Kirby Smart explains why Georgia builds trenches through recruiting even in Transfer Portal era

Once again, Georgia is completing a monster recruiting class, and it all starts in the trenches, where Kirby Smart believes games are won and lost.

Coach Smart actually sat down with On3’s Andy Staples to discuss signing day and the latest class of future Bulldogs. Staples’ biggest takeaway from the ’24 haul for UGA was that they took 10+ prospects on each side of the line of scrimmage, which prompted him to ask Smart how important it is for the Georgia program and recruit and develop its own lineman in-house.

“I think it’s the key to success, you know,” answered Smart. “The offensive and defensive lines of scrimmage are critical. You can’t win football games without big people and that’s proven year-in and year-out with the size of the teams that win national championships.”

Obviously, Georgia’s two title-winning squads were quite beefy up front on both sides, especially defensively. Those were home-grown guys, too, not portal pickups. Smart’s pretty adamant that you simply don’t find many elite linemen on either side of the ball in the transfer portal, so you have to prioritize the recruitment and development of them.

“It’s hard to get those size guys out of the portal. When you look across the portal, it’s really hard to find offensive and defensive linemen. So I think you have to grow and develop them. The key is, No. 1, finding them. The next thing is keeping them, because sometimes they are positions that take a while to play. So you just have to understand it takes a little bit.”

Andy Staples then brought up two of the Bulldogs’ big uglies in the class, the mammoth Marcus Harrison and Nyier Daniels, a pair of offensive tackles standing taller than 6’7. He asked Smart just how impressive it is that football players can be that big but also fluid enough of athletes to still be able to move around like an OL needs to.

“Yeah, it’s definitely been a cycle of continuous growth with these guys, even across the NFL,” answered Smart, remembering when he once thought it was an impossibility for such massive guys to be able to stick on the field.

“You know, I can remember stories 10-15 years ago where I thought there was no way a guy could play, and that guy’s playing in the NFL right now that I didn’t think could play because he couldn’t move in high school.”

To wrap up his comments on the need for size at the line of scrimmage, Kirby Smart explained that when it comes to football, you always want the biggest dudes up front.

“So you’re looking at height, weight, size. It’s hard to get around a big human being. It’s just, at the end of the day, you can’t run around them, they get in the way, move people and they’re the difference in wins and losses.”