Georgia Football: Kirby Smart improving on closing out games

Critics call Georgia football chokers, but Kirby Smart has learned how to close.

In college football circles “Georgia” has become a word that is synonymous with “to come up short.” Which is fair, for the most part, but is it a fair assessment of Kirby Smart‘s program overall? Some would point to the two meetings with Alabama in 2017 and 2018 and answer yes. However, is the answer that simple? Let’s look and see if Georgia football really chokes as much as they say.

Since becoming the head coach of Georgia football in 2016, Smart has played in 20 games that ended in a score differential of ten or fewer points. In those games, he has gone 13-7. Even though he has such a good record in such games, you begin to see why he struggles in such games against teams with an equal amount of talent to his own.

Smart has coached in 66 games, but only 20 of which have been close. This means the rest of the time he is enforcing his will on his opponent or being blown out himself, which does not happen often (just six times in his career). However, even with the smaller amount of games ending in tight scores, it seems that Smart finally figured out how to close games out in 2020.

In order to see Smart’s total improvement, let’s take a look at how Georgia football has performed in the fourth quarter of tight games over Smart’s time as head coach at Georgia.

Points for vs Points allowed in the fourth quarter/overtime:

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2016 (nine games):

• 54 points for (six per game)
• 54 points allowed (six per game)

2017 (two games):

• six points for (three per game)
• 19 points allowed (9.5 per game

2018 (two games):

• 14 points for (seven per game)
• 22 points against (11 per game)

2019 (five games):

• 28 points for (5.6 per game)
• 45 points allowed 9 per game)

2020 (two games):

• 21 points for (10.5 per game)
• 0 points allowed

As you can see there has been a steady improvement from Smart’s first season in 2016 up until the 2020 season. So what does this say about the upcoming 2021 season? Well, it says that Smart should be able to put his team in the right position late in tight games to come out with the victory. It has taken some time, but when it comes to things like this that is usually the case.

We have to remember Smart is a first-time head coach and even though he has five years of experience now, the top head coaches in college football have over a decade of head coaching experience each. So Smart has a lot to learn and quite a bit of room to make up to catch up to them.

That doesn’t mean he is doing a bad job or that Georgia football chokes. It just means that the opposing coach also wants to win and if that coach happens to be a legend they just might achieve it. That doesn’t have to be a strike against Georgia. Sometimes you just have to tip your cap to the better man. However, Smart is coming along and this could be the year he puts all those lessons to use and is finally able to get his own name mentioned along with the other elite coaches.