You’ll have to forgive Kirby Smart if he didn’t seem overjoyed on Wednesday.
He was. Honest.
It’s just that Georgia’s 41-year-old head coach was worn out from the recruiting trail. He called it an “arduous process” reaching signing day, and in the end it went almost exactly as he had planned.
“A pretty uneventful day,” he told reporters in Athens. “An exciting, uneventful day.”
Through bleary eyes and a raspy voice, Smart detailed the 26 signees who made up Georgia’s 2017 Class, which checked in at No. 3 in the ESPN class rankings — the highest the program has finished since the company began tracking commitments. All told, Smart signed more players in the top 15 (four) than any team in the country.
He was excited about the big bodies joining the offensive line, he said. He was positively giddy about the length they added at cornerback. And in terms of skill players, what was there not to like? Keeping running backs Nick Chubb and Sony Michel from the NFL draft was essentially a recruiting home run to start with, but then he and assistant coach Dell McGee went to Philadelphia and landed a top-10 back in D’Andre Swift.
It was the culmination of a lot of hard work — work that Smart said actually began more than a year ago when he was on the field after the national championship game. Wrapping up his final duties as Alabama’s defensive coordinator, he called several 2017 recruits in an effort to start building what would be his first full recruiting class at Georgia.
“It paid off this year,” he said.
But, as Smart well knows, the real payoff isn’t anywhere near completion.
His work has just begun.
Though Georgia fans will revel a while longer in the aftermath of a historic signing class, be prepared for their applause to fade with time. Because though Smart and his staff have brought some much-needed enthusiasm and hope back to the program, the next thing on the agenda is on-field production. And the expectations couldn’t be loftier.
Smart essentially received a pass for going 8-5 during his first season. He was a rookie head coach, most of the roster included players brought in by the previous staff, and his recruits were true freshmen — including quarterback Jacob Eason — who were expected to take their lumps as they gained experience.
But now, after signing such a high-profile class, the heat is on to win right away. Eason will be expected to develop quickly into an All-SEC-caliber quarterback, and five-star freshmen — Isaiah Wilson included — will be looked to as immediate difference-makers, fair or not.
Such is the pressure of living up to a standard you helped create. Smart, after all, was part of the staff at Alabama that recruited the transformational 2008 class that included the likes of Julio Jones, Mark Ingram and Dont’a Hightower, and he’ll be linked to it from now until eternity. When a reporter in Athens was careful to say that he wasn’t going to compare the two classes, Smart interjected playfully, “Please, don’t.”
“That class may have been one of the most productive classes I’ve been around, top to bottom,” he said.
The pressure of living up to that is enough to make anyone cringe. Alabama would rely heavily on freshmen, such as Jones in 2008, and jump from seven wins to 12. A year later, head coach Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide went undefeated, beat Texas and won the first of four national championships in Tuscaloosa.
The comparison, as much as Smart would be wise to avoid it, is unavoidable.
What’s more, he has the legacy of Mark Richt perpetually hanging over his head. Richt went from eight wins his first season in Athens to 13 the next. He averaged 9.7 wins per year over 15 seasons, went 9-3 in 2015, and was let go for the prospect of winning on an even grander scale.
So, yeah, another eight or nine wins aren’t going to sit well with many of the Bulldog faithful.
Signing five-stars is great, but championships are even better.
“No. 1 to me has always been about recruiting and development,” Smart said. “Recruiting and development.”
No one has ever doubted his ability to do the former.
Now it’s time to show whether he can do the latter as a head coach.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
