Georgia's Newest 2017 Commits Show Kirby Smart Dominating the Home State

Credit: Student Sports
2017 4-Star WR Trey Blount is the latest Peach State standout to commit to in-state power Georgia.

New Georgia head coach Kirby Smart’s strategy on the recruiting trail isn’t exactly a secret—at least not anymore.

One glaring commonality among the nine prospects in Georgia’s 2017 class is abundantly clear: They are all homegrown products.

The latest in-state star to announce his intentions to head to Athens is 4-star receiver Trey Blount.

The 6’2”, 185-pounder from Pace Academy in Atlanta selected Georgia over offers from programs such as Alabama, Auburn, Notre Dame, Oklahoma and South Carolina.

Blount’s pledge is just the latest in a string of victories for Smart and his staff in the 2017 cycle.

That push began with Georgia’s G-Day spring game on April 16. Blount joined 4-star corner William Poole III and 4-star offensive lineman Netori Johnson as prospects who pulled the trigger on committing to Georgia in the aftermath of that game.

According to Rusty Mansell of Dawgs247, Blount’s decision was heavily influenced on staying close to home to continue his career in college.

“I have been silently committed to Georgia since the Wednesday after G-Day,” Blount told Mansell. “Georgia is the best fit for me, for the next four to forty years. You get to represent your home state and the class they are putting together in 2017 to go with 2016, we can go win a national championship. What is better than to represent a place you were born and raised?”

Derrick Tatum, who is the defensive backs coach at Pace Academy, notes that Blount was a difference-maker that helped lead his club to a state championship last season.

“Trey is a humble kid, but when the lights come on, he’s a different guy,” Tatum told Bleacher Report. “You can’t put eight in the box against him. You have to put double coverage on him. He was a monster for us in the [Class AA] state playoffs and was a big reason we were able to win a state title last year.”

Keeping players such as Blount home also sends a message to the rest of the programs recruiting in the Peach State that things will be a little tougher in poaching talent away from the Bulldogs moving forward.

That trend was magnified when players such as 4-star quarterback Jake Fromm and Johnson—both of whom initially committed to fellow SEC titan Alabama—opted to flip from the Tide to play for the Bulldogs.

In Fromm, Poole and 4-star safety pledge Richard LeCounte III, Georgia already has three of the state’s Top 10 overall players already committed. That’s already one step ahead of the 2016 cycle—when they landed only two prospects who fit that criteria.

Furthermore, all of the six remaining uncommitted Top 10 in-state players have been on campus within the last two months—most of whom were in attendance at G-Day.

As Tatum describes, that momentum with the top prospects is a credit to the work Smart and his staff have done in focusing on identifying and aggressively pursuing the state’s top players.

“What Kirby has done coming in here, he’s got the top guys wanting to come to Georgia,” Tatum said. “I’m not saying the guys before didn’t, but it’s just a feeling with those guys that’s different this year with Kirby and his staff now there. You can tell they are putting an emphasis on getting the best in-state guys. You can see it and you can feel it. Those top kids are all really excited about Georgia and the direction they are headed.”

Smart is still recruiting well out-of-state, as the Bulldogs are heavily in the mix with prospects such as 5-star athlete JaCoby Stevens and 5-star running back D’Andre Swift.

However, it’s clear that Smart’s plan on returning the Bulldogs program to the upper echelon of the SEC begins with locking up his state’s borders and keeping the Peach State’s top stars between the hedges for college.

Sanjay Kirpalani is a National Recruiting Analyst for Bleacher Report. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes obtained firsthand and all recruiting information courtesy of 247Sports.