Kirby Smart provides initial thoughts on Georgia's season opening matchup with Oregon

There are less than four months remaining until the start of the 2022 college football season, and there are some intriguing matchups on the schedule for Week 1. One of those matchups is between Georgia, the defending national champions, and Oregon.

Adding to the intrigue of that matchup in itself, there will be two familiar faces opposing each other on the sidelines. Kirby Smart will lead Georgia, while Oregon’s new head coach is Dan Lanning, who left the Bulldogs for the Ducks in the offseason. Lanning had been at Georgia since 2018, and now he gets his first head coaching opportunity.

CLICK HERE to get 30% OFF your Georgia Bulldogs National Championship apparel

Recently, Smart addressed his initial thoughts on the season opening matchup between Georgia and Oregon, and he also touched on the fact that he’s going up against Lanning to kick off the season.

“We looked at them in the spring and kind of studies those guys,” Smart said. “It makes it awkward, you know the new head coach, you can take the film and things. You’re really looking more at who the players are than anything. Very familiar with Dan Lanning, very familiar with a lot of guys on the staff. His offensive coordinator was at Auburn and also at FSU, so we looked at those guys. But got a lot of respect for Dan and what he did for our program, and know he’ll do a really good job there at Oregon.”

Oregon and Georgia will face off in Week 1

Lanning was undoubtedly a big part of Georgia’s dominant defense last season. The Bulldogs saw great success in every facet of the game on that side of the ball, and that was apparent even in the 2022 NFL Draft, with an impressive number of Georgia players being selected.

Now, Lanning is embracing his new opportunity as a head coach. It is going to be a unique and excited moment when he takes the field to go up against his former team to kick off his coaching career, but he’s ready. Even as he helped Georgia prepare for the National Championship last season, he was doing double-duty while also preparing for the start of his tenure at Oregon.

“Walking off the field, in the tunnel, after winning the national championship, I was on a FaceTime with a guy that can enhance our program (at Oregon) and make us better,” Lanning said earlier in the offseason. “That moment — you enjoy it, you get to coach your entire career and don’t always get the opportunity to win a championship. But I’ve been fortunate enough to watch other people do that and juggle that in my time, I got to watch Smart do that first-hand in his time going from Alabama to Georgia, and luckily enough, that was someone I could lean on during that process. But it’s full steam ahead at Oregon. Everything Oregon.”