Success no surprise for Georgia's Baker

Georgia's Deandre Baker poses with the Jim Thorpe trophy for being college football's top defensive back. [AP PHOTO/JOHN BAZEMORE]Deandre Baker always envisioned success.Being the best player on the field. Winning championships. Receiving trophies.But winning the Jim Thorpe Award — given to the top defensive back in college football — wasn’t really on Baker’s radar growing up in Miami, Florida.That’s because until the middle of his high school career, Baker played solely wide receiver.Tuesday, the Georgia standout was in Oklahoma City for the official presentation of the Jim Thorpe Award after a senior season where he had 10 pass breakups, two interceptions and 40 tackles.It was a suggestion from his father, Andre Baker, who was with him at the ceremony, that sent him down the path to the award after Deandre grew up playing first running back and then receiver.“He told me to try playing both,” Deandre Baker recalled Tuesday. “He said that’d give me an even better chance of getting a scholarship.”It did, as the Bulldogs offered early. Despite a visit to Texas not long before signing day in 2015, Baker stuck with his commitment and signed with Georgia.Baker said there was little doubt in his mind that he’d be successful with the transition.“I feel like I’m always the best person on the field,” he said. “That’s just how I move.“When I was 4 of 5 years old, when I started playing Pop Warner, I was always the best person on the team and one of the best guys in the neighborhood so that’s when I started thinking that I could really do this.”Baker said his background as a receiver helped him become a top-flight cornerback.“A little bit knowing certain stems on the route and certain areas they are on the field,

knowing they’ve only got a certain amount of routes they can do from that spot on the field so things like that helped me out a little bit,” Baker said.In Baker’s final collegiate game, the SEC Championship Game against Alabama, he held eventual Biletnikoff Award winner Jerry Jeudy to just three catches for 24 yards. On Jeudy’s 10-yard touchdown catch, Baker wasn’t matched up with the Crimson Tide star.Baker sat out the Bulldogs’ Sugar Bowl loss to Texas and is projected as a first-round pick in the NFL Draft.Baker spent some time Tuesday with former winners Antonio Langham (1993, Alabama), Roy Williams (2001, Oklahoma) and last year’s winner Minkah Fitzpatrick of Alabama.He also was asked plenty about Georgia’s win over Oklahoma in the Rose Bowl a year ago.“Everybody talks about the Rose Bowl,” Baker said, laughing. “Some Oklahoma State fans were happy though.”