What is Kirby Smart’s record against Top 5 teams since taking over at Georgia?

Since returning to his alma mater as Georgia’s head football coach in 2016, Kirby Smart has spent much of his tenure as a top-five team in the country and entered the 2024 season as the No. 1 team in the nation before Texas overtook his Bulldogs. With three trips to the four-team college football playoff, Smart also has plenty of experience facing other top-five teams in the country, as he will in Week 5 with a trip to Tuscaloosa to face No. 4 Alabama. 

So, how has Smart performed in those clashes of the Titans? Let’s dig into his all-time record against top-five opponents since leaving his post as Alabama’s defensive coordinator under Nick Saban to take over at Georgia in 2016. 

Kirby Smart all-time record vs. Top 5 opponents

This will be Georgia’s first top-five matchup of the 2024 season, and last year, even in a loaded SEC, Georgia only faced one top-five team, No. 5 Florida State in the Orange Bowl. Georgia dismantled a Seminoles team that fell apart after missing the CFP, 63-3. 

Since 2016, Georgia is 9-5 against top-five opponents. 

Under Kirby Smart:

• 2-0 vs. Top 5 opponents in regular season
• 5-1 in CFP (vs. Top 4 opponents)
• 1-4 vs. Alabama as Top 5 opponent
• 7-5 vs. Top 5 opponents as Top 5 team

In the eight seasons since Kirby Smart replaced Mark Richt in Athens, Georgia has made the SEC Championship game five times and matchups in 2017 against No. 2 Auburn (a 28-7 Georgia win), in 2018 vs. No. 1 Alabama (a 35-28 Georgia loss), in 2019 vs. No. 1 LSU (a 37-10 Georgia loss), and in 2021 against No. 4 Alabama (a 41-24 loss) account for four of Smart’s 14 contests against top-five opponents. 

With three trips to the four-team CFP, all three times winning in the semifinal, Smart has accumulated a 5-1 CFP record, all against top-four teams in the country.

The only times that Smart has faced a top-five opponent in the regular season were to begin the 2021 regular season against No. 3 Clemson, a game that JT Daniels quarterbacked for the Bulldogs and won 10-3 with the help of Christopher Smith’s 74-yard pick-six, and in 2022 when Tennessee came to Athens ranked No. 2 after a win over Alabama in Knoxville and the Bulldogs shut down Hendon Hooker and the Vols offense in a 27-13 win.