With only a bowl game left for Georgia, thoughts now turn to the future. A shot at the NFL awaits several players in the senior class, of course, but what of their younger teammates?
The NCAA allows players to declare for the NFL three years after graduating from high school. The names of two Georgia football players who fall in that category appear on one mock first-round draft board.
Todd Gurley, the obvious one, is still a projected first-rounder at No. 22 after undergoing ACL surgery last week.
Then there’s Leonard Floyd, sitting pretty at No. 10 overall, 12 projected spots ahead of his teammate. Floyd is one of 19 draft-eligible non-seniors to appear in that mock top 32.
“Floyd is a nightmare speed rusher who is also athletic enough to hold up in coverage and effective as a sideline-to-sideline run defender,” wrote Todd McShay in his scouting report on ESPN.com.
The outside linebacker’s productivity during his sophomore season with Georgia has garnered enough attention from analysts and scouts alike to get the rumors rolling long before the Bulldogs finished the regular season. Floyd is eligible for the draft after having played a year at Hargrave Military Academy before coming to Athens. Underclassmen have until Jan. 15 to declare for the draft, and can opt to pull their applications no later than Jan. 18.
Those deadlines are rushing toward Floyd much like he does quarterbacks, but he’s trying not to focus on mock drafts and analysis of his 55 tackles and team-leading six sacks.
“I try not to read into it,” he said. “When I’m away from the Butts-Mehre, I try not to think about football a lot. I try to hang out with people who don’t play football. I try to get my mind off the game.”
Floyd will have the next two weeks to get his mind off football, as Georgia will not practice to allow its players ample time to prepare for fall semester finals. Despite the time away from the practice field, it’s difficult to imagine guys like Gurley and Floyd not thinking about their futures.
According to a source close to Gurley, the junior has already settled on a training facility to rehabilitate his knee and prepare for the draft, which begins on April 30.
Georgia coach Mark Richt said he doesn’t believe Gurley’s late-season injury will influence guys like Floyd to forgo their senior seasons.
“I think football is a physical game and guys do get hurt sometimes,” Richt said. “I think that guys care about their teams and their teammates. Football is not a selfish sport. It’s a very unselfish sport. It’s a team sport. Everybody knows it’s a physical sport and injuries are part of the game. So no, I don’t believe that.”
Jarvis Jones, the 17th overall pick in 2013, declared for the NFL draft after his junior season. A spinal stenosis diagnosis during his time at Southern California was just one of several reasons the outside linebacker chose to declare early.
“For myself, I felt like I had been through a lot already with the injury, transferring,” Jones said. “I think I had a great career at the University of Georgia.”
Jones joked that Richt had assumed Jones was out the door before he made a decision.
“I guess they didn’t really want me to come back,” he said, laughing. “They felt like I had a better opportunity just moving on and playing professional football.”
Jones said making the decision on when to declare is a different process for every player, and that previous injury may or may not dictate that choice. What does play a role, in his eyes, is the financial strife for college athletes.
“When I was in college man, (I) was broke, you really didn’t get no money,” he said. “You really don’t get the full experience, I feel like, as a regular college student. Yeah, you’re a football player or an athlete, traveling different places and all that stuff, but a lot of times you don’t even get to hang out with the regular students because the schedule is so strict, you know what I’m saying? A lot of times that’s the reason they’re ready to take that jump to the NFL.”
About the Author
