Kirby Smart provides update on potential G-Day plans for Georgia football

Georgia has a tentative date for its annual spring scrimmage, with the Bulldogs circling April 18 for the team’s G-Day game.

But as far as what the game will look like, much of that is still up in the air, per Georgia head coach Kirby Smart.

Speaking ahead of Georgia’s first spring practice on Tuesday, the Georgia coach explained his thought process on how the spring game might look for the Bulldogs.

“No, G-Day, will stay similar, assuming (health.) It’s a long way off, but assuming that we’re healthy and we have the number of guys we need to be able to play, G-Day would be a very similar format,” Smart said.

Georgia will have 15 practices this spring, giving the 2026 team a chance to get ready for the upcoming season. The Bulldogs finished last season 12-2, winning the SEC championship but losing to Ole Miss in the first round of the College Football Playoff.

The Bulldogs held a spring game last year, but it was not televised.

There are some questions about what the future of spring football will look like as the sport continues to change.

Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks serves as a member of the NCAA Football Oversight Committee, which is examining further changes to the college football calendar.

Brooks noted in January that there are a lot of moving pieces when it comes to making changes to the chaotic college football calendar.

“I mean, everybody wants to wave a magic wand and just pretend, but there’s things, when you look at the Army-Navy game, when you look at the dates of the CFP, when you look at the dates of when semesters start on campuses,” Brooks said at Georgia’s winter athletic board meeting. “Those are beyond the committee’s purview, so we have to look within those contracts and say, what can we move? So there’s easy ones and then the hard ones, right? You start getting into, OK, we’re going to keep the portal in January or we’re going to move it to a later date.

“In every scenario you look at, there’s a bunch of consequences from that, intended and unintended. Fleshing all those out and deciding the lesser of two evils is where you wind up when you’re making tough calendar decisions.”

One key difference this year is that there is no spring transfer portal, so players do not have the same level of freedom to possibly transfer elsewhere.

The Bulldogs bring back plenty of proven contributors from last season’s team, which went 11-1 and won the SEC. Quarterback Gunner Stockton, running back Nate Frazier, linebacker Raylen Wilson and tight end Lawson Luckie are among those expected to lead Georgia during the upcoming season.

Smart did share that he wants Georgia to focus on becoming more explosive offensively this spring while doing a better job of pressuring opposing quarterbacks.

“Well, our main goals on defense for this spring is to get better at creating havoc in the backfield,” Wilson said. “And really playing together, everybody being on the same page. I mean, if we get that accomplished, I feel like we’d have a great spring.”

Georgia did bring nine players via the transfer portal, in addition to another recruiting class that ranked No. 6 in the country for this cycle.

That gives the Bulldogs a lot of new names and faces to know before they potentially take the field at Sanford Stadium.