The second season of Kirby Smart at Georgia has bathed in the brightest kind of light that college coaching can attract. The second season – the one that has served as the ah-ha moment for some of the best in the profession – has likewise foretold a momentous future for Smart.
Those who were paying attention saw it coming, the Bulldogs’ sudden rise from 8-5 in 2016 to championship contender in Smart’s sophomore season.
“I really did,” said CBS’ point man on SEC coverage, Brad Nessler. “I thought the makings were there last year. He didn’t have his system in yet. I don’t know that the kids bought in yet. Then to have guys like Nick Chubb and Sony Michel and Lorenzo Carter come back (rather than enter the NFL draft), that’s telling you they got the team, the coach who knows what he’s doing and the seniors who want to come back and play for him.”
As this pivotal Year 2 has played out, then, what more have we learned of Smart and his methods?
Here is something new: We got to see him at the top of the heap. After winning the first nine games of 2017 and sampling a largely symbolic No. 1 ranking, Smart demonstrated he could play the role of deflator-in-chief with the best of them, sticking hatpins into the premature notion that a team unranked just months ago had suddenly and fully arrived.
All those who have beaten Florida stand up, he challenged the team meeting room before playing the overmatched Gators last month. To his point, everyone remained seated, providing a powerful visual image.
As the season grew in importance, Smart also realized that his voice alone wasn’t enough to sustain the theme. The wealth of senior leadership he had inherited was useful off the field as well.
So, he and his assistants planted their thoughts in the ears of the team leaders and let them filter down through the ranks. Smart had shown himself a believer in trickle-down motivation. With that, he gave some extra-credit homework.
“We had (the leaders) write some things down, and we passed that out and let the players see it.,” Smart said. “It’s easier to write it down sometimes rather than to say it, for a kid who is not used to getting up in front of the team. We’ve tried different tactics just to stay focused.”
The oldest Bulldog, defensive lineman John Atkins, nailed the assignment.
“He called a couple guys in and told us to write out three things that stood out about the team and three things that could get in the way,” Atkins said. “I wrote that I liked the physicality we play with, the grit we play with, the bond we play with. We don’t give up. The bad, I talked about complacency, that’s the worst thing you can get is complacent now.”
These mini-essays, Smart read to the team.
And the Bulldogs kept winning, Smart sticking with the strategy of running the football, relying on defense and gently bringing along the freshman quarterback.
They settled accounts with Tennessee, Vandy and the Gators, those teams that had made Smart’s first season so uncomfortable. There is one more to check off the list – Georgia Tech on Saturday.
And, all the while, Smart was like the slave of ancient days who stood behind a returning victorious Roman general, given the task of constantly whispering into the conqueror’s ear, “All fame is fleeting.”
Only Smart's chorus went like this: "Humility is just a week away."
Then, sure enough, humility arrived, delivered by a runaway truck with "Auburn" painted on the side instead of FedEx.
Following the jarring 40-17 loss to the Tigers, and the expected tumble down the playoff ranking, the Bulldogs then looked to Smart for a different kind of message.
Just as he had instructed all those in the program to resist becoming too giddy, now Smart was charged with making sure they didn’t become too glum.
Demeanor became almost as important as blocking schemes.
“A lot of that demeanor is created through the body language of the coaching staff and training staff, the players, the leaders,” Smart said. “How do they approach (the week)?”
Maintaining a constant, predictable disposition began with the head coach.
“The thing that shows up time and time again is his consistency,” Bulldogs tight end Jeb Blazevich said of his coach. “He has a plan, and he sticks to it. Regardless of a heartbreaking loss or a tremendous win, we’re going to stay with the plan. Things are not swayed by emotions, positive or negative. As a player, it sets expectations.
“If it’s a great win, we can’t say, ‘Oh, man, we’re going to get pats on the back, we’re chilling today.’ And if it’s a loss, it’s not, ‘Oh, he’s going to kill us today.’ We’re going to stay with the plan.”
“We treat (every week) like dogs in a race when they have those things (blinkers) on,” Atkins said. “Tunnel vision. Tune it out.”
All the while, the face Smart turned to the purveyors of distraction hasn’t changed a bit. In his second season, Smart has been as guarded and as no-nonsense with the media as he was at Day 1. It just may be a permanent state. And that has been pretty much the same for the local newspaper guy to the network TV personality. The coach remained consistent up and down the ranks of the media.
Followers of a certain program in Tuscaloosa may have noticed some parallels. Smart does not care to be cast as a clone of his previous employer, Alabama’s Nick Saban. But Year 2 has done nothing to distance Smart from the obvious similarities.
Not that it’s a bad thing.
“If the approach works, whoever your mentor might be, there’s no reason not to follow it,” Nessler said. “(Smart) maybe gets sick of hearing that, but you couldn’t have had a better guy to show you how to do it. He does it very similarly. The practices are the same. The noise in the practices are the same. It’s a mirror image. And I don’t blame him for going that route.”
Of most concern to the fan base is the second-year bump, that period of expected improvement after a new coach has had time to fully transfuse the program with his approach.
Saban is the poster coach for the second-year spike (from 8-4 first season at LSU to 10-3 his second; from 7-6 at Alabama to 12-2). Other cases are well-chronicled: Urban Meyer at both Utah (10-2 to 12-0) and Florida (9-3 to 13-1 BCS champion); Bob Stoops at Oklahoma (7-5 to 13-0 national champion) and, yes, Mark Richt at Georgia (8-4 to 13-1 SEC champion).
And, here, in 2017, we find two of the leading coach-of-the-year candidates to be guys enjoying great second acts – Smart and, oddly enough, Richt, the supplanted one at UGA now in Year 2 at his undefeated alma mater, Miami.
“I'd put them both on the very short list of coach-of-the-year contenders – those two, Lincoln Riley (Oklahoma), Scott Frost (Central Florida) and Jeff Tedford (Fresno State),” said Pat Forde, of Yahoo Sports, also a Bobby Dodd Coach of the Year voter. “And I'd probably put Richt and Smart at the top (in that order).”
“We’ll wait until the end of the year and see – they’re both doing a great job,” said Nessler, another Dodd voter who has Richt and Smart at the top of his list.
Nessler then expresses the fondest hope of everyone committed to particularly savory storylines: “How good would it be if they both made a semifinal and played each other? That would be awesome.”
To get that far and to be thrust into such intrigue would be the most telling experience yet for both men still learning their way in their current surroundings.
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