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Kirby Smart shares on offseason as National Champ, initial outlook at Oregon

Palmber-Thombsby:Palmer Thombs•05/06/22•

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(Photo by Tony Walsh)

Georgia head coach Kirby Smart took to the golf course this week at the Peach Bowl Challenge, raising money for his Kirby Smart Family Foundation charity, but he couldn’t completely avoid football. Smart sat down with a representative from the Peach Bowl to answer a few questions, some fun and some football – one of which included a look ahead to the Bulldogs’ season-opener in the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Classic against Oregon.

“We looked at them in the spring, kind of studied those guys,” Smart said. “It makes it awkward with a new head coach. You can take the film and things like that, and you’re really looking more at who the players are than anything. I’m very familiar with Dan Lanning. I’m very familiar with a lot of guys on his staff. HIs offensive coordinator was at Auburn and also FSU, so we looked at those guys. But I’ve got a lot of respect for Dan and what he did for our program and know he’ll do a really good job there at Oregon.”

As he said, Smart and his staff will certainly be familiar with what Oregon does. Defensively it might look similar to Smart’s own scheme as Lanning spent the 2015 season under Smart and Nick Saban at Alabama as a graduate assistant. Then, the last four seasons they’ve been by each other’s side in Athens guiding the Dawgs’ defense, a unit that has ranked atop the country two of the last three years and led Georgia to its first National Championship in over four decades.

Kirby Smart on difference in being a National Champion this offseason

“Probably the biggest difference in being a National Champion going into the offseason is you worry about complacency, you worry about guys thinking that they’ve arrived. I didn’t think our group did that,” Smart continued, sharing a lot of the same messages as he did during spring practice. “We got a shorter window, so we had a little less time to prepare. We had one less week to lift before our spring practice, but we played an extra game in the season with the Playoff game. Injuries have played a factor from that. We’ve probably had more guys out this spring than we’ve ever had before. But the biggest thing is not worrying about that. We don’t defend a title. We start new with a new team and develop chemistry to see what this team is going to be about.”

Georgia will have to replace eight starters on the defensive side of the football before that matchup with Oregon out of the gate. The Ducks are likely to bring to the table a starting quarterback plenty familiar with Georgia too in former Auburn Tiger Bo Nix who has started each of the last three seasons in The Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry.

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