Georgia-Oregon not personal for Kirby Smart, Dan Lanning
It’ll be a familiar face for Georgia on the opposite sideline when the Bulldogs take on the Oregon Ducks on Saturday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Former Georgia defensive coordinator Dan Lanning is in his first season as the head coach in Eugene, pitting Kirby Smart against a former assistant of his for the fourth time.
Like all the other times – and every time Smart has been the former assistant playing against his former boss in Nick Saban – Saturday’s game will be about the players, not the coaches according to Smart.
“Yeah, on a personal level, I don’t think the game has anything to do with that, and neither Dan (Lanning) nor I will be worried about each other during the game,” Smart said. “It’s not about that. He’s fighting to do the best job he can for his organization and his players, and I’m doing the same here. We have mutual respect for each other. Always will, always have. Just it’s what competition is about. You love to go compete, and it’s about our players getting a chance to compete against their players.”
Smart and Lanning first crossed paths in Smart’s final season at Alabama when he was the defensive coordinator and Lanning was a graduate assistant. Both went their own ways after that for 2016 – Smart to Georgia and Lanning to Memphis – before a spot on the staff in Athens opened up in 2018. Smart jumped on the opportunity to bring him in, ultimately promoting him to defensive coordinator in 2019 and ending their time together with a National Championship in 2021.
“I had a great relationship with Dan (Lanning) when he worked at University of Alabama, and had a lot of respect for how he went about doing his job. He didn’t try to be somebody he wasn’t. He didn’t try to impress people. He just worked and he grinded, and he really did a good job of just doing what you asked him to do,” Smart said. “Always thought he would be successful. He helped recruit while he was there, and when we had a job come open, it was — I think Kevin ended up leaving, and ended up being a no-brainer for us to bring Dan in because I knew the value he had, No. 1 knowledge, No. 2, of being around me. I was very comfortable with him. And he had more experience. So I think when we had an opportunity to hire him as coordinator, I knew he was going to do a great job.”
All that time together certainly has created for crossover in defensive philosophies. The Saban ways have rubbed off on Smart, and the Smart ways have rubbed off on Lanning. Of course, everybody has their own way of spinning things and Lanning leaving Georgia probably allows him to implement that more. Either way, it creates for an interesting dynamic in preparation.
“As far as the familiarities of the two systems, you know, they’re probably is a little overlap there in terms of defense and they’re watching our defense and we watch our defense to get ready for them,” Smart said. “They have got coaches on their staff from other places. We’ve gone out and looked at the history of their other defensive coach for ideas and things they’ve done at other places. At the end of the day it’s about how you execute. It’s not about Xs and Os. It’s about who has got the best players and do the best players play the best in the biggest moments.”
