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There were plenty of people frustrated by how Georgia’s 2024 season played out even with the Bulldogs taking home another SEC championship. Kirby Smart was not one of those people, and his response to what some saw as a disappointing season illustrates the new world that Georgia finds itself in.
Smart went into detail last week about his perspective and how he managed the aftermath of the Bulldogs’ first three-loss season in six years. Smart explained that the mature view of Georgia football today is that it’s in a more difficult climate than before, specifically when it comes to scheduling and life in a 16-team SEC.
“The norm is it’s going to be challenging for everybody. The 2-3-4-5 Autonomy 5 power conference, you’re going to play better and more competition, which is going to make things more challenging. I don’t run or shy from that,” Smart said. “We thought going into last year that we would have to deal with more adversity, more failures. How we dealt with them would indicate our year. I was very pleased with how we responded to losses to keep ourselves afloat and to win the SEC championship. That’s not going to change for the years to come.”
Smart fielded questions last season about issues such as Georgia’s off-pace rushing attack and the Bulldogs’ tackling problems, and time and time again he pointed to the difficulty of Georgia’s schedule. This wasn’t a matter of Smart making excuses — the Bulldogs played the most difficult schedule according to ESPN’s College Football Power Index. It was more of an explanation for why the stats looked like they did and why things weren’t coming as easily for a Georgia program that ran roughshod over most of competition the previous three seasons.
As frustrating as Georgia’s season was, it was far from a complete failure.
Georgia navigated an incredibly difficult schedule by going 10-2 in the regular season with wins over three top-15 teams. The Bulldogs won a tiebreaker to reach the SEC championship game and made the most of it by beating No. 2 Texas to capture the conference title for the third time under Smart.
While the CFP quarterfinals appearance that followed didn’t go according to plan, it did not undo all that was accomplished in the previous games. It also did not lead Smart to make any staff changes despite an outcry from fans for just that.
“I’ve got a lot of confidence in this organization, the foundation we’ve built. I’ve got the best staff in the country, and I have no doubt about that,” Smart said. “I’ve got one of the most experienced SEC staffs there is, and to be honest with you, there’s a lot of confidence in that, and I have a lot of confidence in it.”
Smart may not have made sweeping changes after last season, but don’t take that to mean he’s content with where things stand.
Smart spoke at length about identifying areas of improvement and explained that the approach begins with how the team gets better. He said it starts with recruiting in addition to studying what other teams do in certain situations.
Smart added that Georgia put roughly two weeks on each side of the ball this offseason before spring practice got underway.
“We’ve got new players coming in on both sides of the ball. We’ll find out a lot about them this spring,” Smart said. “We do a very, very intensive study of not only ourselves but other people. When you go back and watch everything you watch you take into account who are you playing against? What is the caliber of the opponent you’re up against? What did we do well? What did we do poorly? What do we have to do better? There’s just a lot there, and I could sit up here for days and talk about that.”
College football has morphed into a sport that looks more and more like the NFL, and with those changes come fewer teams capable of running the table for an entire season. Smart has taken that truth to heart, and it’s a key reason why the focus this offseason was on improvement rather than a complete overhaul of the program.
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