ATHENS — If you've been following the minutiae of spring football at Georgia, you might have heard or read that a walk-on cornerback named Aaron Davis has been getting practice time recently on the first-team defense.
And you might have asked: Who’s Aaron Davis?
Well, he’s a guy who has played in only one football game in the past three seasons, that one at wide receiver.
Here’s his story, as he patiently recounted it before practice Thursday:
Back in the fall of 2010, as a sophomore cornerback/wide receiver at Luella High School in Locust Grove, he was drawing interest from major-college recruiters. Georgia was among a number of SEC and ACC schools that sent coaches to visit him. But in Luella’s 2011 spring game, he tore the ACL in his left knee, leading to surgery that sidelined him for all of his junior season. And then he reinjured the same knee, necessitating a second ACL surgery, costing him almost all of his senior season. He made it back onto the field just in time to play wide receiver in the last game of the season, the last game of his high school career. He caught 11 passes for 149 yards and two touchdowns in that game, by the way.
But by then, the major-college recruiters were long gone, and Davis had little interest in pursuing opportunities to play at the Division II or III level.
“I felt like if I was being recruited to be SEC/ACC (before the injuries), I didn’t really want to cut myself short,” Davis said. “I felt like I should step up to the challenge and walk on to a school. … I thought I might as well go to a place I want to be.”
So Davis contacted Georgia, which he said had “always been my favorite college,” and was told he could join the Bulldogs as a “preferred” walk-on.
With a 4.5 GPA in high school, he enrolled at Georgia on the HOPE scholarship. He joined the football team last summer and practiced throughout last fall, dressing out for only three games and appearing in none.
Although not much should be made of spring-practice depth charts, it was at least noteworthy when coaches recently elevated Davis to the first-team secondary in practice.
“It was a little surprising,” Davis said, “but I felt like it is what it is, so if I’m going to get the opportunity, I should make the most of it.”
If the 6-foot-1, 190-pound Davis gets into a game at cornerback in the fall, it would be his first game action at that position since his sophomore year of high school — and just his second game at any position since then.
But he doesn’t belabor the time lost to injuries.
“The way I look at it is, if I didn’t get the injuries, I probably still would have pushed my hardest to come here,” he said. “I still ended up at the school I really wanted to be.”
He recently changed his major to computer systems engineering.
“That’s what I like,” he said.
Georgia coaches were not available for interviews Thursday, but linebacker Jordan Jenkins spoke highly of Davis’ work this spring.
“He makes good plays on the ball. He doesn’t bite the fakes and stuff like that. He’s been playing pretty good. He was working hard during mat (drills),” Jenkins said. “I’m glad to see him get some recognition. … I know he’s definitely been working his butt off this whole spring.”
Asked if new defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt might be sending a message to other players by putting a hard-working walk-on on the field ahead of them, Jenkins said: “Yeah, because after every scrimmage he changes the depth charts around. He told us, day in and day out, that ‘nothing you did before matters, it’s a clean slate, (and) I’m going to play the best 11.’”
Davis said Pruitt stresses “doing the right thing all the time and not just when we want to or when we’re fresh. Even when you’re tired, maintain your technique and what-not, and just give him what he wants.”
The walk-on appears to have done that so far. “I guess that’s how I’ve been moving up.”
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