Although the 2025 NFL Draft is approximately three months away, it’s certainly not too early to be speculating on which Georgia players will go where. Presented below is the initial version of this year’s Bulldogs Mock Draft Tracker.
Notably, after Georgia averaged 10.5 players drafted annually over the last four years (2021-2024 NFL drafts), it appears this year’s draft total for the Bulldogs could be in the double digits as well.
UGASports used five recognized/reputable sites, each featuring a mock draft: Drafttek and Pro Football Network (PFN), each of which projects all seven rounds; and Tankathon, Walter Football, and A to Z Sports, each forecasting the first three rounds.
The mock drafts projected 15 different Bulldog players to get drafted. Still, only three of the 15 players were unanimously forecasted by the five mocks (mocks’ average overall selection, round): Mykel Williams (11.4, 1st), Malaki Starks (13.8, 1st), and Jalon Walker (21.2, 1st).
(Each player is followed by a projected round, overall pick in parenthesis, and selecting NFL team):
All five mock drafts forecast Williams, Starks, and Walker to be first-round selections—and between picks No. 6 and No. 30. Tankathon, specifically, predicts all three of the former Georgia defenders to be selected by the 14th pick in the draft. From what we discovered, there have been 20 instances when at least three defensive players from the same school were drafted in the first round of the NFL Draft (including Georgia in 2022 when the Bulldogs had five defensive players selected in the first round). However, there has been only one instance (Florida State, 2006) when at least three defensive players from the same school were drafted among the first 14 picks of an NFL Draft.
Two of the three-round mock drafts, Walter Football and A to Z Sports, project Williams to be the No. 15 selection to the Atlanta Falcons. Entering this draft, only 12 Bulldogs have been drafted by the local professional team (including UGA basketball player Ray Jeffords in 1968) in 59 NFL drafts. What’s more, the highest the Falcons have ever drafted a Georgia player was the 80th pick of the 1981 NFL Draft with defensive back-return man Scott Woerner.
From round two and going forward, the mocks’ predictions are somewhat inconsistent when it comes to Georgia players. For instance, Drafttek forecasts Nazir Stackhouse as a second-round pick, yet the other seven-round mock, PFN, omitted the two-time All-SEC defensive tackle from its draft altogether. Drafttek also forecasts four Georgia players to be picked in the sixth round in a span of only five selections. These quirks, so to speak, which are often evident in early versions of mock drafts, generally are minimized in later editions.
Finally, we looked back at the 15 former Georgia players in the table for their Rivals rankings coming out of high school—and we discovered a trend. Interestingly, of the first seven players in the table—Williams, Starks, Walker, Tate Ratledge, Stackhouse, Smael Mondon, and Dylan Fairchild—or those forecasted by at least one mock as a third-round pick or better—all of them were four- or five-star prospects. In addition, five of the top seven players were Rivals100 prospects, while the remaining two, Stackhouse and Fairchild, were ranked No. 226 and No. 170 overall, respectively. On the other hand, of the eight former Georgia players forecasted to be drafted in the later rounds—Jared Wilson, Chaz Chambliss, Xavier Truss, Dominic Lovett, Ben Yurosek, Arian Smith, Trevor Etienne, and Warren Brinson—no one was a five-star prospect, only Etienne was a Rivals100 recruit, while just Smith and Brinson were part of the Rivals250.
Dan Jackson and Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins were not forecasted by any of the five mock drafts we measured.
Be on the lookout for version 2.0 of the Bulldogs Mock Draft Tracker within the next few weeks.
