Nic Vasilchek is not surprised that Aaron Davis has a shot to play for the Georgia Bulldogs. He just didn’t expect his former player to be in the mix so early.
Vasilchek, the head football coach at Luella High in Locust Grove, is at least partially responsible for Davis being on the Bulldogs’ roster. He urged Georgia coaches to bring in his former star defensive back as a preferred walk-on despite Davis’ injury-marred senior season.
But the rest of it has been up to Davis. The 6-foot-1, 189-pound redshirt freshman has worked with Georgia’s first-team defense at safety and cornerback during preseason camp.
“I didn’t know how long it would take, but I knew with his work ethic and the way he handles the classroom, he’d get into the mix eventually,” Vasilchek said Wednesday. “From what I’ve been seeing, he has bypassed everybody’s expectations.”
Except for maybe his own.
Davis is not your average walk-on. In fact, before an ACL injury in the spring before his senior season, he was a fairly significant recruit.
Wake Forest and Furman offered him a scholarship after his junior year, and coaches from SEC teams were beginning to line up at Vasilchek’s door before the injury.
“Florida came in to offer him, then they came in and found out he was hurt,” Vasilchek said. “The coach said, ‘Dang, we were about to offer him a full ride.’ So, yeah, he was the real deal. Unfortunately he was hurt that last year and everything kind of fell off from him.”
Georgia was among the big-time teams headed in other directions when Davis didn’t attend camps that summer or play as a senior.
“I was talking to them,” Davis said of the Bulldogs. “(Former Georgia assistant Rodney) Garner came by after my sophomore season. But after my injury they kind of fell off. Pretty much every one fell off.”
Davis didn’t let it deter him. He continued to work daily with his team and, in fact, became a de facto assistant coach for the Lions.
“Basically became an assistant DB coach for me,” Vasilchek said. “He just knew the game so well.”
Davis returned to play the final game of his senior season and gained some Division II and III opportunities, but it was never just about football for Davis.
He graduated from Luella with a 4.0 GPA and never deviated from his ultimate plan to attend UGA on an academic scholarship. He always planned to follow the path of his older brother, Oliver, who will graduate from Georgia this year “to become a rocket scientist or something like that,” according to Vasilchek.
“It was the only school I applied to,” Davis said of Georgia. “I had good grades, and I knew I was going to get in and I knew it was where I wanted to go. My coach asked them what we could do and kept in contact with them, and they ended up saying they could bring me in as a preferred walk-on. It was an easy choice for me.”
The Bulldogs are thrilled Davis made that choice. After Georgia incurred some offseason attrition in the secondary, Davis rose to first-team cornerback during spring practice. He’s now getting cross-trained as a safety as well.
Davis’ ascension has come despite the presence of some highly recruited veterans such as Sheldon Dawson and Devin Bowman and contributed as least partially to the transfer of Shaq Wiggins, whom he overtook on the depth chart.
“He will contribute,” Georgia coach Mark Richt said. “Coach (Jeremy) Pruitt from the very beginning liked a lot of things about him, his intelligence, his work ethic, his athleticism and just being coachable and teachable. … He’s definitely going to help us.”
As to where Davis might fit in, he’s not sure. He said Pruitt is making sure he masters the concepts of all five positions in the Georgia secondary. Lately he has been with the safeties.
“He said he was going to shuffle the lineup some, and that’s what he’s been doing,” Davis said. “He wants us to learn by concepts so that everybody can transition from one position to another. So when he moved me to safety it wasn’t a surprise. He just wants get the best guys on the field.”
