Sentell’s Intel representative on Georgia Football Recruiting has the latest with 4-star WR CJ Wiley. He ranks as the nation’s No. 15 prospect and No. 136 overall prospect for 2025 on the 247Sports Composite. The On3 industry rankings place him as the 13th WR and 116th overall.
CJ Wiley just committed to play for Florida State. Wiley chose the Seminoles over Georgia and LSU.
He did so in a ceremony broadcast live by DawgNation from the Brad Zettler LiveLOUD team meeting room in Milton.
In a surprising turn of events, his family was unaware of it until it was broadcast live on multiple media outlets.
“I wanted to surprise everyone,” Wiley said.
The Wiley family didn’t know this.
“I trusted him,” said his mother Jay Wiley. “I mean, it’s been a journey. I let him make this trip. I didn’t want him to let me make that decision for him and then hate me if I didn’t train for him. I told him, “It’s up to you,” “You decide where you want to go,” and “You own your process,” with all that.
“The coaches at Florida State have been phenomenal. They’ve been recruiting him since he was a freshman. They created a bond. It’s a great school and the legacy is phenomenal. I mean with everything. You can not be wrong.
“Really, I just made my little checklist and went through the boxes and saw which school was the best fit for me and all that,” Wiley said Tuesday afternoon.
Wiley also said FSU coach Mike Norvell didn’t know. He said he made a call shortly after the ceremony to announce that he would be a Seminole.
“He was just excited for me and everything,” Wiley said. ” Really. He said I shocked the world.
He said there wasn’t a single moment that made him realize FSU was the right place.
“I’ve been there a few times and I felt like every time I went to FSU it felt like home,” Wiley said after his decision. “Coach Norvell, he greets me well and really sets the tone for real. As if fresh from the visit. As if I had just entered.
He said his recruitment would still be “open” and that he would be open to further recruitment by both LSU and Georgia, among other schools.
DawgNation probably quickly remembers the KJ Bolden story from last August. That’s when the 5-star surprised a lot of people by choosing FSU.
That never stopped the Dawgs and Kirby Smart from continuing to recruit Wiley and ultimately, that persistence won out.
Time will tell if the same thing could happen with this recruiting.
The 4-star wanted to join a team with a “winning mindset” throughout the program. It was what would suit him best.
It is a recruitment which Georgia welcomed after its official visit at the beginning of the month.
But he still had to delay late charges from FSU and LSU against consecutive officials after his last stay in Athens.
What you need to know about CJ Wiley
- He is 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 210 pounds and has been timed at 10.8 seconds in the 100 meters.
- Wiley was a top target for the Class 7A state champion Milton Eagles in 2023. He caught 68 passes for 1,468 yards, 21.4 yards per catch and 14 touchdowns.
- His parents, Chuck and Jay Wiley, are both former SEC athletes at LSU. Her sister, Logan, is enrolled in the Class of 2024 volleyball at Georgia Tech.
- His father, a former two-time ALL-SEC defensive lineman, played six seasons with four NFL teams, including the Atlanta Falcons for two years.
- He had catches of 92 and 99 yards in the same season for a program that competes in Georgia’s highest playing field.
- There’s all that plus this revealing game film from his 2023 season.
But it’s still 1999, remember? This old-school player with an old-school work ethic is already revered around Milton High.
Wiley will be on hand Sunday morning after Milton’s fall games. He will catch the 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.
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Luke Nickel on CJ Wiley: A QB’s true love for his big WR
Milton High quarterback 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 making more of Wiley’s big plays on a football field than anyone now.
What does he think the next QB who throws to Wiley will get from him?
“They have a playmaker,” Nickel said. “It’s a. It’s the football side of things. But they’re recruiting the hardest-working guy. The hardest-working receiver of any team I’ve ever been a part of. I mean, you see him in Milton on Sunday after the matches and I think he said that depending on how many drops he had he would catch a certain amount of JUGS on the machine I’m just sitting there like he’s not giving his body a break. or whatever.
“You just get a leader, a hard worker and a playmaker with CJ Wiley.”
As expected, it’s a lot of fun casting Wiley.
“He’s amazing,” Nickel said. “Everything you can imagine in a receiver, he has it. He is one of those receivers. If he’s going against someone one-on-one, you’ll give him that chance 100% of the time. He’s going to win it every time. He will run past you. He will go in and out of his breaks faster than you.
What is the biggest plus of his game?
“I think it’s his speed and his body control that comes down to his size,” Nickel said. “You wouldn’t think that as big as he is, he could run his routes as well as he can. He can run his routes as well as anyone in the country and his speed is just crazy.
He doesn’t feel guilty about throwing it at her all the time. But he notices the degree of difficulty.
“Sometimes I feel like I feel bad for the DBs that are trying to cover for CJ,” Nickel said. “I definitely think the 50/50 ball you throw at CJ is more like 80/20 with him. If you place the ball near CJ, he will go for it.
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What does Terrence Edwards think of CJ Wiley?
Terrence Edwards is all over the Georgia record books at receiver. He is still the program’s only 1,000-yard receiver in program history. His career records are also all over the pages of history.
Edwards, now the head coach at Mount Vernon, also coached receivers last fall for Milton. But the distinction here is deeper.
When Wiley was in college, he began working with Edwards. He is a long-time #TEWRAcademy student coming to Georgia.
He saw it during those “very green days” at college.
Wiley has a lot of tools. Which ones does he think will benefit him the most at the next level?
“I think these are 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’s not the 10.7 in the 100. It’s his work ethic when there’s no light around . It’s his work ethic to get better when it’s just him and his family and no one else is watching.
“I tell this story all the time and I have to find this image. We had a coaches meeting on Sunday and CJ is there.
Edwards told him, when he caught the ball over the middle, to straighten his shoulders and run.
“It’s because people came behind you to take the ball out and it happened,” Edward said. “Well, next Sunday he and his family were on the JUGS machine. Which they already were every Sunday. But mom was shooting him the ball from the JUGS machine. CJ was catching and Dad had a pogo stick to hit the ball from behind. So there he was, again, working on his game while no one else was watching.
“That’s exactly what CJ and his family do, and this work showed that.”
Wiley played “Z” for the Eagles last fall. He should be an “X” or “Z” in college.
SENTELL INTEL
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