Kirby Smart reveals benefits of Georgia being a young team

It’s now been two full seasons since the Georgia Bulldogs won back-to-back national championships. Head coach Kirby Smart would like to find a way to rectify that this season, but to do so, he’ll have to do so with a young team.

Having a young or inexperienced team can sometimes be seen as a challenge for coaches to overcome. However, as Smart recently explained with Fall Camp underway, there are also some benefits to being a young team.

“Energy,” Smart said. “Enthusiasm. Non-complacency. That’s not to label old teams as that, but you don’t have that problem with young teams.”

The Bulldogs finished last season winning the SEC. However, they’d fail to win a game in the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff. Now, Kirby Smart is looking for his young team to play with renewed fire. That happens by maintaining that from now through the season, as he also recently explained.

“Relentless effort, connection, rewarding a teammate, hand on a helmet, body language. It’s more than just how you play. It’s what you do between the snaps,” Smart said. “… I don’t know if it was lacking in previous years. I just know that we want it, [it’s] more rewarding. We’ve always had some form of it, but it’s the analogy of small campfires. We can have all these little small campfires, or you can have a burning inferno. We want a burning inferno. We want all of these campfires to come together and be 11 burning fires — not a couple of burning bushes over here.”

Once again, Georgia does appear to be a national title contender. The Bulldogs are consistently being ranked highly in preseason polls. That includes the first coaches poll of the 2025 season, in which Georgia is ranked fourth in the country.

Kirby Smart sets standards for what would make Georgia’s offense more efficient

Kirby Smart wants to make the Georgia offense as efficient as possible. That’s going to mean setting up quarterback Gunner Stockton for success with a successful running game.

“Define being more efficient? Not as many third and longs. More than five yards per rush, which is a lofty goal. If you rush the ball more than five yards per attempt, you’ll be one of the top teams in the country. And that’s a goal for us. That’s what it looks like now,” Smart said.

“How does it help Gunner? I think it’s obvious. You know, he doesn’t have to have the pressure of third, seven to 10 every down. It frees things up. It opens up your play action. I mean, all the obvious things. But there’s a lot that goes into running the ball better, and that’s what we’re working on right now.”

Georgia opens the season against Marshall at home. Later, SEC play begins with back-to-back major tests against Tennessee and Alabama.