Kirby Smart, Georgia finding ways to use NCAA rule change to their advantage
ATHENS, Ga. — If you’re making your way out to Georgia Football practice today with the Classic City Collective, you might notice more people involved. No, UGA hasn’t added extra assistants. Instead, the program’s support staffers are permitted to be more involved than in the past.
NCAA rule changes this offseason now allow “any staff member to provide technical and tactical instruction” to players during practice and games. Analysts and quality control coaches that were previously limited in the role they could have with the Bulldogs now can be much more active with the team.
“Well, we’ll use more coaches now and have the ability to maybe move some coaches around in terms of, if you’ve got one drill going on, you’ve got another person that’s an allowable coach that maybe has really good experience coaching or knows our system to be an extra set of eyes, ears, and coach guys. We’re excited about that,” Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said on Thursday, the first day of fall camp, about the extra assistance.
On Smart’s staff are the likes of Mike Cavan, a head coach of 16 years at Valdosta State, East Tennessee and SMU, Jarvis Jones, who earned consensus All-American honors during his playing days and was a first round pick by the Pittsburgh Steelers and former Clemson offensive coordinator Brandon Streeter. Kirk Benedict, previously the special teams and recruiting coordinator at Duke while also assisting the defensive staff, is in charge of the all-important third aspect of the game for Georgia. After two years as an analyst, the was promoted to the title of coordinator in Athens back in February. Former Georgia Tech defensive coordinator Andrew Thacker recently joined the staff, and of course, Will Muschamp stepped down from his position as safeties coach and co-defensive coordinator and brings his years of experience to the staff as an analyst.
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Having extra hands with the kind of experience is quite the luxury, and it’s one Smart is excited to see play out during fall camp. NCAA rules tell him how often Georgia can practice, but there’s no regulation over how the Bulldogs handle practice as it pertains to the number of reps players get each day. Smart hopes that having more coaches on the field will allow for all players to be more involved.
“I’m excited some of our special teams periods, we’re going to be able to take kids that aren’t in special teams where we had a lot of our coaching dedicated to special teams, we have people on the outside now that may be able to do special teams and free our coaches up to give a little time to guys that aren’t in,” Smart said. “A little skill development. A guy can go over there and work on things he needs to work on and not lose time. It’s helpful organizationally to do that.”
Georgia opens its season on August 31st against Clemson. Between the start and fall camp last Thursday and then, the Bulldogs will have the ability to practice 25 times in total including a couple of scrimmages.
