Kirby Smart, Georgia players challenge fans to make impact on game

ATHENS, Ga. — If you’ve watched Tennessee Football at all this year, one thing you probably can’t help but notice is the impact that playing in front of a home crowd can have on a game. Neyland Stadium, which seats over 100,000 crazy fans in orange and white, has been an advantage for the 8-0 Volunteers. Turn on the tape from Alabama, Florida and Kentucky if you don’t believe me. However, Tennessee’s won’t be playing at home this weekend, and Georgia head coach Kirby Smart is hopeful that his team can have the same kind of advantage playing in Sanford Stadium on Saturday.

“Our guys are excited and looking forward to a top matchup in Sanford Stadium. I know our fan base will be loud and proud,” Smart said as a part of his opening statement to Tennessee week on Monday. “I want to challenge our fan base to be — I mean, everybody talks about the Notre Dame game (2019), but we want to be louder than that. We want to be there earlier than that. We had some great matchups last year here at home, and I thought they really affected the game each time we had a big matchup. So we’ll need them again and we’ll be ready to go.”

Saturday we need Dawg Nation to affect the game !! If you can talk when you leave, you didn’t yell enough !!

— Coach Kirby Smart (@KirbySmartUGA) October 30, 2022

Smart wasn’t finished though. When asked whether he saw it as an advantage that his Georgia Bulldogs have been in big games like this before whereas Tennessee is newer to them, he said that the biggest advantage Georgia has in being at home.

“I think the home helps. I think playing on the road’s always a little different. But I don’t know that — I mean, they played in some big games this year. They played at Pitt, they played Alabama at home. They played some really big teams and they played really well against them,” he added. “So I don’t think that the playing in the big games — every game is a big game, to be honest with you, in the SEC. So it’s not like some guys go into it thinking of it differently. But I do think playing at home is important and certainly an advantage in our conference.”

Georgia players understand that advantage too. Warren McClendon and Zion Logue were just freshmen for that 2019 Notre Dame game that Smart referenced, but both were on the sidelines and shared that experience.

“It’s going to be crazy. I’m thinking back to the Arkansas game last year, the Kentucky game, maybe even back to my freshman year for the Notre Dame game and how the crowd was,” McClendon said. “I’m expecting the fans to be full blast. It’s going to be a fun game. I’m looking forward to it … When their offense is out there communicating, if the fans are going crazy, it’s hard to hear. Sometimes you’ll be sitting there and you can’t hear the guy next to you talking. So the fans definitely play a huge part in that.”

“We know it’s going to be a big game, but we can’t treat it like it’s the last game of the season. We have to treat it like it’s another game, prepare like it’s any other week, not stress anything, just go out there and play football,” Logue added. “It’s going to be crazy. Probably like 2019 when we played Notre Dame, one of those weeks again … Notre Dame was the biggest game that I’ve been a part of here at Georgia. It was, even on the sideline you couldn’t take to the guy beside you it was so loud. Guys on the field after the game were like, ‘I could not hear anybody. We literally had to use signals to talk to each other it was that loud.’ So every time people ask me about the hype of a game or the feel of a game, I always refer back to that game.”

Logue, like Smart, also called for the fans to be a part of this game. He said it’s something that the Bulldogs need to help them slow down Tennessee’s explosive offense.

“When our fans are in it, that’s when we want to go play our best football,” he said. “We know we’re going to need everybody on Saturday at 3:30 so I ask the fans to please come out. We’re going to need 93,000 strong.”