Georgia football championship players of yesteryear like to say “The standard is the standard.”
That current Bulldogs — particularly the freshmen — aren’t hitting that standard through the first week of spring drills, and Kirby Smart is not happy about it.
“We really can’t practice to our standard because they’re all tired … so we got to do a better job of getting them in shape,” Smart said following practice on Tuesday.
“They are not where they need to be … they have to be willing to receive coaching.”
The championship Georgia teams loaded with future NFL stars understood and appreciated how hard Smart and his staff pushed them.
“I’m calling out all the freshmen for not being in shape,” Smart said. “There’s not a guy out there, a freshman, that’s sustaining his reps and just flourishing.
Smart understands there’s a curve for any freshman coming into Georgia practices, which are reputed to be the most difficult in the nation, according to many NFL scouts who watch Smart’s program closely because of how UGA develops and churns out players.
But there’s a bigger disconnect that Smart is not about to tolerate.
“They’re offended when you coach them,” Smart said. “I’m not talking about the freshmen, I’m talking about in general.
“It’s like, ‘you’re coaching me hard? Like you’re telling me I gotta play with effort,’ ” Smart said. “And some of them, I guess, have never been able to do that standard. But that standard is not gonna change here.”
Former Georgia team captain and current Philadelphia Eagles’ team leader Nakobe Dean told a story a few years ago that explained the approach needed to meet the standard.
“I’d be sleepy from doing homework all day, and I’d stay up, and I had to mature and find a good bedtime, because there was nobody telling me to go to sleep,” Dean said,
“And I remember Coach Smart coming to me and was like, ‘I can tell you are sleepy, are you doing homework all night?’ And I was like, “yeah,” and he was like ‘I don’t care.’ “
The message was clear.
“It was like, OK, I have to do what I’ve got to do to be great on the field,”
Georgia sent 14 players to the NFL combine, including three first-rounders, so Smart knew he’d have an appreciable reload on his hand.
The Bulldogs have handled this sort of turnover before, winning a national title after seeing an NFL-record 15 players drafted following the 2021 CFP Championship Season, and another 13 players from the two-deep enter the portal.
But Smart said the conditioning and the effort simply isn’t where it needs to be.
The standard is not being met by the newcomers, even in the star-studded secondary.
“It’s just like a lot of guys and there’s nobody really standing out,” Smart said. “K.J. (Bolden) is there and he continues to bulk up, get a little bit bigger …. but there’s no solid foundation that Malaki (Starks) and Dan (Jackson) provided.
“They’re trying to survive practice instead of thrive, and we wanna thrive, not survive.”
It’s a lot of the same thing with the incoming receivers.
“They gotta get in shape, they’re constantly tired in practice, they got their hands on their hips, exhausted,” Smart said. “They’re trying, there’s no lack of effort and they’re talented. But they got a long way to go in terms of learning what to do, and our job is to get them ready.
“They are not where they need to be.”
Smart said it’s on the coaches, for sure, but also, on the players.
“They have to be willing to receive coaching,” he said.
Smart acknowledged the prevalent NIL landscape likely has something to do with it.
“Kids that wanna be coached don’t care what they make — the guys in the NFL make more than these guys, and they still wanna be coached.
“I think it (NIL-related effort issues) is more prevalent than it’s been, it’s not new,” Smart said. “Guys have always maybe not been used to being coached and being corrected, especially at the volume and level at which we do things.”
But the standard is the standard.
“I think they’ll get there,” Smart said. “I mean, if they won’t, then somebody else will be in their spot.”
