ATHENS — Kirby Smart has gone silent on his old pal.
Lane Kiffin, head coach of Ole Miss, often has shared about the group text chain he shares with his coaching buddies, which include former Alabama colleagues Smart and Nick Saban. But Kiffin noticed Monday, as the 10th-ranked Rebels prepared for Saturday’s road game against No. 2 Georgia, that Smart seems to have checked out.
“Yeah, I tried to get that going Sunday and this morning,” Kiffin said at his weekly press conference Monday. “Other people were responding, but he’s not responding. I was asking other people on there if they had any advice. I added (Missouri’s Eli) Drinkwitz on there, and he responded. But Kirby didn’t respond. We haven’t played them before, so maybe he has a rule the week of the game he doesn’t respond to you.”
We can’t be sure, actually. Smart was asked about Kiffin’s famous SEC coaches’ group chat Monday but managed to gloss over it while answering the second part of the question only. Smart and Kiffin worked together for 2½ years for Saban at Alabama as defensive and offensive coordinators, respectively. Kiffin landed there a year after he was fired on an airport tarmac as head coach at USC.
Kiffin was known for being instrumental in getting Saban to open up the Crimson Tide’s offense. He and Smart also had some fierce battles in practice scrimmages.
On Saturday at Sanford Stadium, Kiffin and Smart will go head-to-head for the first time as head coaches. The Rebels (8-1, 5-1 SEC) enter the game at 8-1 for the second consecutive season and are known for their quick-starting offense. They’ve outscored opponents 117-38 in the first quarter this season.
Conversely, the Bulldogs have been a notoriously slow-starting bunch in 2023, but remain undefeated amid a 26-game win streak that includes back-to-back national championships.
“He does a great job,” Smart said Monday of Kiffin. “He’s extremely intelligent. He doesn’t overthink things. He keeps it simple and doesn’t think that you have to overthink things sometimes as a coach. Probably doesn’t get enough credit for that because he wants to beat you with fundamentals. He wants to beat you with his players doing things within their system. ... He looks for matchups, he looks for explosive opportunities. They’re one of the most explosive offenses, run and pass, in really the last 10 years of the SEC.”
The Bulldogs have trailed in five of their six SEC games this season while edging opponents 51-38 in the opening quarter.
But under Smart, Georgia continues to field one of the better defensive teams in the country. The Bulldogs are one of only four teams in the nation ranked in the top 10 in both scoring offense (39.3 ppg, 10th) and scoring defense (15.4 ppg, 6th). The other three are Michigan, Penn State and SMU.
“We have a gigantic challenge in front of us. We’re playing the No. 1 team in the country, playing them at their place at night,” Kiffin said. “I think the last time anyone has beat them there was five years ago before COVID. The last head coach that beat them there, I can’t ask. (Will Muschamp) is now on their staff. Not a lot of answers out there on how to beat these guys at home.”
Georgia’s 24 consecutive wins between the hedges matches 1980-83 for the longest streak in school history. Muschamp’s South Carolina team was the last to beat the Bulldogs at Sanford, winning 20-17 in double overtime on Oct. 12, 2019.
Ole Miss hasn’t played Georgia in Athens since 2012. The Bulldogs won 37-10, which was their 10th in a row in the series. The teams haven’t met since 2016, when Smart’s first team lost to then-coach Hugh Freeze’s Rebels, 45-14 in Oxford.
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