Shane Beamer reveals biggest takeaway from time working for Kirby Smart

When South Carolina and Georgia meet on Saturday it’ll be a reunion of sorts for Shane Beamer and Kirby Smart. Smart had Beamer on staff during his first two years at Georgia.

Beamer said he learned ‘a lot’ from Smart during that period, particularly how to be adaptable as a head coach.

“I saw that from Kirby,” Beamer said. “Obviously Kirby when he got hired at Georgia had been pretty much with Nick Saban and that Alabama model for his entire career, so he had a blueprint of a foundation of what he wanted it to look like initially when he came in, because that’s what he had been exposed to and here’s how we’re doing things. But from Day 1 the willingness and the ability to adapt and if there’s a better way of doing things, show him.”

Beamer touched on some of the different ways Smart adapted, but basically it boiled down to being willing to change if things weren’t working.

Obviously history has borne out that Smart did that exceptionally well. He reached the national championship game in his second season as a head coach, with Beamer on staff, and has since won two national championships.

All the little things began to add up.

“Maybe special teams, how you do things in practice or stuff like that that we tweaked that Alabama didn’t do on offense and defense,” Shane Beamer said. “He’s just done a great job of continuing to evolve, stay ahead of things, maybe there’s a scheme that in one season offenses attack and hit some plays on, well the very next season, very next week, whatever it might be, they’re going to have it corrected and they’re going to have an adjustment for it. So staying ahead of the game.”

There were other things Beamer learned, too.

Smart is a hellacious recruiter, never content to settle when more can be done to land a given prospect. It’s one of the reasons Georgia has had so much success.

Beamer has tried to mimic that aspect in his own program.

“Certainly just the urgency that you’ve got to have every single day in coaching and recruiting,” Beamer said. “When you step in that building there wasn’t going to be a wasted moment. You were working, there was an urgency. The way they do things in practice were very similar in a lot of ways to how we practice here. There was a lot of things, to be honest with you.

“When I got hired there I had worked with some great coaches, Steve Spurrier, my dad, Phillip Fulmer, George O’Leary, Sylvester Croom. But those two years were just extremely impactful for me growing as a coach, just being around Kirby. He was a first-time head coach and being around him really helped me here when I became a first-time head coach.”