Kirby Smart is flipping the narrative, dominating in-state recruiting

One of the most underrated, yet important, things in college football recruiting is locking down the top recruits from your home state. The last thing any program wants is other schools coming into their backyard and stealing the best players from their state.

This is especially true for Georgia when the talent year in and year out is as good as any other state in the country.

However, prioritizing and successfully recruiting the state of Georgia has been a negative talking point Georgia football fans have felt about Kirby Smart in recent years. Many think Smart doesn't prioritize the recruits from Georgia enough and hate seeing them go to other schools. And the recent data actually backs that up.

Below is how many top 10 players from the state of Georgia that Smart has signed in the last three recruiting classes.

Four in 2022 isn't a terrible number by any means, but the last two recruiting classes are too low for my liking. However, this trend of Smart not prioritizing or winning these in-state recruitments appears to be changing this cycle.

2025 state of Georgia recruiting

So far this recruiting cycle, Georgia has eanred commitments from four of the top 10 recruits from Georgia. This includes No. 1 Elijah Griffin, No. 3 Isaiah Gibson, No. 4 Zayden Walker and No. 6 Elyiss Williams. As mentioned, four of the top 10 is pretty solid, but Georgia's pursuit of these recruits appears to be far from over.

The Bulldogs currently are the overwhelming favorite to land two more top 10 players from Georgia. This includes No. 2 Justus Terry and No. 7 Chase Linton.

So if these recruitments go Georgia's way, Smart will end up with six of the top seven players from the state of Georgia. Now that is how you prioritize in-state recruiting.

With one month remaining until the early singing period begins, anything is still possible. Any one of these six recruits could still end up flipping and going to a new school. But if the four current commits stay with Georgia and Smart is able to add the final two players this cycle, this would potentially be one of the best in-state hauls in Georgia football recruiting history.