SAD NEWS: Georgia Bulldogs Key Player Suffers A Career Ending Injury….
Georgia had some of their top targets on campus for junior day on Saturday, another weekend in Athens that moved the needle as Kirby Smart and his staff continue to impress some of their favorite players in the 2025 recruiting cycle.
“Everything was great,” Hillside (NJ) High edge Darren Ikinnagbon said. Georgia is battling the likes of Oklahoma, Ohio State, Notre Dame and Rutgers for him. “They have a great staff. Two-time National Champs. Everything was good. I had fun. I was talking with the coaches. We have a good personal vibe. I had a great meeting with Coach Smart. We were just talking about ball, what he sees me playing at and stuff like that.”
After finalizing our Top247, the scouting department at 247Sports made one final update to our class of 2024 rankings on Monday by rolling out 21 new prospects who earned four-star status in advance of Wednesday’s National Signing Day. Call it an afterword of sorts.
While many are familiar with all the high-profile recruits in the 2024 cycle, most of the names below are relatively unknown. And that’s the idea. Every single year at the NFL Draft players who flew under the radar during the high school recruiting process are selected. Some go as early as the first round.
Now, are we going to hit on all of these new four-star prospects? No. Absolutely not. Evaluating and projecting football talent isn’t easy (just ask NFL front offices), but all of these recruits were chosen for a reason, and that’s because we believe they have plenty of long-term developmental upside.
We approached this exercise hoping to highlight some Group of Five signees who usually don’t get much love from the recruiting industry. Mission accomplished. In addition to the chunk of prospects headed to Power Five programs, we stamped three Mountain West Conference signees, two American Athletic Conference signees, and a Mid-American Conference signee. There are also three FCS signees who now have a fourth star next to their name!
Najiib Anderson might not be the best football player right now in Western Michigan’s class, but the folks in Kalamazoo seem to believe that he might have the highest ceiling of the bunch and it’s pretty easy to see why. A three-phase playmaker at Conyers (Ga.) Rockdale County the past few years, Anderson is long and can run.
We initially thought that the 6-foot-2 athlete would get a look on offense somewhere, but his range on the backend is likely going to be too hard to pass up. What also has us bullish on Anderson are his track and field makers as he almost cleared 47 feet in the triple jump last spring before placing fourth at the state meet in the Peach State’s highest classification.
Lakeland (Fla.) teammates Carlos Mitchell Jr. and Jameson Young are two other Western Michigan signees we love. — Andrew Ivins, 247Sports director of scouting
That’s what an SEC staffer had to say about Yannick Smith, who initially caught our eye at the Shrine Bowl of the Carolinas in December. Smith is a decorated basketball player that was named South Carolina’s Class 5A Basketball Player of the Year as a junior after averaging 18.5 points per game for Summerville.
He can produce on the gridiron, too. As a senior, Smith caught 69 passes for 1,528 yards and 19 touchdowns while also rushing for 405 yards and five more scores.
Kentucky and some other SEC schools kicked the tires on Smith down the stretch, but he stayed true to his word and looks like he could emerge as the focal point of the Pirates’ offense in the coming years given how he eats up cushion with his release and finds ways to get into the end zone. — Ivins
The early signing period didn’t exactly go as planned for Billy Napier and the Gators following a series of defections. One late addition, however, who hasn’t gotten enough attention was the signature of Gregory Smith III.
The big-framed athlete out of Sumner (Fla.) first got on our radar back during the summer months because of his data: 4.57 seconds in the 40-yard dash at roughly 6-foot-3 1/2, 192 pounds. Initially, Smith billed himself as more of a quarterback, but schools tossed out the idea of having him play defensive back at the next level. He eventually bought into the proposed position change and got his first extended action at safety as a senior.
The defensive tape simply popped as Smith got from hash to hash with ease and was surprisingly physical as an open-field tackler. He will likely need some time before he’s ready to go in the SEC, but he could hit big for the Gators as a back-seven defender. After all, there aren’t many high schoolers taller than 6-foot-3 with a near 48-foot triple jump on file that produced on both sides of the ball in one of the Sunshine State’s highest classifications. — Ivins
