Mekhi Mews, nicknamed 'Waffle House', the latest Georgia football walk-on success story

The guy who made the biggest play last Saturday in the season opener for reigning two-time national champion Georgia football had a modest list of schools that talked to him about a scholarship coming out of Central Gwinnett High.

Wide receiver Mehki Mews said Morehouse and Savannah State, in-state Division II programs, and Olivet Nazarene University, an NAIA Division III program in Bourbonnais, Ill., came calling.

Instead, he decided to join the program filled with top recruits 45 minutes from his home in Grayson as a preferred walk-on.

“You just have to put your head down when you first come down,” Mews said. “You just start at the bottom of the depth chart and put your head down and work. If you’re willing to work, I feel like this place gives you opportunities to work your way up.”

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Watching Georgia’s 48-7 win over UT Martin from the stands like he did growing up was someone who knows a bit about succeeding as a walk-on.

Stetson Bennett attended the game in the last off week before the NFL season starts for the Rams rookie quarterback, according to his Instagram story and photos on social media fans took of him.

The 5-foot-8, 185-pound Mews used what he has said is 4.4 speed in the 40 to rack up 1,522 yards and 11 touchdowns as a high school senior in 2020.

“I think his height has an advantage to it,” safety Malaki Starks said. “He’s the full package.”

Mews showed it with a big G-Day spring game and then Saturday with Ladd McConkey sidelined, he started at receiver. Mews had three catches for 75 yards, including a 54-yard catch-and-run touchdown.

“Everybody executed on that play,” he said. “I felt like the easiest part was just running to green grass.”

Georgia’s roster includes 13 players that were rated 5-star prospects — behind only Alabama’s 18, according to the 247Sports Team Talent Composite — but Bennett isn’t the only walk-on who has made a name for himself under Smart.

Dan Jackson has started five games at safety. Jack Podlesny was an All-SEC kicker. Aaron Davis was a four-year starter at defensive back, including on the 2017 team that made it to the national championship.

Running back/defensive back Prather Hudson played in 53 games for Georgia before transferring on scholarship to Illinois. He’s back with the Bulldogs now as a quality control assistant.

Kicker Rodrigo Blankenship, became a folk hero after coming to Georgia as a walk-on under Mark Richt. His father went public with thinking that his son deserved to go on scholarship.

It finally came early in the 2017 season. Smart announced after the win at Notre Dame that Blankenship had been rewarded but he’s since soured on putting out when a walk-on is rewarded.

“I don't think that's always worth the publicity that you get,” Smart said. “I think sometimes you can do more damage than good with guys that may feel like they deserve one. We keep that internal, and if it gets out, it gets out.”

Mews was high on Georgia’s preferred walk-on list and committed in January 2021.

With roster spots filling up with players taking their COVID seasons, Mews was getting only partial scholarship offers elsewhere, he told The Players’ Lounge.

“I had a couple of DIIs but the way the money was they weren’t offering full,” he said “Georgia was honestly my cheapest opinion. This is the cheapest and the amenities were the best.”

Those amenities now include the chance to eat at the Bones dining area inside the $80 million Butts-Mehre football operations center.

Walk-ons can get their meals covered there for breakfast and dinner. Eagles first-round draft pick Jalen Carter reportedly paid for lunches for walk-on defensive lineman Weston Wallace last year.

Mews said his confidence level grew when teammates who went up against him when he was on the scout team told him that he could play. He said in the Players’ Lounge interview that offensive coordinator Mike Bobo calls him 'Waffle House.'

“I’m always open,” he said.

Bennett’s walk-on story — leaving to go to junior college, returning on scholarship and winning the starting job and then back-to-back national titles — is well-known.

When he won the Burlsworth Trophy last December for top player who started his career as a walk-on, Bennett thanked his teammates, saying he wished they could be there with him, “but they took the easy way out and got scholarships out of high school.”

Mews said Bennett making it big as a walk-on provided inspiration.

“I felt like if he could do it at quarterback then who am I to say I can’t do it at receiver,” Mews said.

Another walk-on, running back Cash Jones, stepped up for an injury-riddled backfield and had 4 catches for 25 yards and 3 carries for 5 yards last week.

The redshirt sophomore from Brock. Texas played in 11 games last season, scoring on a 35-yard touchdown run against Vanderbilt. Running backs coach Dell McGee recruited him.

“He’s been in that room with some really good backs,” Smart said. “Cash has gotten better and better and better.”

Georgia’s needs dictate which players it targets as preferred walk-ons.

“We're more selective of who we bring out there because some years we need O-lineman, some years we need DBs, some years we're short at running back,” Smart said. “We try to get our needs out of the walk-on class and, every now and then, in our state especially, you got tremendous high school players who get overlooked.”

Jackson is one. Or it sounds like used to be one. He said this week that Georgia “is taking care of me for sure here.”

His offers out of North Hall High in Gainesville included Air Force and Division II Shorter.

“He’s the second-best walk-on safety in Georgia history,” co-defensive coordinator Will Muschamp, a walk-on in the 1990s who became a starter, said last year. “You figure out who the first one is.”

Georgia lists 133 players on its roster. There are 45 walk-ons. Six-walk-ons played against UT Martin, including running back Sevaughn Clark, linebacker Terrell Foster, tight end Drew Sheehan and snapper William Mote.

Smart said those that don’t get in a game “go out and practice so hard every day that you don't get to see because maybe they don't have quite the ability or are not quite as far up the depth chart."

Said wide receiver Dominic Lovett: “Like Coach Kirby says, if you practice hard, we’re going to find a place for you to play.”

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Mekhi Mews is the latest walk-on to come up big for Georgia football