ATHENS – This is supposed to be a positive week for the Georgia offensive line.
At least three and potentially four starters from last season’s team are going to be drafted into the NFL this weekend. Tate Ratledge and Jared Wilson are expected to go in the second or third round. Dylan Fairchild is likely to hear his name called in the late third or early fourth round. Xavier Truss will have to wait a little bit longer, but he’s a candidate to be drafted in the sixth or seventh round.
That should be a celebration of what the offensive line has continued to do. It seems like every year now, another Georgia offensive lineman is off to the NFL. Last year, it was Amarius Mims and Sedrick Van Pran-Granger. Before that, Broderick Jones was taken in the first round.
Instead, it’s another reminder of how talented Georgia’s offensive line was and why it’s all the more perplexing the unit couldn’t play to its vast potential.
“We’ve had a void that we knew was coming with Dylan, Jared, Tate, Truss that’s been there,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said. “It’s been coming for a while, so we’ve tried to make up for it and put the right kind of kids in those shoes, but they’re not where those kids were yet.”
Ratledge, Fairchild and Truss were all multi-year starters during their time at Georgia. Ratledge and Truss actually started games for the Bulldogs before they had won their first championship of the Smart era.
Wilson was a first-year starter and had to replace the highly-respected Van Pran-Granger. But Wilson was deemed by coaches and players a better athlete than Van Pran-Granger, and Ratledge was one of the permanent captains.
Injuries tell part of the story with last season’s group. Ratledge and Wilson both missed time during the middle of the season with lower-leg injuries. Truss and Fairchild battled through injury as well, limiting their effectiveness.
But last year’s group knew injuries couldn’t be used as an excuse and that won’t fly this year either.
“It’s next man up,” Ratledge said. “It always has been. I got hurt, people got hurt, Jerry got hurt last year. It’s always been next man up. So that’s the mentality going into this year. They got some dudes in that room that I know can get the job done.”
Returnees Micah Morris and Earnest Greene missed games last year due to injury. Greene’s injury in particular proved critical, as his upper body injury sidelined for four games to close the pre-College Football Playoff run.
He was able to return in the loss to Notre Dame, but his replacement Monroe Freeling clearly wasn’t 100 percent in that game either, forcing another reshuffle.
Greene has now moved to right tackle, while Freeling had offseason surgery. He figures to be Georgia’s starting left tackle, provided he can stay on the field. Morris is also likely to be locked in as Georgia’s left guard and Drew Bobo will be Georgia’s starting center.
When you lose four seniors and multiple NFL players, you often don’t take a step forward. Looking at the situation through rose colored glasses, it’s hard for things to get worse on the offensive line in 2025.
“It wasn’t what we wanted. All we can do is just work harder towards it,” Morris said this spring. “This offseason really just put emphasis on that, just being able to improve overall as an offensive line, and just trust the teaching and coaching, and just trust the process, that’s it.”
With talent not being the issue, Stacy Searels emerged as an easy scapegoat. Given his previous ties with UGA and the fact that Georgia had the worst rushing offense of the Kirby Smart tenure, it surprised some that Searels stayed on as Georgia’s offensive line coach.
But Searels has for the most part shown that he can recruit and develop offensive linemen under Smart. The 2025 season will give the most clear picture yet of how to judge Searels.
The four NFL bound offensive linemen were all signed by Sam Pittman or Matt Luke.
“He’s an old-school coach, real tough, hard-nosed,” Wilson said of Searels. “He loves his guys, honestly. He believes in them. He just prepares you for the adversity that you go through in games, especially being in the SEC. Anything can go. Anything can go right and anything can go wrong.”
So many things did go wrong for this unit in 2024. Having to replace four starters will require a lot of things to go right this coming season.
The offensive linemen who are back know they enter the season facing plenty of questions. They’ve admitted time and time again this spring last season wasn’t up to standard.
With the transfer portal not being a realistic option to add talent along the offensive line, any improvement is going to have to come internally.
“I feel like we’re moving in the right direction to be, you know, just a little bit, like I said, a little bit more eager,” Greene said following G-Day. “I mean, because last year, the line, we were really hungry. But, you know, this year, we have a lot of young guys who maybe aren’t as established as they want to be yet. So they might be a little bit more hungry.”
Among those young guys, Juan Gaston might be best positioned to earn some playing time. Interestingly enough, he was working at guard during the spring game. Daniel Calhoun and Michael Uini are competing to start at the position previously manned by Ratledge.
Georgia’s offensive line will be a popular subject this coming weekend. Among draftniks, they’ll gush over Ratledge, Wilson, Fairchild and Truss and what they might bring to their next team.
But for those who follow Georgia, plenty will wonder how an offensive line with so much talent became such a position of worry for Georgia.
And what that all means for a group with a lot to prove entering the 2025 season.
“I think when you look across the teams we play, the upper echelon, best teams in our conference, they win with the line of scrimmage,” Smart said. “We’re probably not as good on the line of scrimmage as we have been in the last three to four years. We’ve got time to get there, and we’ve got to get there.”
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