Kirby Smart: Michigan helped Georgia develop National Championship game plan for Alabama

Georgia coach Kirby Smart is on a bit of a book tour this week with “How ‘Bout Them Dawgs!: The Inside Story of Georgia Football’s 2021 National Championship Season” set to hit stores in less than a month. Speaking with Steak Shapiro on his Monday morning Atlanta sports radio show, Smart shared insight into the time between the Bulldogs’ Orange Bowl victory over Michigan and the National Championship rematch against Alabama.

He got on the phone with the Wolverines’ coaches, did some self-scouting and helped his team come away with a 33-18 win in Indianapolis for Georgia’s first title in 41 years.

“That was big. That probably gave us the biggest difference in the final game, and it was almost a phone call that didn’t happen,” Smart said on 92.9 The Game. “There’s not that long from the semifinal game to the final game, and you’ve got to use your time wisely. A lot of times when you look back and talk to the opposing team you just played, you can gain some kind of insight that they might have had on you. That was a key ingredient talking to them. They had talked to Alabama who had just beaten us in the SEC Championship. They wanted information from Alabama, so some of the information we gathered from Michigan came from information that they gathered from Alabama. It was very unique to hear that prospective, and they gave us a little bit extra incentive and motivation on some things that Alabama had said about us. Of course I was able to parlay that into motivation for our guys.”

Smart said that the majority of what he heard from Michigan coaches was that Alabama did not believe the Bulldogs were well conditioned. That showed in the SEC Championship Game when the Dawgs’ defense looked a step slower than Bryce Young and the Crimson Tide offense, giving up 536 total yards and 41 points.

However, given the motivation of the scouting report from a source so close to the situation, Smart was able to turn that into incentive for his team to get the conditioning concern fixed for the National Championship.

“Yeah, that was basically the gist of it. A lot of people don’t think you can do a whole lot in 10 days, but at the end of the year, there’s a lot of programs that are like, ‘We’re not going to hit. We’re not going to do this.’ You’re a long way into the season so you cut back, but we saw this as an opportunity to crank up a little bit and do a little more with certain guys that needed it. I thought it really made a difference.”

“It didn’t matter what Michigan told us if our kids didn’t buy into it,” Smart continued. “The kids bought into it more because they heard it from a reliable source than if it had just come from me. That part really helped, and we had about five or six guys that were getting up at about 5:30, 6:00, 7:00 in the morning and ran extra those 10 days. The conditioning level in the National Championship Game was a piece that really helped us.”

Georgia’s conditioning showed in the second half, specifically the fourth quarter, pulling away with a 27-9 advantage in the final 30 minutes. Smart and company 9-6 at halftime, the Bulldogs took their first lead of the game with 1:20 to go in the third quarter on a 1-yard plunge from Zamir White. It came just four plays after a blocked field goal from Jalen Carter that was immediately followed by James Cook’s 67-yard run to the Alabama 13.

Alabama bounced back with a field goal of its own early in the fourth. Then, after a controversial fumble from Stetson Bennett that looked as if it might have been a forward pass instead, the Crimson Tide scored again to go up 18-13.

However, Bennett and the Bulldogs responded with two straight touchdown drives going a combined 137 yards in 5:42 and 11 plays to retake the lead. Of course, Kelee Ringo’s pick six sealed the deal on the title for the Bulldogs just moments later. However, it may not have happened had it not been for the post-Orange Bowl scouting report from the Michigan Wolverines.