How Did We Get Here? Explaining The Machine that is Georgia

As Georgia experiences a time period of dominance with their football program, we felt it necessary to answer the question... How did we get here? How did all of this happen?

Brooks Austin | Dec 7, 2022

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Georgia Bulldogs

Fresh off winning a national title for the first time in 41 seasons at the University of Georgia, head coach Kirby Smart and the No. 1 ranked Georgia Bulldogs are on the precipice of completing what would be a truly historic run to a second consecutive national title.

As Georgia experiences a time period of dominance with their football program, we felt it necessary to answer the question... How did we get here? How did all of this happen?

How Did Georgia Do This?

Player Acquisition

Kirby Smart makes no bones about it. Priority number one, purpose number one, is to get the best football players in America — no matter the geographical location — to play for the University of Georgia. Since signing his first full recruiting class in 2017, Kirby Smart has signed 28 five stars, he's had the No. 1 overall class twice, and he's never as much finished outside of the top 3 in the composite rankings. It's player acquisition at a rate this sport has only seen in one other place... you guessed it, Alabama.

So, how do you replace the 28 players that departed the roster a year ago — 15 to the NFL Draft, and 13 to the NCAA Transfer Portal? Well, replace talent with more talent. Georgia's years of stacking and keeping great players paid dividends this season.

Coaching/Coach Replacement

It can be often left out of the discussion around this program when talking about the overall excellence. This is a football team that had to replace four position coaches, one of which was a defensive coordinator, this offseason. The hire of Will Muschamp as an analyst turned special team coordinator paid out last season, and having him in tow for a co-defensive coordinator position didn't hurt this season either. They had to replace a retiring Matt Luke with Stacy Searels at the offensive line position and he — alongside Eddie Gordon — has the unit in the running for the Joe Moore award. There was a mutual parting of ways at the DB position with Jahmile Addae, insert Fran Brown and he's managed to establish a footprint in the northern region of the country on the recruiting trail.

Bryan McClendon has taken what was left of a depleted receiver room, with 6 of the 13 transfers coming from that room, and has them performing well enough to win as well as managed to get Georgia a strong foothold in some major recruitments on the trail. Finally, there's Chidera Uzo-Diribe. A classic Kirby Smart hire... go out and find the youngest rising superstar on the block. Uzo-Diribe is a 30-year-old edge specialist that has a vibrance in the room and on the trail. It's been home run hires, four for four.

Player Development

Stetson Bennett. Christopher Smith. Ladd McConkey. Daijun Edwards. Adonai Mitchell. Javon Bullard. Dillon Bell. We can talk about the 28 five-stars all we want, but what has made Georgia an elite program with sustained success is their ability to take the three-star and turn them into a starter. Those names above, those are just the starters and impact players that were former three-stars on this active roster. This is nothing new to Smart. Names like Jordan Davis, Eric Stokes, Monty Rice, Tae Crowder, Solomon Kindley, and Devonte Wyatt are all names that are playing on Sundays that touted three-star rankings out of high school.

Georgia's ability to find overlooked players with at least one elite trait, then take that trait and add on to it has been one of the many keys to this death machine.

Culture

Everyone says it. Everyone claims to want one. Culture. What does it even mean? How do you quantify it from outside the building? Well, let's do it this way. It's December 7th, the NCAA Transfer Portal window opened 48 hours ago. To date, Georgia doesn't have a single player in the portal. Sure, they are in the midst of a national title run, but that hasn't stopped one of Michigan's team captains from entering the portal.

Do you want to see culture on display? Take a player like Nyland Green at Georgia. He was the No. 4 overall corner coming out of high school in 2021. He's sat for two seasons, waiting his turn to play at corner, and is a prime candidate for portal entry in today's age of college football. Yet, when you turn your television on December 31st against Ohio State, Nyland Green will be a balls-to-the-wall bullet on special teams.

So, you wanna know the secret? Seven years of unprecedented player acquisition, combined with elite coaching and coaching replacement when your great coaches inevitably leave for promotion, on top of elite player development, and an elite culture to boot.

Sounds simple enough, right?

How Did Georgia Do This?

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