2 • INTRODUCTION Copyright © 2022 by Athens Banner-Herald All Rights Reserved • ISBN: 978-1-63846-034-3 No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright owner or the publisher. Published by Pediment Publishing, a division of The Pediment Group, Inc. • www.pediment.com This book is an unofficial account of Kirby Smart and is not endorsed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association or the University of Georgia. Printed in Canada. On the cover FRONT COVER: Coach Kirby Smart during the the national championship celebration at Sanford Stadium in Athens, Ga., on Jan. 15, 2022. JOSHUA L. JONES / ATHENS BANNER-HERALD AthensCreditsBanner-Herald Caitlyn Stroh-Page ATHENS BANNER-HERALD EXECUTIVE EDITOR Fletcher Page USA TODAY GEORGIA GROUP SPORTS EDITOR Ryne Dennis ATHENS BANNER-HERALD SPORTS EDITOR Marc Weiszer UGA BEAT WRITER Chris Starrs CONTRIBUTING EDITOR FOR THE ATHENS BANNER-HERALD McClain Baxley UGA RECRUITING/ATHENS HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS REPORTER Photography Richard Hamm ATHENS BANNER-HERALD Joshua Jones ATHENS BANNER-HERALD Kayla Renie ATHENS BANNER-HERALD A.J. Reynolds ATHENS BANNER-HERALD John Roark ATHENS BANNER-HERALD Special thanks to USA TODAY Network photographers
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Jake Fromm enters junior campaign as Bulldogs’ unquestioned leader A scholarship story: How Rodrigo Blankenship went from walk-on to beloved Bulldogs star Bulldogs’ Sugar Bowl win vs. Baylor showcases young talent and bright future 83 ‘We love him, the crowd loves him.’ How Stetson Bennett’s upbringing and college journey resulted in UGA football glory Last-second field goal pushes Bulldogs past Cincinnati in Peach Bowl Dawgs coming out on top of ‘slugfest’ with Clemson bodes well for big battles to come How Charlotte’s Jordan Davis transformed from reluctant football player to UGA linchpin How Kirby Smart’s recruiting positioned UGA football for its first national title in 40 years Georgia dominates Michigan in Orange Bowl, advances to national championship GLORY, GLORY: Bulldogs finally turns back Tide, wins first national title since 1980 133 Parade, stadium celebration give national champion Bulldogs one more Saturday to remember 141 Kirby Smart and Georgia flip the page from national title. ‘We will not be hunted at UGA’ Story_Head
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Foreword: Nothing connects the state of Georgia more than the Bulldogs After national title, Kirby Smart sees Georgia football built to last, not ‘flash in pan’ Kirby Smart ‘certainly earned that right’ to return as coach at UGA Kirby Smart has lined up winners his entire life Kirby Smart eager to create new culture at Georgia G-Day shows Kirby Smart has vision, UGA can accommodate his dreams Kirby Smart’s moves to beat North Carolina for first career win months in the making Bulldogs cap Kirby Smart’s first season with Liberty Bowl victory Nick and Sony: Tailback tandem balances each other on and off the field Strong finish pushes UGA past Irish in historic matchup at Notre Dame Roquan Smith ‘a tackling machine’ against Georgia Tech and everybody else Bulldogs show bite by beating Auburn for 2017 SEC Championship, setting stage for playoffs Georgia wins Rose Bowl in double OT to go to national championship Still kings of the East: Georgia runs past Kentucky to win 2018 SEC East division title
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Even today, Georgia’s defeat of Oklahoma in the 2017 Rose Bowl, remains a cherished memory with many Bulldog partisans and will gather momentum with the passing of time. In those good old days of the past, there was no social media. People were not as affluent. Television and the Internet did not dominate our world and lifestyle as it does Whattoday.comes through all this is that there is something special about the con nection that the state university has with the people of this state. When he left for Arkansas, Bulldog offensive line coach, Sam Pittman, noted that he was greatly impressed with how well the “Georgia people traveled.” He saw it at South Bend in 2017, he saw it at Pasadena in the playoffs later in the season, and he saw it everywhere the Bulldogs played on the road. It didn’t shock him when he learned about the near full stadium that gathered on
FOREWORD Nothing connects the state of Georgia more than the Bulldogs
BY LORAN SMITH • ATHENS BANNER-HERALD
DAWGS RISING • 5
In late January 2022, I returned to Charlotte — with the most uplifting of memories. When I drove past Bank America Stadium, suddenly there was a flashback to the Georgia-Clemson game on Labor Day Weekend, Sept. 4, 2021. I recalled how evenly matched the two teams seemed to be, but I almost shouted to the top of my voice when, in my mind’s eye, I could see No. 29, Chris Smith, cat quick, maneuver his body in front of the Clemson wide receiver to intercept D.J. Uiagalelei’s pass and sprint 74 yards to glory.That sensational play, the only touch down of this matchup of the No. 2 and No. 5 ranked teams, kick-started Georgia’s season. These “Dawgs” would ultimately reach their goal of winning the national championship.Sincewinning it all, at Indianapolis, on Jan. 10, 2022, getting the New Year off to a glorious Red & Black start, the question has surfaced often about what it was like in Athens in 1980. Was there a parade? Was there a similar celebration? The consensus out there is that there simply could not have been a greater outpouring of feeling and tribute than what took place in Athens six days after winning it all. The answer with regard to the ’80 celebration question is, “No,” but warrants a few disclaimers.
There is nobody living today who could speak to the high moment that took place on Oct. 12, 1929, when Georgia upset the scourge of the East, mighty Yale, 15-0. Even though it was during wartime, can you imagine the emotion of Georgia’s Rose Bowl victory in Pasadena Jan. 1, 1943? The little town of Athens was over whelmed, according to old timers whom I got to know from hanging around the late Dan Magill. That team, too, was a national champion.
OPPOSITE: Georgia coach Kirby Smart looks back into Sanford Stadium after winning an NCAA college football game between Georgia and Georgia Tech in Athens, Ga., Nov. 24, 2018. JOSHUA L. JONES / ATHENS BANNER-HERALD
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Saturday Jan. 15th to pay tribute to Georgia’s latest championship team. Not sure about updated figures but three or four years ago, I saw figures where Georgia’s external revenue — merchandizing, logo apparel and the like — ranked second in the country, topped only by the University of Texas. UGA was significantly ahead of Alabama, even with the Tide’s recent championship success. You travel the backroads of this state and you see the connection with the University of Georgia reflected everywhere on mailboxes in places like Leary, Ailey, Racepond, Pocataligo, Adrian, Suches, Hahira, Rising Fawn and Ball Ground. Wrightsville, too. When Dan Magill organized the Bulldog Club network in 1954, he was able to organize a club in every one of Georgia’s 159 counties, which caused him to remind everybody that, “we are the majority party in this state.” Whenever I am out on the PGA Tour these days, which is not as often as it once was, I frequently see Bulldog caps in the galleries. When one of Georgia’s many alumni professionals posts a birdie on a hole or takes the lead in a tourna ment, you hear, “Go Dawgs,” almost as much as you do on a Saturday afternoon in Sanford Stadium. What I like most of all are the young kids with Bulldog images on their cheeks and T-shirts, and grandmothers wearing jerseys, listening to vintage Larry Munson calls. Maybe Kirby Smart has awakened a sleeping giant.
RIGHT: Georgia fans cheer on the Bulldogs during a national championship celebration parade at Sanford Stadium on Jan. 15, 2022, Athens.in
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DAWGS RISING • 7 Georgia coach Kirby Smart speaks with the media at SEC Football Media Days in Atlanta, July 17, 2018. JOSHUA L. JONES / ATHENS BANNER-HERALD
“You have to stay in that conversation,” said Smart, who won the national title in his sixth Georgia season and second College Football Playoff championship game. “Now this will be the most talent as a whole we’ve lost at once, but every year we lose juniors who are really good players. …The challenge as coaches is to make sure we bring in enough talent to replace those. We are also developing.”
After national title, Kirby Smart sees Georgia football built to last, not ‘flash in pan’
Coach Kirby Smart doesn’t see his program as a “flash in the pan,” he told fans this offseason when talking about the program maintaining a level of excellence.
• ATHENS BANNER-HERALD • JUNE 9, 2022
Recruits on visits to Georgia in the spring of 2022 saw firsthand the results of donors pouring more than $100 million into facility upgrades in recent years, including a glistening football operations center, a much-needed indoor practice facility and a new game-day locker room. They also posed with something the program earned last season: the college football national championship trophy.
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Georgia lost a modern-day NFL-record 15 draft picks, including a record five first-round picks off the defense. But the Bulldogs appear to be built to last like Alabama — the program Smart helped build as defensive coordinator under Nick Saban and one the Bulldogs finally knocked off 33-18 in the national championship game — more than a one-hit wonder like Ed Orgeron’s Tigers turned out to be.
“I think we’ve been there,” he said at an event in Duluth in April. “It’s not like this is the first time we’ve been in the conversation. I’m all for consistency. We’ve consistently performed and been consistent in recruiting and been consis tent on the field.”
LSU went from preseason No. 6 in 2020 to unranked at the end of that season. The magic spun by quarterback Joe Burrow and an explosive offense with passing game coordinator Joe Brady disappeared. After going 9-8 in the 17 games after LSU’s national title, Orgeron was fired in October of last season.
“It’s probably apples and oranges,” LSU athletic director Scott Woodward said at SEC 2022 spring meetings. “Two differ ent people. I know Kirby well, and obvi ously I know Coach O well. Two different
OPPOSITE: Georgia head coach Kirby Smart during warm ups before the start of the Rose Bowl game between Georgia and Oklahoma in Pasadena, Calif., Jan. 1, 2018. JOSHUA L. JONES / ATHENS BANNER-HERALD
After ending a 41-year national title drought behind a generational defense and an underrated offense with former walk-on Stetson Bennett at quarterback, will the incoming recruiting classes add more hardware during their time in Athens? Or will Georgia slide back like an LSU team that won the national title just two seasons earlier?
BY MARC WEISZER
Georgia has finished in the top seven each of the last five seasons in the AP poll, something only Ohio State has done. Georgia is tied with Clemson for second most national championship game ap pearances since the 2017 season with two behind Alabama’s four.
situations, two different things.”
Woodward, who returned to his alma mater before the 2019 season and was the school’s director of external affairs when Smart was a Tigers assistant in 2004, said he would be surprised if Georgia takes a downturn under Smart. Woodward made a splashy hire in luring Brian Kelly from Notre Dame to Baton Rouge to coach the Tigers, but couldn’t pinpoint what went wrong after the 2019 national title season. Whether that’s a sense of complacency or staff departures, including defensive coordinator Dave Aranda or other things swirling around the program at the time, including Orgeron’s handling of sexual misconduct allegations against a player.
ABOVE: Georgia coach Kirby Smart in front of the media at SEC Football Media Days in Atlanta, July 17, 2018.
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Smart’s team may be the reigning national champions, but he’s already pushed back on any notion that Georgia is the defending national champions.“Thatwas never our end-all and be-all last year,” Smart said at an event at the Augusta Boys & Girls Club in April. “That team last year, they wanted to destroy everybody that they played. They never talked about a national championship. That’s easy for the fan base to say I want to win a na tional championship. Our goal was to go out and annihilate, make your opponent quit, make them never want to play you again.”
“It’s so much work that went into that season, that national championship,” said Jamaree Salyer, Georgia’s starting left tackle the past two seasons who was a sixth-round draft pick by the Los Angeles Chargers in April. “It didn’t just happen. Everybody likes to put it on the talent, but it was so much work. I hope those guys never undervalue what that work meant to this team or the leadership that went into it. We won the national championship but I think about all the hard days we put into it in practices and meetings and walk-throughs.”
Said Minnesota Vikings first-round safety Lewis Cine, a starter on the na tional title team: “I think Georgia has a great blueprint going forward. They had a great recruiting class. Kirby knows what it takes. He’s just going to do the same thing that led up to winning the natty.”
OPPOSITE: Smart at the dawg walk before the game between Georgia and Kentucky in Athens, Ga, Nov. 18, 2017.
Smart liked how the 2022 Bulldogs have handled the months that followed a moment that the Bulldog fan base had waited decades to come.
“The pats on the back, the kids get them, everywhere you go, every time you go out in your communities, you get that, you use that for energy but that story was last year,” said Smart, the former UGA All-SEC safety. “A lot of those guys are no longer part of this team. You’ve got a group of young men who were a part of the team, and I’m extremely excited about going out and playing football games with them. Everybody thinks you have to be a certain age to be a performer on the football field, but if you are talented enough … we’ve got some talented guys, we just don’t have a lot of experience. They’ve bought in, they’ve done a tremendous job in the offseason.”
Smart tells the story of two players wanting to address the team after the Missouri game because they weren’t happy with the effort shown. That came after a 43-6 rout. The play ers wanted the entire team to show up for an optional Sunday lifting session.
JOSHUA L. JONES / ATHENS BANNER-HERALD
DAWGS RISING • 11
“There were a lot of factors and if I knew the answer, I would be a Nobel Prize winner,” Woodward said. “I just don’t know. You don’t know what happens. The secret ingredients and the magic was right in 2019. That’s something they’ll never take away from O and it was right. What happened after that? I kind of wish I knew. I really do. I wasn’t expecting it.”
“There was a lot of doubters out there when that ball got kicked off and ran back, a lot of here we go’s, but not one kid on that sideline doubted it,” Smart said. Smart and his staff had the guts to let Jacob Eason rip. That paid off when the freshman quarterback connected with Isaiah McKenzie for 51 yards in the fourth quarter to set up the go-ahead score.
Kirby Smart’s moves to beat North Carolina for first career win months in the making
ATLANTA — Stay hyped, Bulldog fans –there’s always next year. That should no longer be a derogatory statement among the fan base. There will be more big games. And more crucial touchdowns and defensive stands. Georgia’s best with Kirby Smart in charge is yet to come and still very much in the making. Instead of constantly fretting over not losing, as in previous seasons, Bulldogs everywhere should be eager and hungry to go get “Changewins.isa process, and we’re trying to change the culture and the demeanor,” Smart said after Georgia’s 33-24 win over North Carolina in the Georgia Dome on Saturday.Itwould have been easy to get nega tive in the third quarter. North Carolina scored on the kickoff to open the second half, then scored easily on the next drive. Big game. Big hype. Big deficit. Seen it before. Know how that ends. Yeah, it would have been easy to feel that way.
BY FLETCHER PAGE • ATHENS BANNER-HERALD • PUBLISHED SEPT. 4, 2016
ATHENS
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Eason finished 8 of 12 with 131 yards and a Smarttouchdown.andhisstaff did their homework on running back Brian Herrien and trusted that he would do his. His grades kept other programs away in February. But Kirby held a spot and Herrien made the A’s to get in late. He scored a 19-yard touchdown on his first career carry in the first half. “Tears almost came to my eyes when he had that touchdown run,” Smart said. Smart persisted in his pursuit of Maurice Smith into August, the defen sive back transfer from Alabama that Nick Saban initially would not let come to TheGeorgia.drama was worth it. Smith broke up two passes that could have been Carolina scores and had five tackles. Every angle, it appears, has been me ticulously pursued or covered. Kirby is going for the win. Nick Chubb had 222 yards in his return, but even a player as special as OPPOSITE: Georgia coach Kirby Smart wears The Old Leather Helmet after defeating North Carolina 33-24 during the Georgia – North Carolina game at the Georgia Dome, Sept. 3, 2016.
SEPT. 3, 2016 • VS NORTH CAROLINA • W/L 33-24
Chubb isn’t enough. Georgia has always had phenomenal top-end talent. What it has lacked is Smart’s attention to detail. His work ethic to create a smaller margin forIt’serror.not perfect and there will surely be setbacks, but Smart is building that with hisSomoves.when the Georgia Dome went silent in the third quarter, when the Dogs were down by 10, there was nothing to worry about.Themoves to correct the problems and win the game had already been made.
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OPPOSITE: Coach Smart leads the football players run out of the tunnel at the Georgia – North Carolina Chik-fil-A Peach Bowl.
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LEFT: Coach Smart speaks with Georgia free safety Quincy Mauger (20) during the second half of the Georgia – North Carolina game on Sept. 3, 2016.
ABOVE LEFT: Georgia tailback Nick Chubb (27) runs onto the field with the team.
JOHN ROARK / ATHENS BANNER-HERALD
JOHN ROARK / ATHENS BANNER-HERALD
“You prevent that every day in practice … and you’re demanding excellence,” Smart said. “I’ve really been hard on these guys. That’s not going to change. Sometimes they wonder why, they wonder if I’m crazy. That’s why. If I can make it hard on them in practice, they really re spond better. I’m really proud of the way they responded.”
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ATLANTA — Roquan Smith says he en joys going up against the style of offense that Georgia Tech employs. “I love playing the triple option be cause you have to embrace it anyway,” Smith said. He certainly looked like it Saturday with his sideline-to-sideline playmaking ways.The way he is playing this season, chances are good it was his last game against Georgia Tech.
Georgia Tech was held to 226 yards of total offense and 188 rushing yards on 46Thosecarries.totals were the fewest Georgia Tech has managed in 10 games under Paul Johnson against Georgia.
Smith is a finalist for the Butkus, Nagurski and Bednarik awards and some are projecting him as a top 10 NFL draft pick in 2018. He offered a “no comment,” when asked if Saturday’s game was his last against Georgia Tech given his rising NFL“He’sstock.amachine, a tackling machine,” said coach Kirby Smart who used the words “relentless, athletic and tough,” to describe the 6-foot-1, 225-pound Smith.
“He did a hell of a job, he was fly ing around,” inside linebacker Natrez Patrick said. “I feed off his energy. I feed off of him.”
The Bulldogs’ junior continued to look All-American worthy, leading the Bulldogs with nine tackles — eight solo — with three tackles for loss, including a sack in a 38-7 romp over Georgia Tech.
The previous low was 276 total yards and 194 rushing yards in a 13-7 Georgia win in 2015. “They were flying around as you could see,” said Georgia Tech quarterback TaQuon Marshall who led his team with 72 rushing yards on 17 carries. “Their hands are really long and we were trying to get around them and get things going to the Smithperimeter.”nowhas100 tackles on the sea son after leading the team in tackles for a fourth straight game and seventh in the last “That’seight.just Roquan,” nose guard John Atkins said with a laugh. “He owes me some cookies I think. I get him free.” Smith earlier gave credit to his team mates around him.
“They’re hitting tackles, hitting guards, hitting A-backs and things like OPPOSITE: Georgia linebacker Roquan Smith (3) during warm ups before the Rose Bowl game between Georgia and Oklahoma in Pasadena, Calif., Jan. 1, 2018. L.
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NOV. 25, 2017 • VS GEORGIA TECH • W 38–7 Roquan Smith ‘a tackling machine’ against Georgia Tech and everybody else
BY MARC WEISZER • ATHENS BANNER-HERALD • PUBLISHED NOV. 26, 2017
JOSHUA
