Kirby Smart praises buy in of Georgia staff, says it's 'best it's ever been'
Kirby Smart isn’t always easy to impress, but he’s been full of praise recently for his assistant coaches. After Georgia’s 49-3 win over Oregon on Saturday to open its 2022 season, Smart said that the group he’s got in Athens right now is the best staff he’s had in his seven years as the head coach of the Bulldogs.
With Todd Monken leading the offense, Glenn Schumann and Will Muschamp partnering to guide the defense and Smart overseeing the entire operation, they did a tremendous job of preparing for the opener according to Smart. Things have clicked and the coaches are enjoying their time together. And on Monday, he was asked to further explain why that would be the case.
“The buy-in of those four coaches, the alignment, the understanding of this program’s bigger than me and that I’ll sacrifice for the program,” Smart said, speaking specifically about Georgia’s four assistant coaches that the Bulldogs added in the offseason: Fran Brown, Bryan McClendon, Stacy Searels and Chidera Uzo-Diribe. “They understand their role. They’ve done what they’ve been asked to do and they embrace it. And there’s a lot of positive energy and enthusiasm at practice. And it works. So it’s created a really good kind of connection among the staff.”
Brown joined the Bulldogs after having been at Rutgers most recently. Meanwhile, both McClendon and Searels return to Athens having coached at Georgia previously under Mark Richt. As for Uzo-Diribe, he was headed to TCU with their first-year head coach Sonny Dykes, who he had spent the last season with at SMU, before landing the job at Georgia. Those four joined returnees to the Georgia staff Todd Monken, Dell McGee and Todd Hartley on the offensive side of the football as well as Tray Scott, Glenn Schumann and Will Muschamp on defense.
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Those comments in addition to what Smart said on Saturday after the game, praising the preparation work that they were able to get done ahead of the beatdown of the Ducks.
“I thought Coach Monken, I thought Coach Schumann did a tremendous job with both their staffs,” Smart said in his postgame press conference. “Our staff is the best it’s ever been. We’ve got a great staff right now, and it’s awesome because we’ve got a great –we’ve always had a good staff, but we’ve got a really great staff right now in terms of guys enjoying to work together and putting plans together, and I thought they did a great job of doing that.”
Georgia is back in action this week against Samford, who won its season-opener as well this past Saturday. Kickoff time from Sanford Stadium in Athens is set for 4:00 p.m. ET on the SEC Network.
