Now that Georgia football has over three weeks until their first College Football Playoff game, Kirby Smart and his staff will start prioritizing recruiting. Not only will they begin devoting a lot of their attention on the class of 2026 high school recruits, but they will also begin to aggressively target players in the transfer portal.
The portal opens on Dec. 9, meaning that players from all over the country will begin flooding the portal as they look for their new school to play for next season. And there will be a good amount of players that Smart will want to bring to Georgia.
But what positions does Smart plan to target the most this offseason from the portal? The answer Smart shared to that question may surprise you.
"Yeah, all of them. All of them," Smart shared via 247sports.com. "It's not a position that we don't have enough depth at. I mean, like I repeatedly say, we have less depth than we've ever had before. So we evaluate the transfer portal on who fits our culture more than we do who fits our talent level. There's tons of talented guys out there. We just want to find people that want to fit our culture and really our ethic because it's not a place to go to if you're just looking for sheer numbers. I mean, you've got to want to win, and you've got to want to make sacrifices for the team here."
Georgia is looking for culture fits first
Smart shared that there isn't one position in particular that Gerogia needs to target in the transfer portal this offseason. In fact, he said they need to go after players at every position.
Smart's reason for this is because he doesn't feel Georgia has enough depth at any position, especially compared to the last few years. So instead of focusing on one specific position group, Smart shared that he's first going to look for players that will fit the culture at Georgia first.
Now obviously there is a certain skill level that is required for Georgia to be interested in a player, but how they fit in the program as a teammate and in their culture is how Smart and his staff may decide between two players who are very similar skillwise.
This offseason will likely be a very busy offseason for Georgia. They already have had two of their own players enter the portal, but that number is only going to increase. So Georgia is going to have to be active in the portal to not only replace those players, but to add the depth that is desperately missing from this year's team.