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Georgia looking for leadership, 'juice guys' as season gets closer

Palmber-Thombsby:Palmer Thombs08/18/23

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Kirby Smart
Tony Walsh / UGA Sports Communications

ATHENS, Ga. — Ask anybody on Georgia’s defense who brought the most energy to practice last year, and the answer will without a doubt be Nolan Smith. Even after his injury in October, Smith was an active part of the team, helping coach players up and acting as a leader for the outside linebackers, Bulldog defense and the team as a whole.

“I obviously didn’t have to talk,” Smith’s teammate and fellow outside linebacker Chaz Chambliss said. “There was Nolan.”

Jalon Walker, a freshman last fall, was taken under Smith’s wing following his season-ending injury suffered against Florida. To that point, Smith had totaled seven tackles for loss in eight games – one in every game after being shut out in the opener. To Walker, it was Smith’s leadership that stood out from everything else.

“Going out and watching him, it’s the aspects of his leadership that he had. He was a vocal guy. He was an on the field leader. He was an off the field leader. Those are the things you want to have overall.”

As Smith gets his NFL career underway after being taken in the first round by the defending NFC champion Philadelphia Eagles, Georgia is trying to replace his presence. Chambliss is taking on a bigger role as a leader in the outside linebacker room, better known as the Wolfpack on the team, while others like Jamon Dumas-Johnson and Kamari Lassiter, two juniors who stepped into starting roles last season as sophomores, are becoming more and more of “juice guys” by the day.

“I’d have to give that energy in the linebacker room is Jamon Dumas-Johnson. He brings the energy for us and Kamari Lassiter as well,” Walker said. “Those guys are our juice guys who get us going on the defensive side of the ball. They keep us going. The game is about energy, and they bring it – all day, every day.”

While Walker, who’s naturally a more vocal guy, says he easily can see himself growing into that kind of a role one day, words don’t come quite as easily to Chambliss. It’s something he’s actively having to force himself to do to help the team.

“Coming into the spring, I was more of a lead by example kind of leader in my room,” Chambliss said. “Going into summer and coming out of spring, I realized I had to be a bit more of a vocal leader. I’ve got to be more of a leader for the young guys to teach them how it’s done.”

“I had to do it in high school,” Chambliss continued. “It’s on a different level in college, but I’ve had experience doing it from previous times. I just had to get back into the role.”

Chambliss isn’t the only one who’s had to take on more of a vocal role. Georgia has a starting quarterback to replace – the position out in front of the team most often, especially on offense. That’s put leadership responsibilities on Carson Beck and his competitors for the job.

Reality is, leadership is a responsibility that’s fallen on everybody with Smith – and others – gone. However, it’s one that head coach Kirby Smart feels there is plenty of potential for within this team mentioning it at several points in the preseason.

“There’s no schedule for leadership,” Smart said at SEC Media Days. “Last year this time we weren’t where we are now and two years ago we were probably ahead of where we were both years in terms of guys coming back and experience. I don’t know what the stats say. You guys can tell me in terms of play experience, volume of offense, volume of defense – I don’t look at that. I don’t care about that. I just look at, what is the demeanor of the room, and I think it’s a product of these skull sessions and things we’ve done. We have more guys who have done them, and so with three years of doing it, you’ve got a body of work that’s greater than the first year we did it, the second year we did it. You have developed more leaders.”

“This year it was really a toss up across the board because we had so many. I felt like we had so many guys capable of coming and worthy of coming to represent us because we’ve got a really good group in terms of confront and demand and lead and do all those things,” he continued, talking about the trio of Lassiter, Brock Bowers and Sedrick Van Pran that he decided to bring with him to Nashville to represent Georgia. “I think the biggest thing is that complacency doesn’t exist in our organization. We try to squeeze out complacency … I’m going to talk about the cost of leadership because I think everybody talks about the benefit of leadership, and we brought three guys here today that exemplify and are not afraid of the cost that comes with leadership.”

Georgia’s leaders will be put to the test this Saturday in the team’s second scrimmage of the fall. Last week, Smart said the conditions showed who wanted to push through and play and those that didn’t. Leaders of course emerge in situations like that, and it’s something Smart will surely want to see again this week as the season gets closer by the day.

“You know, the season’s so close,” Chambliss said, looking ahead to the scrimmage. “We’ve got to create an identity for ourselves.”

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