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Kirby Smart still holding star linebackers to high standard

Palmber-Thombsby:Palmer Thombs•04/02/23•

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Jamon Dumas-Johnson
Tony Walsh/UGA Sports Communications

ATHENS, Ga. — Georgia linebackers Jamon Dumas-Johnson and Smael Mondon weren’t necessarily unknowns this time last year, but they were far from solidified starters. They had to fight for the spot and beat out veterans like Rian Davis and Trezmen Marshall. There was also the talented Xavian Sorey and incoming freshman Jalon Walker competing for snaps. A year later, Dumas-Johnson has a Butkus Award finalist spot to his name while Mondon led the team in tackles. There’s no doubt they’ll be the Bulldogs’ top options at inside linebacker this season. Still, Kirby Smart wants to see the same kind of fight from them that he did headed into 2022.

“Him (Jamon) and Smael started out the spring in a curious position, whereas last spring they had a chip on their shoulder and nobody knew who they were, everyone is questioning them, so they were out there hungry, eating off the floor. They both had good seasons, but I had to call them in at one point because I didn’t think that they were practicing with the same ferocity that they would’ve been practicing with last year,” Smart said on Saturday when asked about the linebackers after Georgia’s first scrimmage of the spring. “I showed them some clips and said ‘Here’s you last spring and this is the way you were practicing when you had something to prove, and here’s the first four practices of this spring. Is that the same two guys?’. I think they both acknowledged that it probably wasn’t, and it needed to be, and that’s the disease that’s out there. Since that conversation, they’ve both really picked it up and been great leaders. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong, it’s just that they weren’t doing it right enough.”

Dumas-Johnson and Mondon finished first and second on the team in tackles with the latter leading the way with his 76 stops. Dumas-Johnson wasn’t far behind however with 70 including a team-high nine for loss. He earned All-SEC Second-Team from the Associated Press starting all 15 games for Georgia while Mondon started all 13 that he played in, missing a pair due to injury.

While understandable that the same level of intensity might not be there with a solidified spot at their disposal, that’s not at all what Smart wants to see. He’s preached competition since the day he arrived, and he wasn’t going to let two star linebackers set a bad example for others on the team. Their response is exactly what you would expect however from a pair of proven leaders. On the field their play speaks for itself. Off the field they’ve always been about being on their A-game and playing to the standard of a Georgia defense.

“Well, it feels different just like being an older guy in the room I guess because, like, it feels like I was just a freshman coming in and learning it. So I wouldn’t really say too different, but I don’t know, it’s kind of like weird a little bit,” Mondon said earlier in the spring about his new role as an experienced linebacker in the system. “I still feel like we’ve (him and Jamon) got a lot left to show. You know, we’ve got a lot of room to grow still. We’re not really complacent or stuck on last season. We know we’ve still got a lot of room for improvement, so really just working on things like that.”

Georgia has two weeks to go in spring practice, wrapping up on April 15th with the annual G-Day spring game. Between now and then the Bulldogs will go through six practices and two scrimmages, G-Day acting as the final for both.

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