Welcome to "Sentell's Intel" where Jeff Sentell not only provides you the latest recruiting information, he takes you into the homes of these students and what makes them special to the Georgia program.
This Sentell’s Intel rep on Georgia football recruiting has the latest with 4-star WR CJ Wiley. He ranks as the nation’s No. 15 WR and the No. 136 overall prospect for 2025 on the 247Sports Composite. The On3 Industry Ranking has him as the No. 13 WR and at No. 116 overall.
CJ Wiley just committed to play for Florida State. Wiley picked the Seminoles over Georgia and LSU.
He did so from a ceremony streamed live by DawgNation from the Brad Zettler LiveLOUD team meeting room at Milton.
In a surprising turn of events, his family did not know about it before the live stream across several media outlets.
“I wanted to surprise everybody,” Wiley said.
The Wiley family did not know.
“I trusted him,” his mother Jay Wiley said. “I mean it has been a journey. I let him have this journey. I didn’t want him to have me make this decision for him and then have him hate me after that if I didn’t work out for him. I told him ‘It’s on you’ and ‘You decide where you want to go’ and ‘You own your process’ here with all of this.”
“The coaches at Florida State have been phenomenal. They’ve been recruiting him since he was a freshman. They created a bond. It is a great school and the legacy is phenomenal. I mean with everything. You can’t go wrong.”
“Really I just did my little checklist and went down the boxes and saw which school fit me the best and stuff,” Wiley said on Tuesday afternoon.
Wiley also said that FSU coach Mike Norvell did not know. He said he placed a call shortly after the ceremony to share the word that he would be a Seminole.
“He was just excited for me and everything,” Wiley said. “Just really. He said I shocked the world.”
He said there wasn’t one moment that triggered in his head that FSU was the place.
“I’ve been there numerous times and I just had the feeling that every time I’ve been to FSU it just feels like home,” Wiley said after his decision. “Coach Norvell, he greets me well and like really just sets the tone for real. Like fresh off the visit. Like just coming in.”
He said that his recruitment would still be “open” and that he would be open to further recruitment by both LSU and Georgia, among other schools.
DawgNation is probably quick to remember the story of KJ Bolden from last August. That’s when the 5-star surprised a lot of folks by choosing FSU.
That never stopped the Dawgs and Kirby Smart from continuing to recruit Wiley and eventually, that persistence won out.
Time will tell if the same thing might happen with this recruitment.
The 4-star wanted to commit to a team with a “winning mindset” throughout the program. That was what would fit him the best.
It was a recruitment that Georgia felt good about after his official visit earlier this month.
But it still had to hold off late charges from FSU and LSU on back-to-back officials after he last was in Athens.
What to know about CJ Wiley
- He’s 6 feet, 4 inches and 210 pounds and has been clocked at 10.8 seconds in the 100 meters.
- Wiley was a go-to target for the Class 7A state champion Milton Eagles in 2023. He caught 68 passes for 1468 yards, 21.4 yards per catch and 14 touchdowns.
- His parents, Chuck and Jay Wiley, are both former SEC athletes at LSU. His sister, Logan, is a Class of 2024 volleyball signee at Georgia Tech.
- His father, a former two-time ALL-SEC defensive lineman, played six seasons with four teams in the NFL, including the Atlanta Falcons for two years.
- He had catches that went for 92 and 99 yards in the same season for a program that competes in Georgia’s highest playing classification
- There is all that plus this eye-opening game film from his 2023 season.
But this is still the year 1999 remember? This old-school player with an old-school work ethic is already revered around Milton High.
Wiley will be in on Sunday mornings after Milton games in the fall. He’ll be catching balls from the JUGS machine. His parents will be there with him. He’ll be there whether he had one catch for 23 yards or six catches for 254 yards in his last game.
Luke Nickel on CJ Wiley: Some genuine love from a QB to his big-play WR
Milton High QB Luke Nickel threw those 14 touchdowns to Wiley last fall. The Elite 11 QB is headed to Miami and he’s had the pleasure of teeing up more Wiley big plays on a football field than anyone now.
What does he think the next QB that throws to Wiley will get from him?
“They’re getting a playmaker, Nickel said. “That’s one. That’s the football side of it. But they’re getting the hardest worker guy. The hardest-working receiver around any team that I’ve been a part of. I mean you see him at Milton on Sunday after the games and I think he’s said depending on how many drops he has, he catches a certain amount of JUGS on the machine. I’m just sitting there like he doesn’t give his body a break or anything.”
“You’re just getting a leader, a hard worker and a playmaker with CJ Wiley.”
As one might expect, it is a lot of fun to throw to Wiley.
“He’s amazing,” Nickel said. “Anything you can imagine from a receiver, he’s got. He’s one of those receivers if he’s matched up one-on-one with somebody you are going to give him that chance 100 percent of the time. He’s going to win it every single time. He’s going to run past you. He’s going to get in and out of his breaks quicker than you.”
What’s the biggest plus to his game?
“I think it is his speed and his body control for how big he is,” Nickel said. “You wouldn’t think as big as he is he could run his routes as well as he can. He can run his routes as well as anybody in the country and his speed is just insane.”
He doesn’t feel guilty throwing it his way all the time. But he does notice the degree of difficulty there.
“Sometimes I’m like I feel bad for the DBs out there trying to cover CJ,” Nickel said. “I definitely think that 50/50 ball you throw to CJ is more like 80/20 with him. If you put the ball anywhere near CJ, he will go get it.”
What does Terrence Edwards think about CJ Wiley?
Terrence Edwards is all over the Georgia record books at the receiver position. He still stands as the program’s only 1,000-yard receiver in program history. His career records are all over the pages of history, too.
Edwards, now the head coach at Mount Vernon, also coached the receivers last fall for Milton. But the distinction goes deeper there.
When Wiley was in middle school, he started working with Edwards. He’s been a long-time pupil of #TEWRAcademy coming up in Georgia.
He saw him during those “very green days” in middle school.
Wiley’s got a lot of tools. Which ones does he feel will benefit him the most at the next level?
“I think it is the tools that a lot of people don’t see,” Edwards said. “It’s not the 6-foot-4, It’s not the 195. It is not the 10.7 in the 100. It is his work ethic when there are no lights around. It’s his work ethic to get better when it is just him and his family and it is nobody else watching.”
“I just tell this story all the time and I have to find this picture. We were having a coach’s meeting on Sunday and CJ is there.”
Edwards had been telling him when he caught the ball over the middle to square his shoulders up and run.
“That’s because people are coming up from behind you to poke the ball out and it happened,” Edward said. “Well, that next Sunday him and his family were on the JUGS machine. Which they were already every Sunday. But Mom was shooting him the ball from the JUGS machine. CJ was catching and Dad had a pogo stick punching the ball out from behind. So there he was, again, working on his game when nobody else was watching.”
“That’s just what CJ does and he and his family does and that work showed.”
Wiley played “Z” for the Eagles last fall. He should be an “X” or a “Z” in college.
SENTELL’S INTEL
(check on the recent reads on Georgia football recruiting)
