Chuck Bednarik Award (2004)
• Lombardi Award (2004)

This isn’t particularly close and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. David Pollack is by far and away the greatest player to have played for Mark Richt at Georgia. To put it bluntly, he’s arguably the best player in Georgia history not named Herschel Walker. Hard to believe he was under-recruited coming out of Shiloh High School in Snellville.

While his former roommate David Greene would be the offensive pillar to those great early teams under Richt, Pollack was the defensive stalwart that brought Georgia back to national prominence. Though not yet a College Football Hall of Famer, he will be sooner rather than later as one of the four best players in Georgia football history.

Pollack was a three-time First-Team All-American along the Georgia defensive line. He was three-time First-Team All-SEC and a two-time SEC Player of the Year in both 2002 and 2004. Pollack was part of the 2002 SEC Championship Team as a true sophomore, winning both the Chuck Bednarik Award and the Lombardi Award in his senior season in 2004.

Though he made so many big plays in Georgia uniform, his interception for a touchdown against the South Carolina Gamecocks is his signature play. With South Carolina quarterback Corey Jenkins buried deep in Georgia territory, Pollack was able to intercept a pass he initially batted for a touchdown. That was a one-in-a-million play, only further illustrating his freakish athletic abilities in the Georgia front-seven.

Pollack would end up with 36.0 career quarterback sacks in his four years with Georgia. That is the most in school history and has him in the top-five all-time in college football. He is one of two players in Georgia history to be named to three First-Team All-American squads. The other is obviously Walker. Elite company.

While there have been other great pass rushers and players in the Georgia front-seven over the years, nobody had the ability to wreck the opposition’s offensive game plans like Pollack. He was on his way to superstardom in the NFL, having been the No. 17 overall pick by the Cincinnati Bengals in the 2005 NFL Draft.

However, his NFL career would come to a heartbreaking end in Week 1 of the 2006 NFL season. He broke the sixth vertebrae in his back making a tackle on Reuben Droughns. After having spent three months wearing a halo, Pollack’s football career came to an end before his 25th birthday.

Since his career-ending injury, Pollack has since carved out a successful media career for ESPN as a part of College GameDay. While his football playing career ended way too soon, Georgia will always be proud to call one of the greatest defensive linemen in college football history their own in Pollack.