Kirby Smart: Georgia defense competing against itself to be elite

Heading into Saturday’s slate, No. 8 Arkansas at No. 2 Georgia appeared to be one of the top games of the week. Sam Pittman and Arkansas were 4-0, with wins over two ranked opponents in Texas and Texas A&M, and Pittman was facing his former boss in Kirby Smart; Smart had led the Bulldogs to a 4-0 record of their own, with one win over a ranked opponent in a Week 1 win over Clemson and the nation’s best defense.

But the game wasn’t even close, as Smart and Georgia’s defense emerged victorious, 37-0, in a dominating display against Arkansas.

Smart’s defense smothered Arkansas, just like it did to Vanderbilt the week prior. Arkansas managed to convert just three of 12 third-down attempts against Georgia’s stiff defense, and the Razorbacks mustered 162 yards of total offense — 87 passing yards and 29 rushing yards. Though Georgia didn’t force a turnover, it hardly needed to. This was the second consecutive shutout by Georgia, as the Bulldogs held Vanderbilt scoreless in a 62-0 rout in which the Commodores had just 77 yards of total offense, 24 through the air and 53 on the ground.

“Man, they played hard. I’ll tell you: we’ve never met, as a defensive unit, this long. I think what [the defensive coaches do] is they sell unity in there. They have fun. If we have a 45-minute meeting on a Tuesday or Wednesday, you would think everyone is like, ‘ugh, I’ve got to go practice today,'” Smart said, rolling his eyes as he imitated the players’ response. “But they hype it up.”

Whatever the coaching staff is doing, it seems to be working. The Georgia Bulldogs under Smart have the best defense in the nation, and it’s not quite close. Through five games, they’ve allowed just 893 yards and two opposing touchdown — all season. Georgia is allowing an exceptional 178.6 yards of offense per game, giving the Bulldogs hope that they can compete with Alabama as the season winds down.

According to Smart, the defense is competing with itself to be elite. In doing so, the Georgia coaching staff during defensive meetings shows highlights from some of the NFL’s best defenses for motivation.

“They play music [in the meetings], they show turnovers, they’ve really done this really good messaging where they show elite defenses,” Smart said. “The teams that were super elite. Like the Ravens, the Bears — and what’s happened is these guys, they really want to be them [the elite NFL defenses]. They want our defense to be those guys, to emulate those guys. And it’s made them not really go about playing the opponent. We’re playing standard, and we’re playing this, ‘can we play this elite team,” and our offense really helped us today because I don’t know what the time of possession was, but it seemed like we really ate a lot of clock and ran the ball really well so we didn’t have to play as many snaps.”