Isaiah McKenzie, a highly-regarded kick returner and receiver from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., committed to the Bulldogs at a press conference at his high school on Wednesday morning. His letter-of-intent arrived later in the morning, Georgia announced.
McKenzie immediately becomes the top candidate to return kicks and punts this season.
“His No. 1 job is gonna try to be that punt returner, kick returner for us,” offensive coordinator Mike Bobo said. “It could be the difference in one ballgame, and obviously help us on offense if we can sometimes just get 10 yards on the punt return. That’s the first down for the offense. And field position is so crucial, it sometimes doesn’t matter how effective you are as an offense, the percentages go down if the field position isn’t in your favor. It’s hard to go 80 yards on anybody, I don’t care who you’re playing.”
Head coach Mark Richt was watching film of McKenzie just before coming in Wednesday for his press conference.
“He’s a very dynamic return man,” Richt said. “That’s what jumps out at you the most – just his ability to make people miss one, two or even three times in the same play. He has a lot of speed, quickness and swag. He really believes in himself.”
Return swag
Now if Mark Richt believes in the return game again, we may really be on to something.
Filed under Georgia Football
Get The Picture 
170 lbs. sure is small. I hope he can take a hit and hold on to the ball.
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Brandon Boykin, Mikey Henderson, Prince Miller, etc. have all been smaller dudes. It’s usually the smaller, the more dangerous in the return game imo.
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Trindon Holliday is 5’5 and playing in the NFL. If they can’t catch you to to tackle you, size might not matter as much. At least w/r/t returns.
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I keep telling my wife that!!!
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Meh, Percy Harvin was 5’11” 180 when he got out of High Schoo and went to Florida. Do ya think he might just needs some time?
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Geez, AHD. It’s Percy Harvey whose gusty play won him the game ball against Big Game Bob
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1,2…3,4,5
them gatahs don’t take no jive!
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never gets old!
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Honey Badger and Triton Holliday say hi!
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Not to grumble about what appears to be a good recruit, from what I’ve seen of our return team, the fair catch is often due to the kicking team having four guys surrounding our returner before the ball arrives. I we can’t coach blocking for a return, he’ll just need to practice the fair catch wave.
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I was thinking the same thing
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Best punt return blocking is often when you are aggressively going after the block punt. Only the gunners can release and punter has less time to hang a high one. Aggression for the win!
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Damien Gary was a little dude wasn’t he?
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Can anyone direct me to the Kool Aid? A new defensive staff, tons of solid recruits, loads of returning talent…be still my beating heart!
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I know … I had to take another cold shower!
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I am glad that CMR appears to have rediscovered the wheel.
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There are lots of coaches who never do.
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I think we may be a little more committed to the punt return this year. The last three years we wanted no risk and get the ball to Murray and company. We have had great punt returners in the past and the right guy could be in the future. Of course coaches will want trust in ball security which starts with actually fielding the punt.
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“Pinch me, I must be dreaming” of the second coming of Carlton Thomas and the Swagger Wagon
“Rounding out the 2008 class of backs is Carlton Thomas. The scat back from Frostproof High School in Florida has speed for days. The minuscule back (5’7″, 170)…was a terror on special teams.”
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/32871-georgia-football-tailback-u#articles/32871-georgia-football-tailback-u
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Would certainly be exciting to have a Tavon Auston-type play-maker in the return game. But as others have already noted, the other guys on the field still need to do this crazy, new-fangled thing called “blocking” for it to work.
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With the uusal caveats about highlight videos, here’s McKenzie’s very entertaining one from Youtube (“The Human Joystick”). It’s a 5 minute video. Watch the whole thing because the last minute is the best.
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WOW!!!!
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Not wanting to be negative but what I saw on this video was a really fast runner/receiver and a lot of poor tackling and bad pursuit angles. He’s not doing that to any SEC teams.
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What I saw is that he runs backwards almost every time before starting up field. There is one punt that he catches at the 35 and runs backwards to the 5 yard line before turning upfield. He can’t be doing that in the SEC. It won’t work and will probably draw a penalty for block in the back every time.
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Jeez. Good thing there weren’t blogs around in Jan of ’79. Can’t you just hear it: “Oh that Herschel Walker all he does is run over tacklers. He won’t run over anyone in the SEC.”
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The guys hating on that video must not watch much HS FB. He made some really good HS teams look slow. My only question is who in the world was good enough to keep us from offering him until Monday?
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There’s definitely no defenses in the SEC that have poor tackling fundamentals and take bad pursuit angles. Nope, not a one. Kisses Jeremy Pruitt shine buried in closet
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There was one but he won’t be playing against that team. 🙂
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Don’t a lot if guys seem to take bad angles on gurley and Marshall? Just sayin.
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Particularly last season during spring and summer practice.
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But to be fair, he was doing that against South Florida HS teams. There’s some pretty good football being played down there.
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Nice! Though I think some of those stop and circle back moves will get him killed in the SEC. Still, nice to have this kind of threat back there on returns.
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Think of what he would have done against our special teams!
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It will be interesting to see if the punt return remains McClendon’s responsibilty with the new defensive staff. Most defensive coaches want control of that. Who wants their defense to get a stop only to fumble the punt back?
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Thomas flowers was 5’10 according to georgiadogs.
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It’s like everything else…give and take. The comments about returns helping the offense sounds like a change of philosophy (prompted by what?). I think for every great play a returner gives you, you get two or three plays that hurt you because of penaties, fumbles, backward runs, etc. Admittedly I have no data to back this up…but being Georgia you have to know they’ll call it (block in back) if they possibly can.
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We already got a shorty who can return kicks. JJ Green, anyone?
And just why do we need 2 undersized DBs and 2 undersized wide receivers in the same class?
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Great class and great effort by Richt and his team. Go Dawgs.
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That “slide and glide” move he shows several times in that video is impressive. He seems to have the patience of an experienced runner and instincts of a cat when he gets into traffic. You never know how a HS player will develop over the next 4-5 years but this was a helluva pick-up this late in the game. Since we were all over Michel, how did we not see the talent he exhibited in that clip before February? I don’t care if he is the same height as Howdy Doody, get that man the ball in space a few times a game. Reminds me a lot of Holliday, Hester, and a few of those pygmies FU had that used to run by us with every year.
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His nickname (Joystick Izzy) has my 6 and 7 year old boys intrigued already. They were pestering me on the way to school this morning about what his number is. I was trying to explain to them he doesn’t have one at UGA yet but they would not seem to accept that answer.
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It sounds like someone has been reading Bill Connelly.
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