Georgia picked up its biggest commitment of the class of 2018 Friday morning with the pledge of Georgia's Harrison High quarterback Justin Fields. This is as big as it gets. He is the top recruit in the country according to the 247Sports rankings, just ahead of fellow Georgia high school signal caller Trevor Lawrence. Georgia fans were a little dismayed back in December when Lawrence chose to cross the border to Auburn's lakeside campus.
Georgia is his home town school, and several of Fields’s close friends have either committed to Georgia or appear to be leaning toward the Red and Black.
Fields’s younger sister, Jaiden, is committed to play softball at Georgia as part of the class of 2019. In college football recruiting relationships matter. Both the family Justin Fields was born into and the friends he’s cultivated over the past few years seemed to be leading him to Athens.
This commitment is a pretty good reminder that things have a way of working out. When Kirby Smart took over in Athens one could have argued persuasively that he inherited the worst quarterback depth chart in the SEC. If things go according to plan, he could enter 2018 with arguably the best in the country.
What does Fields’s decision mean for the 2018 class? Immediately, Georgia’s slow-starting class jumps from #13 in the nation to #6, ahead of the Florida Gators and just behind the Tennessee Volunteers’ class. As recently as May that class was ranked in the fifties.
Down the road, Fields can begin putting together the finishing touches on a class that could once again rank in the top 3-4 nationally. It will also help out with some class of 2019 prospects both instate and elsewhere. Fields is just one of those guys other prospects want to play with.
While there were plenty of reasons for Fields to look elsewhere, it appears that in the end he decided to stop analyzing depth charts and just go where he wanted to go to school. That was Athens.
The commitment adds to the momentum this staff has built through the early part of the season. A lot of top prospects, including Fields, appear to have been in “show me” mode with the Bulldogs, waiting to see if Smart’s infectious sales pitch would translate into wins on the field. With that now happening, Georgia is in position to reel in more top prospects in route to building the kind of depth needed to compete for SEC and national titles.
Georgia goes for their sixth consecutive win in Saturday's tilt against Vanderbilt in Nashville.