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Georgia football: Lightly-recruited Ladd McConkey making a name for himself
By Sydney Hunte
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To say that Ladd McConkey wasn’t a player in high demand coming out of high school is a massive understatement.
The redshirt freshman from Chatsworth, Ga., less than an hour from Chattanooga, was a Swiss Army knife at North Murray High School. You name it, and he could do it.
For what it’s worth, North Murray hasn’t been around for long as it opened its doors in 2010. But it has fielded a pretty good football team, one that went 11-2 and 8-0 in its region in 2019. Remember when I said McConkey did it all? He was an all-state dual-threat quarterback that year who accounted for 30 touchdowns passing and rushing combined. Oh, by the way, he returned 3 kickoffs for touchdowns.
Did I mention he had 3 pick-6s that year too and was a punter?
That versatility was what led Kirby Smart and Georgia to eventually come calling. It’s tough to turn down the Dawgs, especially when virtually no one else — outside of Vanderbilt, who offered a day after Georgia did in January 2020 — puts you on your recruiting radar. Less than 2 weeks later, McConkey, a lowly 3-star by Georgia standards, was a UGA commit.
On Saturday, he was a key figure in the Bulldogs’ blowout win over Auburn, hauling in a 60-yard pass from Stetson Bennett IV seconds after the Georgia defense forced the Tigers to turn it over on downs at the Bulldogs 40 early in the 2nd half.
It wasn’t McConkey’s first time in the end zone this year, though, as he caught a touchdown pass and scored on an end-around against Vanderbilt. But with the Dawgs’ pass-catching corps still a little banged up, he has taken advantage of an opportunity to make an impact.
And he did so in a big way against the Tigers, too, hauling in a career-high 135 yards on 5 catches.
“I saw the heart of a warrior,” Kirby Smart said after the game. “He didn’t have one Power-5 offer. I said I want this guy on my team. Any player on our team will tell you Ladd McConkey will outwork any guy out there. He is everything right about college football.”
One of the narratives that has worked against McConkey is his size. A 6-foot, 185-pounder doesn’t normally equate to an SEC-level wide receiver (unless you’re 6-1, 175-pound DeVonta Smith). Maybe it’s for the best, though, as it’s given him a bit of a chip on his shoulder.
And his high school coach, Preston Poag, knows it, too.
You are exactly right. All the Power 5 programs said he was too small. Ladd is proven all of those programs wrong. You cannot measure heart and Ladd is playing with a chip on his shoulder!! Keep it up my man!
— Preston Poag (@PrestonPoag) October 10, 2021
Thanks in part to him (to say nothing of its defense), Georgia is 6-0 headed into a showdown against a Kentucky team that suddenly isn’t sneaking up on anyone right now. Who’d have pointed to that one as a de facto SEC East championship game before the season began? And the Dawgs are poised to be the No. 1 team in the country upon release of the latest national rankings after Alabama’s loss at Texas A&M.
But back to McConkey, who spent his redshirt season in 2020 on the scout team, a role he learned to embrace.
“Being young you are like, ‘hey, I am on the scout team, I am not really doing anything for the team,’” he said in September. “But as the season goes on you see all the good stuff and you go, ‘yeah, I kind of like scout team.’ It helps you get better, it helps the defense get better and the offense get better.”
So what’s next for McConkey? He doesn’t look as if he’ll be simply a flash in the pan in this offense.
As the Dawgs have half the season in front of them with sights set on both an SEC Championship appearance — which inevitably appears that it will be against Alabama — and a spot in the College Football Playoff, there are questions as to whether it will be Bennett or JT Daniels that will be getting the snaps behind center down the stretch.
Whoever it is, though, appears to have a pretty solid weapon in Ladd McConkey. Not bad for a lightly-recruited kid from Murray County, Georgia.
Sydney is an Atlanta-based journalist who has covered everything from SEC and ACC football to MLS, the U.S. men's national soccer team and professional tennis. His work has appeared on such platforms as SB Nation, Cox Media Group and FanSided.
