The Chosen One: South Georgia Wonder Kid Elyiss Williams
The Chosen One: South Georgia Wonder Kid Elyiss Williams
C/O 2025's Elyiss Williams is who you wanted Arik Gilbert to be.
Time for the chosen one to reveal himself.
- Arthur Shelby, Peaky Blinders
When considering what ingredients are necessary in the formation of a football hotbed, South Georgia emerges as an interesting case study. Inquisitive minds have long debated what part of the US reigns supreme as the apex region for high school football prospects, and in truth, there probably isn’t one right answer. However, in order to conduct an intelligent discussion on the matter, defining which characteristics are beneficial can prove useful.
One reasonable place to begin the discussion would be population size. The area should be heavily populated—that’s just a numbers game. Similar to lottery tickets, the more you have, the more likely you’ll scratch a winner. The socioeconomic status of the population would certainly be relevant too (quoting Philadelphia Eagles legend Jason Kelce here: “Hungry dogs run faster”).
But above all, I would argue that football passion would be ingredient number one. I’ve always found the areas which are sparsely populated, barely scraping by economically (if that), yet somehow managing to construct and maintain massive high football facilities, to be incredibly fascinating. It’s a phenomenon that is almost worthy of an anthropological study in my opinion.
Certainly, if you were to gather a group of CFB wisemen in a room and pose the following question: where is the best football hotbed? While you’d probably receive a variety of answers (e.g., South Florida, Atlanta, LA, the Dallas Metroplex…), South Georgia would almost certainly be mentioned as well. However, unlike the four previous areas, South GA is a very rural area.
As someone who loves to follow high school football recruiting, I have a theory about South GA. It’s true that no matter how passionate a small town may be, and no matter how many Rush Propsts they hire to coach their town’s football program, these areas aren’t going to be able to individually churn out elite football prospects every single year. The numbers just can’t support that.
But, if you have an area—an incredibly large, rural area—that was populated by hundreds of these small towns that each loved football more than anything, and invested (apparently) every dollar of their disposable incomes into their high school football programs, perhaps incredible results could be yielded. One small town won’t individually produce a special player every year, but at least one of the other hundreds of high schools is bound to.
From that lens, it starts to make sense how a rural area, without one large population center, can provide at least one big time prospect each cycle. I should say that I am basically considering all of non-Atlanta/non-north Georgia as ‘South GA’ for simplicity. Certainly, middle GA deserves to be pooled into the same group given the geography, the vibe etc… Ask any UGA fan who follows recruiting, and they will agree with me that there is a difference between prospects from Atlanta (like those ungrateful bastards in Gwinnett County) and the rural Georgia prospect.
For myself and other disciples of the above mentioned hypothesis, 2025 is proving to be a banner year. Lee County’s Ousmane Kromah looks like pre-knee injury Marcus Lattimore reincarnated. IDLs Justus Terry and Elijah Griffen are some of the best looking DLine prospects of the last 10 years. Linebacker Zayden Walker from Schlee County has shades of Rueben Foster to his game. But perhaps the freakiest of the south Georgia monsters this year is 6’7 five star TE Elyiss Williams.
TE Elyiss Williams — 6’7, 240
Even my guy Ray Charles could tell you that Williams is an All-American ‘First off the Bus’ type of guy. With most high school prospects—even the five stars—it always feels like a long shot that they’ll eventually get drafted into the NFL. With this kid, something had to have gone horribly wrong if he is not at least selected at some point in the 2028 NFL Draft (I am assuming he’ll be a three-and-done player, silly me).
Perhaps his closest comp will actually turn out to be one of his UGA predecessors—Darnell Washington. Although I would argue that Washington was even more of an enigma of an athlete coming out of Las Vegas. Williams looks more the part of an offensive skill player, albeit, a really tall one. Darnell could have been a DE, DT, OT, or TE coming out of high school and still make it to the NFL, in my humble opinion.
Like Darnell, Williams is also a dual sport standout. In his spare time, he moonlights as a (elite) basketball player, and you can tell by his football highlights. He looks more coordinated and comfortable as a runner with the ball in his hands versus Darnell at the same stage, which is one of the few differences in the two profiles from my point of view. Below is a snippet from Elyiss’ hudl tape from the 2023 season. They both even have clips where they’re wearing some sort of hoodie thing coming out of the back of their neck pads.
Here’s Darnell’s high school highlights by Maxpreps:
I can’t recommend this highly enough if you haven’t, you should do yourself a favour and watch Darnell in high school. Dude did it all for his program. I think people tend to forget what a dominant pass catcher he was coming out of high school because 1) he happened to play at UGA during the same time that Brock Bowers was there, and 2) as he grew into his frame he became the most dominant run blocking TE in CFB, probably ever. It doesn’t take a football genius to figure out why he might not have been padding the stat sheet in the passing game.
Williams—should he stick to his commitment to UGA—shouldn’t be in a position where he is relegated to being the primary run-blocking TE. At least not all the time (I’m basing this opinion off of the probability that UGA isn’t finding another Brock Bowers anytime soon). So while the reader may have rolled their eyes as soon as they heard that my comp was Darnell Washington, I would not be so quick to dismiss Williams as a guy who could become UGA’s primary pass catcher eventually (à la Bowers).
True to form—being a rural Georgia prospect—Williams is a current UGA commit, and it sounds like he’s trying to bring the South GA squad with him. He was recently quoted in an interview on ON3 as saying this:
Zayden Walker, Elijah Griffin, David Sanders and a couple of guys, Ousmane Kromah at Lee County as well. I feel like for most of the guys in South Georgia, Georgia is the hometown school.
As far as what the evaluators are saying, here is Gabe Brooks of 247 Sports:
Legitimate high caliber-prospect as a tight end or an edge / defensive lineman. Elite physical traits in regards to height and frame. Possesses desired multi-sport athletic profile that includes basketball and limited throws competition.
Displays good downfield ball-tracking concentration. Consistent hands catcher with a titanic catch radius. Flashes impressive get-off from an attached alignment. Big stride and functional athleticism foster build-up speed that provides particularly dangerous sideline verticals and seam shots.
Excellent two-way snaps with playmaking ability as a pass rusher. Rim runner and rim protector as a big man for his basketball team. Smooth floor-runner and strong rebounder who can bang in the paint.
Keys for continued development include expanding the route tree and leveraging better into breaks. More of a linear athlete than lateral and can improve lower-half fluidity.
Projects as a high-major mismatch tight end with the size to play attached and the athleticism / playmaking ability to flex out. Owns physical traits and athletic profile that reflect immense long-term potential and NFL Draft candidacy.
Here is a note that ON3’s Jeremy Johnson dropped on Williams earlier this month:
That dude is one of the freakiest athletes I've seen. The stories are already kind of legendary down there with the things he can do.
The game against Lowndes is something I have heard about on multiple instances. Camden was down by 20 or more and then they just started throwing the ball to Williams and they rallied and won. On the basketball court, I have had multiple coaches say 'he's the truth' on the court as well.
I don't think he's Brock Bowers or Darnell Washington. The truth is he may be somewhere in between. If that ends up being the case, Georgia hasn't seen a tight end like this one in this run of great tight ends. He's potentially a transcendent talent that could change the narrative of how the position is played. He has work to do. He's a plus blocker but needs to refine himself as a pass catcher that will happen some this year as Camden has made the move to spread.
Personally, I think Johnson might be a bit overzealous there, but I’ve seen some of the clips from camps that are starting up already and he’s giving some Arik Gilbert vibes as well. To the naked eye, he’s bigger than everyone else, faster and more coordinated. Gilbert was a bit more thicc, whereas Williams is longer. Kyle Pitts on steroids? One can dream… just keep him away from Atlanta for the love of god.
Coaching & System
UGA has recently become known as a ‘TE’ school amongst the CFB and CFF crowd. In fact, they’re the only school who have had a TE drafted every year for the last six straight years (it’s true, look it up). However, it should be noted that it was one specific TE who accounted for the elite offensive production during the Kirby era—Brock Bowers.
Besides Bowers, there had not been a highly productive TE at UGA during the Kirby era. We all know that Smart is more involved on defence, and that it is the OC who calls the plays on offence; and given that the OC has changed several times during Kirby’s reign, the numbers that you see below for Kirby’s historical track record relate to different systems. Point being that there will be quite a bit of volatility in the historical patterns under Kirby. And as usual, you can ignore the projections, it’s the historical usage numbers which are pertinent for our discussion.
Note that the 2020 Covid season is omitted from the numbers.
Mike Bobo, who is the OC, doesn’t really have a history of using the TE position as a receiver either, prior to last season of course. Before his one season at UGA, his TEs typically saw fewer than five targets per game. So the target share of ~16% at UGA last season under Bobo appears to be somewhat of an outlier.
However, I’m not convinced that the trend of TE usage that started with Bowers won’t continue moving forward. UGA has recruited and signed multiple high-end TE prospects already based on the reputation of their offences with Bowers, so I’d imagine that the coaches want to make good on their promises to said players (e.g., Oscar Delp, Lawson Luckie, Jaden Redell).
Furthermore, Brock Bowers’ target share actually increased with Carson Beck at QB last year compared to Stetson Bennett the two previous seasons (that is—before Brock got injured, the aggregate target share number in Table 1. doesn’t reflect this, but you can see the targets per game number is higher in 2023).
Of course, Beck won’t be around when Williams touches down on campus in 2025 (I’m just going out on a limb here). At that point—in the current era of CFB—who the hell knows where we’ll be when it comes to UGA’s starting QB, system, transfers, etc. etc. And who even knows if Williams will stick to his verbal and sign with UGA in the end.
Nonetheless—as crazy as this might sound—Williams’ ceiling is probably higher than that of Brock Bowers due to his physical tools. He really is the prototype when you think about building the optimal physique of a TE. And you can just imagine what the CFF outcomes could look like if he’s in a system that wants to feature him as a receiver.
Coming out of an area stacked with athletic freaks in this strong 2025 cycle, Williams looks to be the freakiest of them all. ◾
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