Stephen A. Smith shows love to Kirby Smart despite loss: ‘No need to hit the panic button’

The Georgia Bulldogs and Alabama Crimson Tide played a fantastic game on Saturday, but somebody always had to lose. Unfortunately, for head coach Kirby Smart, that ended up being the Bulldogs.

Despite that loss, Stephen A. Smith shared on First Take that he has plenty of love and respect for Smart, praising him for how he approached halftime by not hitting the panic button.

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“The other thing is, I’ve got to take a moment to give some love to Kirby Smart,” Smith said. “Listen, they’re down 28-0. They go down 30-7. They hadn’t even given up a touchdown this season and then get blitzed for four of them in the first half and what does he say going into halftime? ‘No need to hit the panic button. We need to make stops. We got to give our offense a chance.'”

At halftime, Georgia was trailing by 23 points but they did stay focused and began the comeback with a slow and steady approach in the second half, trimming into that lead during the third quarter before a 19-point run in the fourth quarter gave the Bulldogs the lead.

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“And Georgia could have folded,” Smith said. “They didn’t. They came back and took the damn lead. It wasn’t like they inched back, they took the damn lead.”

Despite the excellent second-half performance, Kirby Smart still saw his team come up short on the back of a late touchdown pass. That added score ended up being just a little too much for the Bulldogs to overcome, though, and Georgia walked away with a loss in the game.

Now, it’s back to the drawing board for Kirby Smart and the Bulldogs as they look to improve and get another shot at Alabama down the road in the SEC Championship Game or the College Football Playoff.

Kirby Smart explains importance a speaking to every players after Alabama loss

Following the game, Kirby Smart made a point of speaking to every individual player, a choice that was very important to him.

“Well, there’s no greater response of a leader than to be with the guys who go to battle with you and those kids went to battle tonight. But make no mistake about it, that group we got in there, man, they’re connected. They’re proud, they got pride. And I told our guys, I don’t know what the second has to look like, but I do know this, when we watch it we’re gonna find out a lot about ourselves,” Smart said.

“We’ll see what kind of character we got. I thought we were the team that was in really good shape and felt that we could play with the fourth quarter. Once we were in the situation we were, we said, one moment at a time. And I didn’t want to get off the field without telling each one how much I appreciated them. We went through some tough adversity there.”

Next week is another rivalry game as Georgia is set to take on Auburn.