A few days after he took his official visit to Colorado over the weekend of Dec. 3, Georgia athlete Xavier Smith pulled the trigger and committed to the Buffaloes.

The 6-foot-2, 185-pound athlete became commit No. 17 in CU's 2022 class and plans to sign his letter of intent this upcoming Wednesday.

Smith is a self-described late bloomer.

While the Buffaloes represent his lone Power Five opportunity, he picked up offers from Army, Charlotte, Liberty, Middle Tennessee State and others.

Part of that had to do with a recent position change he underwent at Langston Hughes High School, which advanced to the Georgia Class 6A state championship game this past weekend, losing in heartbreaking fashion, 21-20, to Buford.

Up until this summer, Smith had played quarterback for the Panthers before transitioning to safety, the position Colorado recruited him to play in Boulder.

When Smith initially started to get recruited, he quickly built a bond with CU safeties coach Brett Maxie, who had firsthand experience in switching from quarterback to defensive back in his football career.

While Maxie didn't make the change in high school, as Smith did, he began his college football career at Texas Southern as a signal caller and shortly thereafter switched to defensive back.

“He said he sees a little bit of himself in me," Smith said of Maxie. "He played quarterback up until his sophomore year in college, so he said he saw a little bit of himself in me with my range, how I can cover and the raw instinct of me seeing things and making plays on the ball."

"I feel like I can learn a lot from him and I can relate more to him than most coaches.”

Having been in the passing pocket himself, Smith found it to be an advantage in turn when playing safety and trying to anticipate what a quarterback is going to do.

“You see it differently when you play quarterback, so I can see the field differently when I’m back there at safety," he said. "It’s just like playing quarterback because I’m reading the field and I can sometimes anticipate concepts in different situations."

"When you watch film, it helps you pick up on those concepts. It’s ultimately made me better and a smarter player.”

Smith's recruitment also suffered due to a serious injury he suffered in-season with Hughes, breaking his leg back on Oct. 29.

While he has some time ahead until he's back to 100% health, he's making steady progress and making sure to stay as involved as possible in working out when and what he can.

“I’m in a walking cast right now," he said. "It's still a hard cast, but I can put weight on it now. When I was in a full leg cast, I was just relieved to get out of it. But the doctors have been telling me everything’s been looking good."

"...I never wanted to take a break with the working out because I don’t want lose a step — I’m already behind since I missed out on the last six weeks of football with my high school."

Following his official visit a couple of weekends ago, and coupled with the relationship he had built with Maxie, Smith felt like he'd seen enough to make a decision on his recruitment.

“I picked up that he was a very knowledgeable guy," Smith said. "He’s somebody you can sit down and talk to outside of football — you’re going to have a really good, genuine conversation. You can already tell he knows a lot about football and knows what he’s doing."

While he'll sign Wednesday with the Buffaloes, Smith does not play to enroll at CU until this upcoming summer.