This play proved Kirby Smart's SEC Coach of the Year worthiness
Kirby Smart’s entire body of work proved his SEC Coach of the Year worthiness this season. One play in particular knocks them all out of the park, though.
And it’s all about Smart’s / his staff’s insane attention to detail.
The moves that Georgia makes in the margins are the ones that will have these Dawgs competing for championships each year for the foreseeable future.
They’re the kinds of situational plays that you don’t blame other staffs for passing up – mainly because you and those staffs don’t even think about them to begin with.
I have no doubt that Georgia’s 2022 football season contains several plays in which Kirby Smart’s staff lived and won in the margins.
But there’s one play in particular that puts it all on display – and I know this only because Smart addressed it after the SEC Championship game.
Remember when Georgia’s Nazir Stackhouse blocked a LSU field goal, and Christopher Smith housed it while the Bayou Bengals walked back to the sideline?
Of course you do. It’s one of the wildest touchdowns you saw this season.
Well, that score showed just how narrow – and how wide – the gap is between Kirby Smart and his SEC peers.
Compare what Smart and Christopher Smith said about that play, to what Brian Kelly said in their postgame press conferences
In a nutshell, ‘We practiced it, and we talked about it often,’ Kirby Smart and Christopher Smith said.
On the flipside of that shell, ‘We did not practice it at all,’ Brian Kelly said.
Again, I want to emphasize – this isn’t necessarily a ‘bad’ look for Kelly’s LSU staff.
Do you really blame them for not thinking about such a specific in-game situation?
Maybe now you do, with the benefit of hindsight.
“Obviously we did a poor job coaching. It’s our responsibility to have our guys alert in that situation,
Kelly said.
“They were not alert. That falls on coaching. That falls on my shoulders. I take full responsibility for that.”
While it isn’t a terrible look for the Tigers, it is a tremendous look for Kirby Smart and Georgia.
“That’s a scenario we go over a lot. We know if the ball passed the line of scrimmage, we have an opportunity to be able to pick it up,” Smith said. “I was waiting for the go to get it from the sideline.”
“The rule is you’re not allowed to pick it up unless you score with it,” Smart said with a smile.
Some made the case for Brian Kelly to win the SEC’s Coach of the Year
He led LSU to the SEC Championship game in his first year as a SEC head coach.
That doesn’t happen often.
But after the Dawgs’ undefeated regular season, this play and the SEC Championship, you see why Kirby Smart would not be denied this year’s honor.
Of course, it isn’t ‘SEC Coach of the Year’ awards that Smart hunts.
It’s titles. Numbers on the walls.
His program, his staff and his players just do things immensely better and more thoroughly than their peers.
It will earn you individual recognition, sure.
But it’s also the kind of approach that helps championship teams prove they’re anything but a fluke year in and year out.
Smart finds out if he is also the Eddie Robinson Coach of the Year – the nation’s top coach – on December 20th.
Ask him, and he won’t find out until January 9th at the earliest.
Ask me, and I’ll tell you he may have won it on December 3rd.
