Kirby Smart on earning bye in CFP: ‘That long layoff can get you’

ATHENS — Kirby Smart has his team back into the College Football Playoff for a second consecutive season.

Yet he was not in a celebratory mood when speaking to ESPN on Sunday. The Georgia coach was already focused on what comes next for the Bulldogs.

“The first thing we’re gonna do is try to heal, recover, final exams, and then take a deep dive at looking in ourselves and maybe see some areas we can grow in,” Smart said. “But it’s a long-thought process about that, a lot of debate last year. I think none of the teams with byes won, if that’s correct. So there’s a lot of thought there, a lot of texting going on between coaches who did it last year, trying to find maybe a better way.”

Georgia won’t know its opponent until Dec. 20, when No. 6 Ole Miss plays No. 11 Tulane. Georgia beat Ole Miss 43-35 earlier in the season, but both those teams are different from that meeting. Ole Miss won’t have Lane Kiffin, who has since taken the head coaching job at LSU, while the Bulldogs could be missing a few of their contributors.

Georgia’s first playoff game will be the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day, a familiar spot for the Bulldogs who won the SEC championship last year and had a long layoff before facing Notre Dame.

Even after delivering a dominant performance against No. 9 Alabama, Smart was plenty aware of struggles by last year’s bye-earning teams.

“I think we’ve played complementary football all year. We do have a lot of players getting better. We’ve challenged our guys to do that, but the problem now is continuing to do that, and that long layoff can get you.”

Georgia will look to use the extra time off to recover and improve.

There are a few key differences between Georgia from last year to this year. Carson Beck was knocked out of the SEC championship game and Gunner Stockton was thrust into starting duty. The Notre Dame game marked his first career start.

Entering this year’s playoff, Stockton is the only quarterback who has started in a CFP game.

The other big change that Georgia has made is their commitment to stopping the run and running the football.

“At the end of the game, if you have to run the ball and you have to stop the run, especially when you get into cold weather or tough elements, those are things that matter the most,” Smart said. “And we didn’t do those well last year, guys. And that was what we were hanging our hat on this year was, can we stop the run and can we run the ball? And we were gonna do that come hell or high water.”