Kirby Smart shares what Georgia football is missing

Georgia football is in an interesting position as they get ready to kick things off against Mississippi State today. The team is 4-1 with their lone loss coming on the road against Alabama. On paper this isn't a bad start to the season, but many fans are feeling worried about the outlook of the Bulldogs’ season.

What is missing then? The Bulldogs do have some dominant wins over good teams and looked pretty good against Alabama even though they lost. So what is missing with this team?

Let’s see what Kirby Smart had to say.

”I don't think anything's missing. I really don't. We haven't tackled as well as we have in the past, but some of that is space play. Some of that is the offense and the athletes we've played.”

Missed tackles (and slow starts) would be what I would say is missing too. Statistically this is the worst tackling Georgia team in recent years as they’re averaging three more missed tackles per game than they have in the last couple years. So what could be the cause for this?

Smart has an answer for that as well.

“We lost three players in the secondary who are all starting in the NFL, but I think we've got three people to replace them that are good players. I don't know that we've got three draft picks in our secondary right now, but last year we did.”

While I’m not the biggest fan of this quote from Smart there is some truth to it. Georgia is replacing a lot of talent and that’s not an easy thing to do. As much as we’d like UGA to not miss a beat every season, that’s just not realistic to expect.

When you couple that with the fact that Georgia has played some tough teams early in the season then it’s really not a surprise to see the team struggling on defense with tackling. The hope now is that the team improves on this and improves in a hurry.

Georgia will be able to get away with some missed tackles against Mississippi State today, but they won’t against teams like Texas and Tennessee. So let’s hope we see some improvements today so UGA can build some confidence going forward.