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Georgia football report card: 'Proud' Kirby Smart credits practice juice and energy
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Georgia football report card: 'Proud' Kirby Smart credits practice juice and energy
Georgia football coach Kirby Smart saw two of the best practices of the season leading up to the 49-14 road win at Missouri
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did anyone catch the graphic during the telecast that showed the comparative stats between CKS and CMR in their respective first five seasons as head coach? Telling!
Yes, I did catch those stats. Kirby and Richt are both elite recruiters, but I still think Kirby is an overall better coach. BUT, do you realize that those were mostly Richt's recruits that took us to our only appearance in the CFP in 2017?? Same number of SEC East titles too. The Dawg's record wouldn't be near as good if we were in the SEC West. Let's be honest. Think about it. I'm giving Smart 2-3 more seasons to take us back to the CFP and a Natty. If he can't do it by then, it ain't gonna happen under Smart.
But back to yesterday's performance...Great game overall. Proud of those DAWGS. A few miscues but we took care of business. Let's hope the players have another great week of practices and finish the regular season strong against Vandy. I'd love to play Cincy or UNC in the Peach Bowl New Years Day. Either team would be a challenging matchup.
GO DAWGS!!
Do you realize it was Donnan’s recruits that accounted for the overwhelming majority of the wins Richt’s first five years? To call Richt an “elite” recruiter is being very gracious! I would call him lazy! Barely cracking the top 10 in the fourth best recruiting state in the country is not elite. Top three recruiting classes is not only elite, it is what building a championship contender is all about! The comparisons between Richt and Kirby will end after this year. Kirby is building a program built for longevity and his next 10 years will put Richt’s to shame!
I beg to differ when looking at the records of both coaches in their first 5 seasons. That IS the comparison. Records are almost identical. What Kirby does going forward is still to be seen. He has the opportunity to make history or not. I'm looking forward to the results and a Natty. Until then we'll hope and pray he can find the winning formula to take us to the next level.
The team...A. I am forgiving.It was cold, windy and misty rain. If the whole is the sum of its parts, then it is impossible to give the team an A, Mike? You must be charitable like I am. You scored mostly B+ and a D even. To me, the "juice" was evident.....plenty of it. No way should UGA have blown out a pretty good team like MO. It was clear..UGA was a much stronger unit than MO. Actually, UGA out-coached Drinkwitz...who is said to be an offensive wizard!! I was pleasantly surprised as UGA RBs charged through the MO line at will...racking up TDs. JT hit Pickens if the ball was just close! George is an amazing athlete. UGA's defense literally stifled MO RB Rountree! Great job!
The best game UGA has played all season!!! "A"
PS-Smart needs to convince JT Daniels to remain at UGA next year. The potential for a great legacy is in this young man!!
They have to play every opponent the way they played mizzou if they want to win a national championship including bama.
There's no coach in the east of Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer's caliber so Kirby should dominate most of the teams in the east which will make the path to the college football play off much easier than the teams in the west and he has the most talent in school history to get it done
Coach Dooley's team was all business when they won their national championship. He kept his team on an even keel. His players were fundamentally sound offensively and defensively and they played hard on every single snap. I must say "that was an amazing season!"
I generally agree with the grades. It was nice to see the OL bounce back after a dreadful lull.
And I'll add a big ol' F for the network coverage of Pickens' outstanding touchdown grab. It was one of the best plays we've seen from our team all year, and we had to catch it anticlimactically on replay because the cameraman stopped to take a bite of his sandwich in the middle of it.
It would be nice if people would stop with the Richt comparisons until there's a comparable sample size from Smart. Obviously, the results over the first 5 years are very similar. If Richt were fired at this point because it was said he just wasn't good enough, then yeah, it would be fair to point out that Smart hasn't done much better. But of course, Richt's first 5 years were never the problem. And as harbingers go, I don't put any stock in this comparison for two reasons.
1. It seems to me that Richt and Smart were/are on pretty different career arcs as as head coaches. Looking back on Richt's career, it's fair to say he peaked early. The results from 2002-2005 were great. But after that he produced all of two noteworthy seasons before being fired in 2015. So far, there's been no indication that Smart is on that same path. If anything, there's reason to believe the opposite is true - that it's taken him a little while, but he's starting to adjust his mentality, philosophy, whatever you want to call it and open up to better ways of utilizing the talent on the team. To wit, one of the big contributing factors to the downturn under Richt was his questionable coordinator management - e.g., Martinez, Schottenheimer. Conversely, Smart seems to have learned his lesson from his previous OC hires, quickly moving on from Coley to bring in Monken.
2. The comparisons of their respective recruiting abilities - saying "they're both good recruiters" or "they're both elite recruiters" - are simply not accurate. A top 3 recruiting class, the norm under Smart, was a rare treat during the Richt era. The vast majority of Richt's classes would have been received as disappointments if they had occurred during Smart's tenure. Richt was a good recruiter; Smart is an elite recruiter. This means that if/when it does "click" for Smart (and again, there are signs that it's starting to), he's going to have more talent to work with than Richt ever brought in. Which kind of brings me to a third ancillary point...
I've never understood the "he did it with the other guy's players" argument in general, and its application to Smart/Richt is no exception. You want to say it was all Richt's players that Smart played to get to the title game? (Putting aside the ones who weren't for simplicity's sake) OK. Richt had all of those players and produced a result that got him fired. Smart used them to win the SEC for the first time in 12 years, win the Rose Bowl and get to the national championship game. That this would be used as a basis for questioning his coaching ability seems backwards to me.
Anyway, obviously time will tell on all of this. There's no denying that Smart does need to continue to grow and develop as a head coach for all of it to come to fruition. I'm optimistic that he will.
JT took 1 sack that was his fault where he had a chance to get rid of it but waited too long, the other was a busted blocking assignment and he literally had zero chance.
Richt had Donnan's recruits and Kirby had Richts. Richt's did well for Kirby, got him to a NC game and should have won, but Kirby went all conservative and the tide turned, pardon the pun.
Donnan's recruits did well for Richt. He was able to have early success because of having good player.
If Saban wasn't at Bama we would of had at least one and perhaps two NC's right now. It was definitely Richt that had us in a position to take the next step instead of coming into a bad situation and starting over from scratch.
You can certainly offer that Kirby is a much better recruiter than Richt, although it was Richt's recruiters who did the heavy lifting, Bobo, Mclendon and the D-line guy at Auburn now.
But with greater recruiting classes go greater expectations. I believe in Kirby, if he can grow, learn and evolve and stay out of his own way. He has the drive, no doubting that.
What coach should we compare Kirby to? You've got to compare him to someone else. Richt was considered one of the best recruiting head coaches in college football at that time. No doubt. I would call him 'elite' at the time. Yes, Kirby has produced even better recruiting classes, so shouldn't our results under Smart be EVEN BETTER? Yep. Heck, our new facilities and the amount of money we are spending on the football program today pales in comparison to when Richt was coaching. Yet, Richt and Kirby had almost identical W-L records and SEC Championships in their first 5 seasons. SO, by your logic then Kirby has kinda been a bigger disappointment considering how good his "elite" recruiting classes have been.
You are right. Time will tell whether Kirby and his coaching, development, and play-calling decisions gets us back to playing for a Natty. I give him 2-3 more seasons to prove it.
Sure, Richt was an elite recruiter at times. Twice in 15 years.
And who says there NEEDS to be a comparison, to the point of comparing a 5th-year coach to his predecessor's 15-year career? As I explained, that's the problem with the Richt comparisons at this point. Both got off to a great start in their first 5 years. But the problem with Richt was that that was his ceiling. So any meaningful comparison would have to account for that, which is obviously impossible to do at this point since Smart's career has yet to extend beyond those first 5 years.
I'd like to dive into the matter of the spending=championships argument, but I just don't have time.
Richt had the longest coaching career at UGA since Dooley. Heck, he might have the longest career period. All I was comparing was the first 5 years like they did on the TV broadcast yesterday. That's how this started. Sure, Kirby is his own coach and time will tell if he is really a better coach than Richt. I think he is, but I'm still not nearly convinced he can be as successful as a Saban or a Swinney. So let's just compare him to those elite coaches. I'm not even sure he can take us back to the playoffs. Again, winning the SEC East has not been that hard to do honestly. I don't see that as a big accomplishment in the scheme of things. I'm expecting much more and so are MANY fans.