Kirby Smart shares how Georgia keeps defensive linemen fresh

During his time at Georgia, Kirby Smart has established the Bulldogs as one of the best defensive teams in the country. A large part of this is because of the dominant defensive lines he puts on the field, who have the depth to continually rotate without major drop-offs in production.

Kirby Smart was asked about this leading up to the SEC Championship Game, in particular how he keeps defensive linemen fresh throughout the week.

“Well, conditioning is the number one thing. It helps to have depth where you can play multiple players and not have players drop off. I don’t think anyone in the country will tell you they have enough defensive linemen. It’s a rotational position. It requires effort and strain,” Kirby Smart said.

“We do conditioning all year. We condition multiple times a week. If you want to be a really good football team, you got to be best conditioned. Best conditioned is not a word, it’s a requirement and a strain that you have to put in. We’ve conditioned enough to be at our best in moments like this Saturday.”

Georgia will have a chance to show off its conditioning against LSU. If the Bulldogs want to win their first SEC Championship since 2017, the defensive line will need to play at its best and be well-rested deep into the game.

Kirby Smart on College Football Playoff expansion

Georgia is one of the few teams in college football who has consistently made the four-team College Football Playoff. Now that the CFP is expanding, everyone is going to be impacted, but a team like Georgia is less so because they already have the ability to make it. As for Kirby Smart, he doesn’t know what to make of expanding the CFP to 12 teams just yet.

“I think only time will tell. I read and see a lot of opinions out there. Length of games, number of games. I don’t think we’ll truly know. Like when we went to the four-game model, there were a lot of questions involved there, too,” Kirby Smart said.

“It’s not something I’ve got a huge opinion on right now, especially right now because of what we’re focused on. In the off-season I’ll think about it a lot more.”