Kirby Smart Addresses Redzone "Woes" for Georgia

Georgia head coach Kirby Smart addressed the recent struggles in the redzone for his Georgia Football team as they complete their regular season on Saturday.

Brooks Austin | Nov 22, 2022

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Georgia Bulldogs

We have one remaining game in the 2022 regular season. Georgia is the No. 1 ranked football team in the country, they are undefeated, and they are 37.0 point favorites in their final home game on Saturday afternoon against Georgia Tech.

Though they are the best team in college football, they are not without flaws, particularly on offense. Georgia has shown a propensity to turn the football over, having turned the ball over 15 times this season, with all of those coming over the last eight football games.

The turnovers are one thing, but they also lead the nation in redzone field goals as well, a stat they've had a hold on since the second game of the year when they settled for four redzone field goals in one contest. Stalling inside the 20s has been a problem for this offense, entering the redzone has not been, however.

Their 61 redzone trips lead all of college football, it's not been a matter of moving the ball, it's been a matter of leaving with six, not three. The redzone "woes" if you will were addressed by Kirby Smart on Monday during his press conference.

"You know, we worked really hard on it. It was one of our big things coming in. We actually had moved -- we started off really slow in that area, offensively. And we moved into the twenties and we were creeping up. And it was getting really good and then we took a step back, you know, last week. And the level of concern is about execution. It's not like you can say it's one thing or, Oh, you have a problem here. No, you didn't do this right. And every play we can point to and say we have a failure here. And when you have a failure here, we don't execute. You play good defenses, they capitalize on you. And, you know, our defensive red zone team percentages has been really, really special. We've stopped a lot of people. And we go against each other all offseason. They get to see our guys go. We do it every week on every Wednesday we go out and do it. So it's been a point of emphasis for us. But it's one of those things we got to keep working on and getting better at.”

In case you were thinking it's something he and his staff haven't tracked and analyzed closely, Smart has clearly been aware of their propensity to settle for a Jack Podlesny chipshot.

For Smart, it's been a matter of execution across the board in the redzone. The games in which Georgia's players have executed their assignments on a consistent basis in the redzone are the games in which they've maintained success.

For Stetson Bennett, it's a matter of running the football at a higher clip. When asked what the key is to a successful redzone offense, Bennett quickly responded "Great redzone offenses can run the football successfully." That was something that obviously Georgia struggled with on Saturday against Kentucky, coming up on a goal-line stand on 4th down.

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