Click here to watch a video of the Signing Day 2010 Press Conference with Mark Richt

“Quality over quantity.”

That’s how Georgia assistant head coach Rodney Garner described the 19 members of the Bulldogs’ 2010 class of football signees.

Georgia assistant head coach Rodney Garner and head coach Mark Richt held a press conference to discuss new recruits Wednesday. PHOTO BY KATHERINE POSS

Though this year’s class may be thinner in sheer numbers of signees than previous classes, Garner stressed in a press conference Wednesday that he is confident and excited about getting to work with the new crop of talent headed to Athens.

“We’re excited about the young men that we have coming into this program and we’re really looking forward to helping develop these young men into being the future stars of tomorrow for this program,” Garner said.

The make-up of the Bulldogs’ 2010 class is heavily skewed toward the defensive side of the ball and boasts a wealth of homegrown talent, with 13 of the 19 signees hailing from Georgia.

The Bulldog nation breathed a collective sigh of relief Wednesday morning when prized defensive tackle, Mike Thornton, a Stone Mountain native, chose

Georgia after previously weighing offers from SEC foes Auburn and Alabama, and PAC-10 powerhouse USC.

The surprisingly agile Thornton, who weighs in at 280 pounds, should help bolster a Georgia defense that will need plenty of help in the trenches after losing battle-tested seniors Jeff Owens, Kade Weston and Geno Atkins.

Another bright spot in the Bulldogs’ 2010 class is junior college graduate, safety Jakar “The Hitman” Hamilton, who enrolled at Georgia early last month after turning heads around the country with his stellar play in his two years at Georgia Military College.

“In the short amount of time that I’ve had a chance to spend around here, he’s one of those guys that’s jumping out at everybody as a really hard worker which has everyone really excited about what could be down the road for him,” Georgia secondary coach Scott Lakatos said.

On the offensive side of the ball, 273-pound Brent Benedict — an offensive tackle out of Jacksonville, Fla., who is recovering from a knee injury that cut his senior season short — will add considerable size and depth to a Georgia offensive line that should be a strength for the Bulldogs in 2010.

The Bulldogs 2010 class was hit, however, by some significant 11th-hour defections, as previously committed wide receiver Da’Rick Rogers and cornerback Nickell Robey signed with Tennessee and USC, respectively, Wednesday.

In Wednesday’s press conference, Georgia head coach Mark Richt acknowledged that the late-season firing of former defensive coordinator, Willie

Martinez, and the uncertainty surrounding the program during the lengthy search for his eventual replacement, defensive coordinator Todd Grantham, may have weighed on the consciences of some of Georgia’s young commits.

“Recruiting is a lot about relationships, and anytime there’s some kind of change on your staff for whatever reason, the relationships that have been built throughout this recruiting process were broken,” Richt said.

“I think the timing of the [Grantham] hire taking as long as it did, it did put a strain on some of these young men that we had committed,” he said.

Richt, however, refused to discuss specific players who had backed out of their initial commitments to the Bulldogs.

“I know young men love Georgia,” he said. “I know they love the other universities they go to, but [recruiting] is a lot about people and I think that that was a challenge, and not everybody stuck to their commitment.”