Elijah Griffin didn’t exactly come into football as a kid obsessed with the game.
The 6-foot-4, 310-pound defensive lineman from Pooler, Ga., near Savannah, said his first instinct was to stay home and fire up video games instead of putting on pads. His favorites ran from LEGO Batman to LEGO Star Wars, plus WWE and just about anything else on the shelf.
“I really just wanted to sit home and play video games, to be honest with you,” said Griffin. “I was into LEGO Batman, LEGO Star Wars, any LEGO game, WWE, you name it.”
That changed in seventh grade, when football finally clicked.
“That’s when I really started to feel a love for it and just transcend it,” said Griffin, who later became a five-star recruit and the No. 2-ranked prospect in the country.
His rise picked up again as a ninth- or 10th-grader at Savannah Christian, where confidence became a big part of the story.
“I started to get more confidence in how I played, and people started seeing stuff in me - and I started seeing stuff in myself,” said Griffin, who arrived at Georgia in January 2025.
Now, in his second season, Griffin is no longer just a reserve trying to find his footing. He played in all 14 games last year as a freshman and finished with 22 tackles, 2.5 tackles for loss, a sack and 14 quarterback pressures. This fall, he has stepped into a much bigger role.
He is one of eight Georgia defensive players to start every game this season, and he takes that streak into Saturday night’s game at No. 10 Ole Miss with 12 tackles and two sacks.
One of those sacks came in Georgia’s 27-8 win over No. 24 Florida last Saturday, when the Bulldogs’ defense smothered Jaden Baugh and the Gators’ ground game.
Baugh entered the game averaging 109 rushing yards per game, but Georgia held him to 38 yards on 17 carries and limited Florida to 54 yards on 28 attempts.
That kind of run defense fits right into Georgia’s approach. Ole Miss comes in ninth in the SEC in rushing at 157.50 yards per game, while Georgia ranks third at 200.1. Kirby Smart made it clear after the Florida win that stopping the run is where everything starts.
“I think anybody will tell you, if you can’t run the ball, and they struggled to run it, it makes you one-dimensional, and then everybody gets to feast and rush the passer.”
Ole Miss, though, brings a passing game that has been one of the best in the conference. Trinidad Chambliss leads the SEC with 273.6 passing yards per game and has a league-high 18 passing touchdowns. Smart said Monday that Chambliss can create those “Wow plays,” but what stood out most to him was the quarterback’s day-to-day precision.
“It’s the down-in, down-out decision-making that he’s really elite at. The accuracy that he’s elite at, the release, the decision.
His pinpointing,” Smart said. “He has an anticipation of windows that’s probably unmatched.
I don’t know if that was God-given or the fact that he played a lot of football before he got to Ole Miss. He has played a lot of football, and experience helps.
You throw all that in, and you have a tremendous athlete. He goes forwards, backwards as fast as he goes sideways.
He can back up and go for it. He’s just a great athlete that is a great quarterback.”
Georgia’s defense has been one of the best in the SEC, allowing an SEC-low 14.9 points per game and collecting 26 sacks, which ranks third in the league. Griffin has been part of that push up front, and he says the physical side of the game is what he enjoys most.
“I seek contact; I don’t run away from it,” he said.
Georgia tight end Elyiss Williams, who stands 6-7 and weighs 255 pounds, knows exactly what that looks like from the other side.
“He is pretty tough, I ain’t gonna lie; he’s pretty, pretty big,” Williams said.
For Griffin, though, the football part is only part of it. He said he values the team bond just as much as the on-field work, and he’s trying to slow down and appreciate it while he can.
“It’s the brotherhood, camaraderie, all the memories you make with your brothers. Not even on the football field, but outside of it, in just regular life,” he said.
“You know, it’s crazy how time’s flying by. I was just a freshman last year, and now we’re already at game nine in my sophomore year, so time is just flying.
I’m definitely taking in these moments as they come.”
He also says the game is starting to make more sense to him now. Last season, Griffin leaned more on his physical tools. This year, he says, the mental side has come much further along.
“It’s just understanding the scheme and what we do on defense better, being a smarter player. I feel like last year, I knew the playbook, but I didn’t really understand or grasp it well enough. Just the way I play the game now, striking blockers and stuff like that, it’s much different than freshman year.”
And he expects that growth to keep going.
“There has to be,” he said. “I feel like in order to be a good player, you just have to transcend each year.”
It’s a long way from the kid who would rather play LEGO Batman than chase quarterbacks or blow up a run play in the backfield.
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