South Carolina Football battling Georgia (again) for talented defensive lineman

It is not abnormal for South Carolina football to find itself locked into recruiting battles with the Georgia Bulldogs. The border rivals both play in the SEC and both heavily recruit the southeast. The state of Georgia puts the most players on UGA’s roster, and most Gamecock teams over the years have had more players from Georgia than any non-South Carolina state.

What has been a bit odd in this recruiting cycle is the sheer number of recruiting battles that the Gamecocks and Bulldogs have been in over defensive linemen.

Jordan Thomas, Justin Greene, Quintavius Johnson, and Nnamdi Ogboko all chose the ‘Dawgs despite heavy pursuit from the South Carolina football program. 5-star Dylan Stewart picked the Gamecocks, but he had Georgia in his top-5.

South Carolina football defensive line coach Travian Robertson is hoping that the latest South Carolina-Georgia battle will go more like Stewart’s recruitment than the others.

Jerome Simmons is a South Carolina native who went up to Highland Community College after graduating from Bamberg-Ehrhardt High School in 2022. Simmons was not ranked by any major recruiting outlet out of high school, but the big defensive tackle has burst onto the scene since becoming a force at the junior college level.

Now a 4-star prospect according to 247Sports, Simmons has received double-digit offers recently with both USC and UGA making official offers to the big man over the last six weeks.

Frankly, Georgia doesn’t need to add Simmons to their class. The Bulldogs already have four defensive tackles committed in the ’24 cycle. South Carolina football has none. With multiple big-name tackles off the board, Shane Beamer and his staff have turned to Simmons to help out at a position that has underperformed in recent seasons.

As a player, Simmons is a space-eater. Listed at over 330 pounds, he can be the type of run-stuffing nose tackle that Carolina has not had in a long time. Just because he is big, though, does not mean that Simmons is not athletic. The big man moves pretty well for a player his size, something that is a necessity in the SEC.

You can watch some of his high school film here.