Kirby Smart, Georgia wasting no time with beginning preparations for 2023 season

There’s no rest for the weary — or for the back-to-back champions, according to Kirby Smart.

Georgia just beat the breaks off of TCU, but the Bulldogs leader recognizes there’s plenty of work to be done. Other teams have had a head start on preparing for the 2023 season — a season in which Smart and company will lose star quarterback Stetson Bennett.

No time to waste. Smart explained what he’s looking for as he prepares for an attempt at a three-peat, and how the transfer portal will play a sizable role.

“I am concerned about our season next year the entire flight home and things we can do right now what’s important now. W.I.N., that’s our motto. I know people think that’s unheard of, but you actually have to. There will be time to take off it’s just not today because decisions are imminent,” explained Smart. “We have several players on our team who stuck it out. Like they didn’t have to. They could have said I’m going into the portal. We had several guys that said, Coach, I’d like to go in the portal; I’m going to go into the portal, but I want to win a national championship. That makes me want to cry they did it for the team over themselves and that makes me really proud.

“That time is now for them the portal is a real thing. It’s a vehicle to go somewhere elsewhere you can be successful. We had guys make sacrifices to do that. I think that’s pretty cool.”

As you can see, Kirby Smart has his work cut out for him, but the 2022 season proved he’s more than up to the challenge. The Georgia Bulldogs aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, and the fantastic work ethic of their head coach is one of the driving forces why.

Kirby Smart tells incredible story about his son crying over Stetson Bennett leaving, ties into 2023 mindset

Furthermore, Kirby Smart shared with the media that he’s already thinking about the challenges that his Bulldogs will face next season as the nation’s two-time defending champion.

To start, Smart shared a moment he had with his son, Andrew, during the postgame press conference after the 65-7 beatdown of TCU. He said his son realized it was QB Stetson Bennett’s final game and that it actually showed him what kind of leaders his program would be losing ahead of the 2023 season.

“Unfortunately, (Stetson) is not (coming back),” Smart said. “To tell you a quick story, I walked back into my office and my 10-year old son, Andrew, is bawling. And I was like oh no. Somebody’s hurt his feelings, thrown him down, or done something to him. I said why are you crying? You’re gonna ruin my moment. And he said, ‘Stetson’s leaving! Stetson’s gone!’. I said he’s 25 years old! He’s gotta go!”

“But he’s bawling about Stetson being gone. We’ll have a lot of guys back (but) we’re gonna lose some pretty talented guys,” said Smart. “The disease that creeps into your program is called entitlement and I’ve seen it firsthand. If you can stomp it out with leadership, then you can stay hungry. We have a saying around our place. We eat off the floor. If you’re willing to eat off the floor? You can be special.”

Bennett just closed out the final chapter of his incredible college football story with a second national championship after recording six touchdowns against the Horned Frogs. Still, he’s not all that the Bulldogs are going to lose.

Whether because of departures through the NFL Draft or transfer portal, Georgia will have to rely on some new faces next season. That’s why Smart did everything in his power to stomp out any ‘entitlement’ last night. He said his younger players who are returning need to learn that, in order to potentially repeat, they need to work as hard as players like Bennett and the ones who came before them.

“The biggest challenge is the same thing in all the world. The world we live in today, the society we live in. Entitlement,” said Smart. “The uphill battle for those guys is you think that you just inherit success. I personally think next year’s gonna be a much, much more difficult challenge over this year because we had so many guys leaving last year. We got a lot of guys coming back (this time).”

On3’s Andrew Graham contributed to this article.