They must be doing something right.

Josh Kendall has a piece up in today’s Macon Telegraph about the slight number of Georgia players that will be selected in this weekend’s NFL draft. If you’re watching to see how many of your favorite players will go on the first day, you’re likely to be disappointed.

… when the NFL holds its draft Saturday, Georgia will be decidedly under the radar. The Bulldogs, who finished 11-2 last year, are in danger of having no players selected on the first day of the draft for the first time since 2000.

The article notes the strange juxtaposition between the level of the program’s success over the past few years and the slender number of pro prospects this time around:

“For a team to be as developed as Georgia is at its high level of competition and have such a small and marginal draft class is very unusual,” said Frank Coyle, publisher of Draft Insiders’ Digest…

In my mind, that’s a telling point.  And it’s nothing unique to the ’08 draft, either.  After all, don’t forget that Georgia didn’t have a player selected in last year’s draft until the first pick of the third round.

Of course, that trend will change – perhaps as soon as next year, if certain players elect to come out after their junior seasons – but it’s quite a tribute to the coaching staff to have the program at the consistently high level it’s been at under Richt without a significant number of high level NFL picks being deployed on the field year after year.