Kirby Smart owns Georgia's loss to Alabama: 'It starts with me'

Athens, Ga – Kirby Smart found multiple players walking off the field following Georgia’s 24-21 loss to Alabama on Saturday night. He made sure to give them hugs, handshakes, or a pat on the back.

That’s part of how Smart wants to lead and take responsibility for Georgia’s first loss of 2025.

“That’s what you do,” Smart told reporters after the game. “If you’re the leader of an organization and you’re gonna lead men, then you’ve got to be at the front and you can’t hide.”

Smart wants the blame when things are bad and wants to defer to his players when things go well.

“That’s always who I’ve been in terms of, if things aren’t going well, then I won’t take responsibility for that,” Smart said. “If things are going well, I want our players to get the acknowledgement of what they do well; if things aren’t going well, if we’re not playing well, if we’re not doing this well, I don’t want that. That’s my responsibility. It starts with me, and I want them to know that. And they’ll take ownership and look it in the mirror.”

Fourth down call comes into question

Georgia failed to convert a fourth down with under 4 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. Alabama’s Lebbeus Overton was able to bring down Cash Jones to create the turnover on downs. Georgia was never able to regain possession of the football after two Alabama first downs.

The decision to run that play out of tempo is one that has been called into question in the hours since the game went final.

Smart provided an explanation following the game.

“We had decided previously that if we gained anything, we were going for it,” Smart told reporters after the game. “We were gonna probably kick the field goal if we didn’t get anything.”

Smart credited ‘sequencing’ for aiding in making the decision to quickly line up and go for it.

“There’s a thing called sequencing, where you sequence plays to try to set up and know that you’re going go for it,” Smart said. “So we felt like we were gonna go for it if we got it, and we did.  We got it down to a fourth and one. That play has been really successful for us. We’ve run it against Tennessee probably three times for a conversion. We’d run it earlier in the night. We had run it for a conversion; it’s just a block that we got to make. When they ran through, they made a really good play. I do that ten out of ten times in terms of the decision whether you go full or tempo or not, and we felt like tempo had been really good for us throughout the year.”

Kirby Smart ‘not losing sleep’ over record against Alabama

Smart is 1-7 against Alabama after Saturday’s loss.

He spent almost a decade as the Crimson Tide’s defensive coordinator and won a handful of championships along with Nick Saban. Saban has now moved on and Smart-led Georgia teams are now 0-2 against Kalen DeBoer-led Alabama teams.

The question of whether the record will or has become a mental factor for the program. Smart bucked that thinking. He considers each game its own entity.

“I don’t lose sleep over that, because those games have been championship caliber games,” Smart told reporters after the game. “And even when we play the regular season, I just saw 25 scouts out there. They’re all there to watch these teams play, so that’s not going to affect me. I’m gonna be happy and just go lucky if our team comes back and plays well. That’s what I worry about. We’ve just got to get better. Next year, it won’t have anything to do with this year.”

There’s promise. Smart acknowledges that there is room for growth in his team and that losing one game does not doom the season. Georgia suffered a loss to Alabama last season as well. Georgia went on to win the SEC Championship.

This is a different team, and Smart acknowledged that as well.

 “I realize it’s a big game, I realize everybody wants to make a big deal about it,” Smart said. “But for us, it happened to us last year, right? Like, we got to go worry about the next one, because you can’t let this game beat you twice… It’s a very different team, because we’re all a little bit more experienced. We’ve seen young linemen, some young skilled guys on defense, and we just got to continue to grow and get better. The key is we’ll take the team in the right direction, leadership, and say, okay, we know what we’ve got to work on. Let’s get better at it.”

Georgia will host 2-2 Kentucky next week at noon.