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

Kirby Smart just brought Georgia to the mountaintop for the second time in as many years. However, 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).”

After going 29-1 in the last two seasons, finding a way to three-peat with some new cast members will be the next challenge for Georgia to overcome. With that said, if Smart can keep them as hungry as they showed they were during their victory in SoFi Stadium on Monday night? It’s hard not to see them being back in the CFP about a year from now and still very much on a title hunt.