Arik Gilbert didn’t suit up for the Bulldogs in 2021 due to personal reasons, but with injuries piling up at the tight end position during spring practice in Athens, the former five-star recruit and LSU transfer could find himself in prime position to make an impact for the Dawgs fairly soon.
Shoulder surgery kept starting TE and 2021's leading receiver Brock Bowers out of spring practice and both Darnell Washington and Ryland Goede went down with knee injuries. This leaves Gilbert as the only UGA tight end on the practice field with a collegiate reception—35 catches for 368 yards & two touchdowns for the Tigers in 2020.
Now back with the team, DawgNation’s Brandon Adams shared that he’s “hearing really good stuff” regarding the All-SEC Freshman but offered a slight caveat.
“The last thing you want to do is oversell something like this because it’d be too tempting to want to do that, but the sense that I get is, is he’s fitting in pretty well right now," he told Andy & Randy on 92.9 The Game. "He seems to be doing well in the classroom. We’ve had folks tell us that. Doing well on the practice field. Now, probably a long way to go to kind of work himself towards being the player we all thought he could be at one point in time, but definitely the reviews that you’re getting from him right now in practice have been positive.”
At Marietta High School, Gilbert racked up over 3,500 reciting yards and 35 touchdowns in his high school career and was the top TE in the 2020 recruiting cycle. That potential, Adams says, should excite the Bulldog faithful.
“I don’t know that anybody was a more polished pass-catcher at that size than what Gilbert was and so there’s still a reason for optimism for him. And thus far, folks are saying that he is doing really well in practice and certainly could be a factor heading toward the fall," he said.
Spring practice for the defending national champions will culminate on April 16 with the annual G-Day spring game.