Earlier this week, Georgia football head coach Kirby Smart spoke again on why his staff is one of the best ones he has had with the Dawgs. The answer was what you want to hear from a coach about the assistants around him because the success proves his point.
Smart may have replaced four coaches this offseason, but those four new faces have brought a lot of good to the program. This new group knows what it means to coach at the University of Georgia and why it’s such a big deal. They know the kind of culture Smart wants in Athens, and they respect that.
Georgia won the national championship with part of this group of coaches, but after the Dawgs roundhouse kicked Oregon in the face, it’s clear that this staff is different from the others. They had this team prepared for that opening game, which Georgia has struggled with in the past.
When a team exerts that much dominance, the coaching staff and players are all on the same page.
Georgia football has its best staff under head coach Kirby Smart, and it’s already showing.
While Smart didn’t flat-out call those coaches selfless, that is probably the perfect way to describe them. They love this group of players, and it’s clear whatever it takes, they will help lead them to success.
"“The buy-in of those four coaches, the alignment, the understanding of this program’s bigger than me and that I’ll sacrifice for the program,” Smart said in his press conference. “They understand their role. They’ve done what they’ve been asked to do, and they embrace it. And there’s a lot of positive energy and enthusiasm at practice. And it works. So it’s created a really good kind of connection among the staff.”"
To have a successful program, the coaching staff has to buy in because it’s hard to win without it. When those coaches will sacrifice and do whatever it takes to win, that is how you know the staff is elite. Embracing the culture that a head coach puts in place is also a recipe for success because everyone stays on the same page and while there may be tension about little things, it isn’t tension that could cause an uproar.
However, I want to point out the word connection because it seems to be one of the underlying messages for this 2022 team. It was one for the 2021 team, and we all saw what happened with that group. To hear that connection word for the coaching staff, though, shows that no matter if you’re a player or coach, that relationship matters, and it’s how you produce results.
Smart knows he has something special with this group of coaches, and hopefully, they will stick around Athens long enough to do even more great things. The Dawgs have a program sustaining success, so with a staff like this, winning championships is the highest thing on the to-do list.