Kirby Smart shares on Georgia's early-season offensive success, philosophy in play calling

I wrote last week about Georgia’s offensive identity, and it’s a topic of discussion once again this week with the Bulldogs still figuring that all out. Through two games, Georgia is averaging 395.5 yards per game, second-best in the country behind Texas Tech. Meanwhile, the rushing offense is coming in at No. 92 with 129.5 yards per game, only good for tenth in the SEC. Sure, not all things are equal this early in the season, and, really, people are going to say, ‘What does it matter? Georgia’s winning games.’ Still, it’s something that folks are going to talk about until the Bulldogs get it all figured out.

“It’s evolved based on the players,” Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said when asked about his team’s offensive philosophy. “That will never change, right? So when the strength of our team is the backs, then we feature the backs. If the strength of the team is the tight ends, you try to feature the tight ends. The strength of the team is the quarterback, O-line — you know, right now the strength of this team is probably its depth upfront, experience at quarterback and a distribution of the ball across the entire offense to make you defend 53 yards. So the evolution is based on what players you have.”

That’s pretty similar to what Georgia players said last week, and as a result, we’re seeing the stats that we are. And with people questioning the run game, Smart shared his feelings on the topic. To him, there’s more to being able to run the ball than the stats show.

“I think you have to have a run game to win tight ball games, you know, to be a good, physical team. And I have — there’s not a lack of confidence in our run game, for me,” Smart said. “I think people look at statistics and that’s all they look at. I look at it as what have we asked our guys to do. And there’s a lot of things, no offense, that you guys don’t understand about football. You know, when you talk about passing and yardage, I would say probably 30 to 40 percent of the plays you’re calling a pass or yardage is a run play. And they can be very successful run plays. The question is: Are they more successful as a run play or more successful when we decide to throw the ball out of that run play? So the evaluation, for us, is those plays are running plays. And a lot of times, we put them in rushing yardage. Because they’re actually replacing rushing yardage. I know that’s really complicated. But that’s the way we look at it. So we’re not evaluating it just alone how many times we rush the ball.”

He continued, sharing on the passing game. While the Bulldogs are No. 2 in the country for passing yards per game, they aren’t doing that all on big plays. It’s not like the offense is on the field for a few plays at a time and scoring quickly on explosive, highlight-reel type scores. Instead, they are doing it with the wear and tear of making teams tackle their big, physical players over and over again, and as a result, giving those same players opportunities to make plays in space. Many of those plays are the ones he was talking about as potentially successful run plays too.

“Can we sustain it? I think it’s probably dictated more by what the defense does and what the defense gives us,” Smart added, speaking on the success of that intermediate passing game. “You know, I wouldn’t — I would like to think we could sustain it when it comes to accuracy, completion percentage, decision-making. A lot of those plays, there’s multiple people that the ball can be thrown to. It boils down to, ‘Did we read the coverage right? Did we take what the defense gives us? Did we hand it when we should hand it? Did we throw it when we should throw it?’ A lot of things involved in that, you know? I would certainly think we can maintain that, but it’s going to take staying healthy, protecting the quarterback. It’s going to take protecting the football. But that’s the expectation.”

Georgia goes on the road this week for the first time this season, opening up SEC play at South Carolina. Kickoff time from Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia is set for 12:00 p.m. ET on ESPN.