Kirby Smart on how he has changed since 2018 National Championship Game

On Monday night, Georgia is looking to break a national championship drought that spans over the previous 40 years. When Kirby Smart and Georgia take the field inside Lucas Oil Stadium, a familiar face will be on the other sideline in Nick Saban and Alabama, and both teams are vying for a championship.

In the 2018 National Championship Game, Georgia and Alabama faced off. Alabama came out on top, squeaking out a close victory. Georgia head coach Kirby Smart has learned a lot from that game, and he has also changed a lot in the years since then.

“I don’t know. I don’t know how much I’ve changed,” Smart said on what has changed since the 2018 National Championship loss. “It’s hard to take a snapshot. I don’t remember much about 2017 anymore. It’s amazing how fast these years go by and time goes by.”

The 2017-2018 season was just Smart’s second as Georgia’s head coach, so it didn’t take him long to reach the championship game. But a return has eluded the Bulldogs ever since. Georgia has won 11, 12, and 8 games in the seasons between that year and this season. But now, Smart and Georgia get another jab at Saban and Alabama.

Smart and his staff have improved between Georgia’s National Championship appearances

One thing that Smart thinks has improved in the years since Georgia’s last championship appearance is his coaching staff. He is happy and comfortable with the coaches around him, and having more trust in them has helped Georgia improve this season. In 2017-2018, Smart had more pressure on him to “micromanage” the rest of the staff, but now he is comfortable taking a step back and letting everyone do their thing.

“I think I’ve got a staff of great coaches and I’ve got an organization that’s full of good leaders,” Smart said. “And trust in those people maybe more now than in 2017 when I felt like I needed to micromanage and be over the top of everything. Probably now a little more comfortable delegating things out and trusting people to do their jobs and maybe imparting a little bit of their personality into their parts of the organization.

“And letting them grow within that organization because a lot of the people in the organization aspire to go and do things. And I want them to be successful because they stopped at Georgia. That’s probably the biggest difference. But the core beliefs and the way we do things, they haven’t changed much.”

The biggest way to tell if things have truly changed is by looking at the scoreboard. At the end of Monday night’s game, Georgia is hoping to have truly turned things around with a national title.