Georgia football scours the country for top recruits to add to a program that’s hasn’t lacked for talent in Kirby Smart’s nine seasons.

The Bulldogs hit their backyard for in-state prospects as well as bordering states, but it spares no expense to go far and wide to acquire players that can help win championships.

Texas hasn’t been a hotbed for Georgia, but its well-represented on the No. 4 Bulldogs who play in the Lone Star State Saturday night in Austin against the top-ranked Longhorns.

The Bulldogs have nine players from Texas including six scholarship players led by wide receiver Dillon Bell, cornerback Julian Humphrey and returner/wide receiver Anthony Evans.

“I think we’ve done really well, but I also think with each of those players we looked really critical at them,” said Matt Godwin, who was on Georgia’s recruiting staff from 2017 to 2023, the last three years as director of player personnel. “Going all the way out there, it takes more to actually get them to put pen to paper.”

Georgia still has more players hailing from hometowns listed in Florida, but there are more from Texas than North Carolina and California.

“There's tons of players in Texas,” Smart said. “I mean, I've always said the entire SEC footprint prior to Texas being in the SEC and A&M being in the SEC could fit into Texas. …There's so many good players there. There's so many good high schools.”

Running back Cash Jones leads three Georgia walk-ons who are also Texas natives.

Jones, who has 6 catches for 82 yards and a rushing touchdown, wasn’t offered a walk-on spot at Texas or Texas A&M. He’s from Brock, Texas, west of Forth Worth.

Texas produced the most players on NFL rosters opening weekend of any state with 190, according to the league. Georgia was fourth with 146.

One of those Texas natives was Matthew Stafford, the longtime NFL quarterback and Super Bowl winner with the Rams who was the prize of Georgia’s 2006 class under Mark Richt out of Dallas.

“If there was a great player and he had some kind of connection which gave us a reasonable ability to get in the race, we’d go after a guy like that,” Richt said this week. “There are a lot of players in the state of Georgia obviously and nearer to us. Historically, the further away they are from you the less chance you have to get them.”

Stafford’s father, John, was a former college swimming coach who was a graduate assistant for the UGA swim team in the 1970s and swam at Florida State where Richt later coached quarterbacks.

Godwin said he felt Texas, Louisiana and Alabama were probably the three toughest state to land players.

“They're hard to get because of the travel,” Smart said of Texas. “What we usually end up doing is getting somebody that's connected, you know? It's like, okay, they have some kind of connection, somebody in Atlanta, some relative, maybe a connection to a coach. Or they really wanted to play in the SEC. And before, they had one option. You know, now they've got multiple options. But the hardest job in Texas is figuring out who to go after."

Georgia also has to fight off in-state Texas and Texas A&M for players.

“We always felt there were a lot of barriers to getting Texas kids,” said Godwin, now a manager at private aviation company Wheels Up.  “Usually to recruit someone from Texas, we needed them to kind of be a little bit forthcoming to kind of recruit us a little bit.”

Godwin said Georgia made inroads with Bell, who is from Houston, because it knew his trainer well and he worked out at UGA’s camp.

Georgia had previously landed wide receiver AD Mitchell from Missouri City, Texas who Bell trained with and admired.

Mitchell, Bell and Evans were overlooked out of high school by Texas and Texas A&M.

Godwin said Georgia also had a relationship with the trainer of Humphrey who is from Webster, Texas in the Houston area.

“For those guys, there were less barriers to entry,” Godwin said.

Godwin said 5-star freshman linebacker Justin Williams and defensive end Joseph Jonah-Ajonye from Conroe, Texas were wanted by Texas and Texas A&M, but Williams built a relationship with several Georgia coaches. Freshman offensive lineman Michael Uini was a third UGA signee from Texas in 2024 out of Kempner.

Georgia’s 2025 class has 14 of its 22 commitments from in-state and none from Texas.

NIL is more of a factor now than ever and Godwin said Texas and Texas A&M are well-funded to win battles for players. He said a player like Williams who showed a lot of interest at Georgia on its own will be needed.

“I always felt it was a game of managing time and resources,” Godwin said. “Ultimately, we got some good players from there, but it was very tactical.”

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: A look at the six Georgia football scholarship players from Texas