Georgia football: 3 Reasons Stacy Searels is an outstanding hire

Georgia football officially has a new offensive line coach, and some Dawg fans aren’t sure about the hire. Head coach Kirby Smart hired Stacy Searels, who has been coaching the offensive line at North Carolina the last few years.

Questions of whether or not Searels can recruit and keep the Dawgs’ offensive line at an elite level have littered the interwebs, and fans have begun questioning Smart’s decisions again.

Didn’t Georgia just win a national championship? Yes, and it only took a little under two months since hoisting the College Football Playoff Championship trophy for the fans to start complaining again.

While Searels may not have been Georgia’s first choice for this position, he is a great offensive line coach with ample experience and quite a few All-Americans on his resume.

He was one of the first coaches we discussed would make a solid hire after Luke announced that he was stepping down because he knows his stuff.

Georgia football made a great offensive line coaching hire by bringing Stacy Searels back to Athens.

Searels coached at Georgia before during the Mark Richt regime as he was the offensive line coach in Athens from 2007 to 2010. He came to Georgia from LSU after winning a national championship with Nick Saban in 2003. After his time in Athens, Searels left for Texas to coach with Mack Brown, where he coached there from 2011-13.

When Brown left the Longhorns, Searels took the same job at Virginia Tech for a season before rejoining Richt in Miami. He stayed with the Hurricanes from 2016-18 and then reunited with Brown to coach at North Carolina in 2019.

While the Tarheels’ offensive line performance has been up and down since Searels took over, it doesn’t mean he is a terrible coach. Searels is the furthest thing from a bad coach. It isn’t easy to coach the offensive line position, even though some of these fans act like it is.

There is a lot more that goes into developing these guys than blocking. Smart wanted an experienced coach, and he got one in Searels.

The fan base will quickly realize that the Dawgs made a great choice hiring this veteran offensive line coach.

Here are three reasons Searels will turn out to be an excellent hire for the Dawgs and their offensive line future.

Stacy Searels has the talent to work with within the Georgia football program

One of the biggest concerns from the Georgia football fans is the number of sacks that North Carolina has given up in the last few seasons with Stacy Searels as the offensive line coach.

Georgia allowed just 16 sacks in 15 games last year, so fans don’t want to see that number go up if it doesn’t need to.

Matt Luke did a great job with pass protection, but he wasn’t the person out there blocking — it was the players, which most of those guys return in 2022.

The Tarheels gave up 49 sacks in 2021, 34 in 2020 and 37 in 2019. Those numbers aren’t great, and they are downright bad, but that doesn’t mean it will happen in Athens.

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When Searels coached at Georgia the first time the Dawgs were a team that rarely gave up sacks. In his first season with Georgia, that unit, which had three starting freshmen on it, gave up 15 sacks, which ranked No. 13 in the country.

In his second season, Georgia gave up 17 sacks, which ranked No. 21 among the other college teams. His third season, 2009 was his best because the Dawgs’ offensive line gave up just 12 sacks on the year, which was No. 6 in the country.

Then in his final year, the Dawgs gave up 25, which isn’t great, but not terrible either.

No one wants to see starting quarterback Stetson Bennett under pressure because he usually makes mistakes when he gets rattled but to automatically assume that Searels will cause Georgia to cough up 30-plus sacks as the offensive line coach is silly.

It’s understandable why most fans are concerned with that, but a lot more goes into the offensive line than how many sacks they allowed. We get it, Searels wasn’t the fans’ first choice, but there is much more good that he brings to the table than bad.

These offensive linemen that Sam Pittman and Luke have brought in are naturally gifted, and the starters all have a lot of experience already. Searels won’t have to do much with them to alter that.

There will be some changes, but for the most part, he is stepping into a great situation, probably the best situation because the foundation is complete.

Georgia football will see Stacy Searels get the run blocking back to an elite level

One of the biggest positives about Stacy Searels becoming the Georgia football offensive line coach again is his ability to produce incredible rush blocking lines.

Offensive production is something Searels succeeds at, and now the Dawgs’ offensive line will get that magic touch.

North Carolina’s offense in 2021 was one of the most productive in college football. The Tarheels averaged 35.2 points and 468.2 total yards a game. However, the most impressive stat is how North Carolina led the ACC in rushing yards with 2,763 — 17th nationally. Two years in a row, the Tarheels have led the ACC in rushing yards, led by Searels and his offensive line.

Not to mention, there have been five 1,000-yard rushers to come out of Chapel Hill in the last three seasons. Explosive plays were right up their ally with 80 plays of 20-plus yards, 42 plays of 30-plus yards, and 13 plays that went for over 50 yards.

That production was even better in 2020 for the Tarheels. Sure, a lot of things go into having those kinds of numbers on offense, but it all stems from having an offensive line that can block well enough to let it happen.

Those explosive play numbers are what Georgia wants to see, and Searels’ offensive line helped make them happen. Most of the Dawgs’ explosive plays came through the air, but it would be nice to see more of them come on the ground again because we love a good 50-yard touchdown run.

When he was at Georgia, Searels produced an offensive line that helped increase the production. Georgia averaged 177.2 rushing yards and 32.6 points a game in his first year. The Dawgs’ offense averaged 31 points and 426 total yards during his second season. Georgia averaged 161 rushing yards a game in 2009, and in Searels last season, the Dawgs saw 31 points a game.

However, there was a seven-game stretch to end the regular season where Georgia averaged 41 points a game and scored 40-plus points in five games.

Georgia had a great rush attack in 2021 under Matt Luke, but it always felt like it took a while for the offensive line to get that push needed to produce big runs. Searels will be able to come in and teach this line how to get that push right away and increase production on an already productive offense.

Stacy Searels will be just fine on the recruiting trail for Georgia football

There are high expectations for assistant coaches when it comes to recruiting. As we all know to stay elite, a program has to continue to sign high-level talent. Georgia football head coach Kirby Smart wouldn’t have hired Stacy Searels if he couldn’t recruit.

This notion that Searels can’t recruit was another thing fans brought up when complaining about him that piqued my interest. What made them think this, I’m not sure, but when he was at Georgia the first time, he recruited well, but he also developed his guys.

Look at Clint Boiling and even Ben Jones, two of the guys Searels brought in and coached. Boiling was a freshman All-American and earned All-SEC honors in 2008, 2009 and 2010. Jones earned All-SEC honors in 2009 and 2011.

He and Jones were draft selections, and one of them still plays in the league. Boiling retired in 2019d after eight years with the Cincinnati Bengals, and Jones has been a starter for the Tennessee Titans for six years.

Cordy Glenn is another Searels guy who was a stud in college and played for a few seasons in the NFL.

Of Searels 11 NFL Draft picks, Jones, Boiling, Glenn and Justin Anderson are four of them. He knows how to recruit and develop. Some say, well, that was 10-plus years ago, but that argument doesn’t sit right because he continues to recruit and turn those boys into All-Conference and All-American men.

In 2020, Four of Searels guys at North Carolina earned All-ACC honors, and in 2019, he helped get Charlie Heck All-ACC honors, an invite to the East-West Shrine Bowl, the Senior Bowl, and Heck got selected by the Houston Texans in the fourth round of the Draft.

Those are just the most recent. Searels had more players accomplish those things at Miami, Texas and LSU. Searels knows how to recruit quality players and turn them into solid offensive linemen wherever he coaches.

Plus, if we think about it, Searels is coming to coach for the defending national champions — recruiting can’t be that hard when you have that kind of sell. Even if he did start to struggle, it’s not like he can’t ask Smart what to do. Smart is one of the best recruiters ever, and he can help his assistants meet his expectations.

Georgia football hired the right guy to fill the offensive line coaching job.

Searels will have a lot of fun with the current offensive linemen in the room, and who knows, a few of them could leave Georgia as All-Americans, and high Draft picks because of what they learned from him. Not to mention the ability to either maintain or increase offensive production — it’s a win-win situation for him and the Dawgs.