Will Muschamp provides high praise for Kirby Smart as a leader

Georgia co-defensive coordinator Will Muschamp — a former head coach at Florida and South Carolina — knows how hard it is to win in the SEC. So he also understands how impressive a job Kirby Smart has done with Georgia, navigating it to the truly elite tier of college football and hopefully keeping it there.

Muschamp and Smart have a long-running relationship stemming back to their playing days for the Bulldogs and early coaching careers. When he got asked at a press conference about what Smart has brought to UGA, Muschamp had a lot to say, but first noted that Smart is a fierce competitor.

“He’s a great competitor, extremely bright,” Muschamp said. “Does a great job with the players as far as relating with the players, motivating the players, continuing to challenge himself, to challenge our staff and our football team on a daily basis for a very high standard. He’s got an element of toughness about himself, knowing what it takes to be successful in our organization and in this league, a great understanding of our league which I think is a huge part of being successful. You either adapt to what happens in our league — football stuff’s different — I’m talking about recruiting, I’m talking about all the different things that go in to being successful in this league. And he certainly has done that and done a phenomenal job here at Georgia.”

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Muschamp singled out Smart’s tone-setting role for the Bulldogs, and how Smart creates an atmosphere of high expectations that start at the very top and goes all the way down to how they practice.

“I can probably count on one hand the amount of maybe not-so-good practices we had last year,” Muschamp said. “Now that’s a lot of credit to our young men on our team because of the leadership and things like that. But it’s also the culture that’s been set about how we’re going to practice at Georgia.”

And there is maybe no better window into the world of Georgia under Kirby Smart than Tuesday practice, according to Muschamp.

“You go to Tuesday practice here, it’s a thing of beauty,” Muschamp said. “It’s when you’re supposed to get after it, when you’re supposed to go after it. But it’s what is expected, it’s what is set from the top all the way down within the organization and it’s understood that’s the way we’re going to do things. And I credit him with that.”