Georgia attacked its obvious WR need in the portal, but 1 question remains ...Middle East

Georgia had to be aggressive adding wide receivers from the portal because if it didn’t, we would’ve wondered wheether Kirby Smart lost his mind. Everyone could see it. And when we saw the drops — a stat that UGA led the country in — we heard it brought up on the broadcast.

The good news for UGA is that Smart hasn’t lost his mind. He saw and heard what everyone else did. That is, Georgia needed immediate help at receiver.

Again.

Already, Georgia added USC playmaker Zachariah Branch and Texas A&M leading receiver Noah Thomas out of the transfer portal. Branch was a first-team All-American as a return specialist in his true freshman season in 2023 and Thomas was T-No. 4 in the SEC with 8 touchdown grabs in 2024, 5 of which came in A&M’s last 4 games.

Those are established guys that Georgia will lean on heavily in 2025 in a post-Carson Beck world now that he’s off to Miami. Leading receivers Dominic Lovett and Arian Smith are out of eligibility. Former transfers Rara Thomas was dismissed from the team after family violence charges, and Colbie Young remains suspended indefinitely after his Oct. 8 arrest (Young is out of eligibility but Diego Pavia’s case vs. the NCAA could grant him an extra year of eligibility after he started his career at the JUCO level).

Dillon Bell is the lone returning wide receiver who had at least 250 receiving yards in 2024. As versatile as Bell is, he also dealt with injury issues and drops. Bell’s drop in the Sugar Bowl prompted the broadcast to mention the aforementioned stat. In Bell’s final 7 games, he had a drop in 6 games (via PFF), had just 1 contested catch, failed to surpass 50 receiving yards in a game, didn’t record a 20-yard catch and didn’t score a touchdown.

Bell is a fine player, but at this point, he hasn’t performed like a go-to target. That’s the issue. That’s the biggest question moving forward for Georgia’s receiver room even after adding Thomas and Branch, who had a combined 4 games with 70 receiving yards in 2024.

Are we sure that UGA will have a go-to guy emerge in 2025?

I say that as someone who applauded those 2 portal additions and think UGA was smart to add a pair of players who might not have been 1,000-yard receivers, but have shown that they can take over games at this level. As UGA knows all too well, those guys don’t grow on trees. In the final 7 games vs. Power Conference competition, no UGA receiver eclipsed the 67 yards that Smith had against Notre Dame. Mind you, that came on 1 catch … which also included inactive walk-on Parker Jones making contact with the side judge to prompt a 15-yard sideline interference penalty/borderline meltdown from Smart.

Georgia didn’t have guys who could be trusted to go win 50-50 battles. Remember how I mentioned that Bell had just 1 contested catch in his final 7 games? He still led UGA by a wide margin with 13 contested catches. The only other UGA player with more than 3 contested catches was Lovett with 8.

The good news is that’s where Thomas will help immediately. Even with a back-and-forth quarterback situation in College Station, he had 7 contested catches and he had 3 grabs of 50 yards, while UGA had 4 pass plays of 50 yards all year and 3 of them came from the NFL-bound Smith.

This is what Noah Thomas brings to #Georgia #UGA pic.twitter.com/RlK54h36dj

Speaking of Smith, Branch will be tasked with becoming a big-play threat. Granted, that’s not necessarily as an over-the-top target like Smith was (aside from the 10 drops). Branch, who played 78.7% of his snaps out of the slot, had an average depth of target of 6.6 yards and 38% of his targets came behind the line of scrimmage, while only 2 of his catches were on passes 20 yards downfield. He won’t be asked to make contested catches (he had 2 on 11 such targets), but he’ll be asked to do something that UGA couldn’t do all year — turn nothing into something. He averaged 8.3 yards after the catch, which would’ve been a team-high among Georgia pass-catchers (min. 20 receptions).

Again, Smart deserves credit for identifying weaknesses and addressing them with established players. But to this point in their careers, Thomas or Branch haven’t established themselves as bona fide go-to targets.

Smart hopes that by adding Thomas and Branch, Georgia has a pair of guys who can be a bona fide WR1 in the right matchup. Thomas’ size and ability to highpoint the football will be a weapon, as will Branch’s speed and shiftiness in space. Plus, it would help to have someone pose a legitimate threat in the return game with UGA’s primary return specialist Anthony Evans in the portal. Not coincidentally, the Branch news came out the same day as Evans’ portal entry.

UGA needed to get more explosive. Branch will certainly help check that box, however he gets his touches.

Some guys just look different than everyone else on the fieldZachariah Branch is one of those pic.twitter.com/otPZipR9LX

Think of how convenient it would’ve been for Georgia to have a weapon like that during those slow starts. A unit that was held to 10 first-half touchdowns in 12 games vs. Power Conference competition would’ve loved nothing more than to watch Branch weave through a defense to provide some breathing room.

What remains to be seen is whether we’ll exit 2025 feeling like UGA had found pass-catchers that did the things that Brock Bowers and Ladd McConkey did. Don’t get it twisted. Nobody is stepping in and becoming Bowers 2.0 or becoming a route-running savant like McConkey. That’s not realistic.

The realistic goal is giving Gunner Stockton playmakers he can trust to make life easier on him, which Bowers and McConkey did at an elite level. It’s as simple as that. Far too often, Georgia’s 2024 pass-catchers felt like a group that couldn’t pull their weight, and not just because of drops. They couldn’t make the highlight-reel play, they couldn’t make people miss in space and they couldn’t become matchup nightmares.

Maybe Thomas and Branch will check all of those boxes and more for a revamped UGA passing game. That’ll be priority No. 1.

Well, I suppose Smart already took care of priority No. 1 by getting those guys to Athens.

Georgia attacked its obvious WR need in the portal, but 1 question remains Saturday Down South.

Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Georgia attacked its obvious WR need in the portal, but 1 question remains )

Also on site :

• Could 100 Men Really Take on One Gorilla and Win? We Asked ChatGPT
• Trump sees no red line that would change tariff policy - The Atlantic
• Pope Tawadros meets with mayor of Polish town