Kirby Smart sees a lot of qualities to like in Steve Sarkisian's Texas
Georgia head coach Kirby Smart is the epitome of a winner in college football. His Bulldogs have lost just three games since the end of the 2020 season, and his program has taken home two national championships since that time.
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Smart and company have not lost very often of late, but when they do it comes at the hands of Alabama either under Nick Saban or Kalen DeBoer. Four of the team’s last five losses have come via the Crimson Tide, and Smart has shown that outside of the team in Tuscaloosa, he has become almost unbeatable.
But Smart isn’t writing off what Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian has built in Austin since taking over the Longhorns in 2021, the year Smart won his first national championship. What Sarkisian has constructed reminds Smart a lot of his own successful teams, and praise has been dished out throughout the leadup to Saturday’s game between the two top-five teams.
“Well, I think when you look at a team, you look for weaknesses, you look for areas that you can maybe take advantage of,” Smart said Wednesday on the SEC Coaches Teleconference. “And when you look across the board to the kicking game, the passing game, the run game, the fundamentally sound complimentary football, they force turnovers and don’t turn the ball over. The things that you can eliminate for beating yourself, they do a great job at all of that, and that’s why they’re undefeated. That’s why they were in the playoffs last year, and that’s why they rank number one right now in the country.”
Texas enters this matchup with the potential to create a seismic change in the college football world. Even Sarkisian called Smart and Georgia the standard-bearer in college football over the past few years. And despite a close loss in Tuscaloosa this season, Georgia is a team many believe will be a factor to the end in the new era of the 12-team playoff.
The Longhorns are No. 1 in the nation, but skepticism abounds when discussing the validity of the ranking. Has Texas really played anyone of note? Michigan and Oklahoma looked like huge games heading into the season, but both teams would be lucky to finish the year with seven wins at this point. Texas has a chance to prove that its early performances were fore real, it is truly the best team in the nation, and should be considered a national title favorite.
What really stuck out about Smart’s words this week was the respect he gave to Texas at position groups you’d often associate with the Bulldogs.
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“The offensive and defensive lines are extremely big and physical,” Smart said. “They have great skill. But you know, you might play three or four teams in the SEC that have great skill. You rarely see the combination of offensive and defensive lines with that depth and that size.”
The Bulldogs have sent 11 players on the offensive and defensive lines to the NFL Draft over the last three seasons, including former No. 1 overall pick Travon Walker. But Texas is starting to follow suit, with five players from those position groups drafted in the last two drafts. The Horns could even send two tackles to the first round of the draft this year with Kelvin Banks most likely to be a top 32 pick and Cameron Williams moving up draft boards.
Smart was nothing but complimentary of the Longhorns this week, and the coach seems to understand that he’s going to be playing in one of the games of the year on Saturday.
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A night game at DKR, College GameDay in town and a top-five battle in Austin for the first time in 18 years. What’s not to love about this matchup?
