I made a lot of Georgia fans on Twitter mad on Saturday by making the observation that a couple of active head coaches could’ve made a better team out of the 2021 Bulldog roster than Kirby Smart did: “Georgia was overall the best team all year and so a worthy champ, but the funny thing is there are at least a couple of active head coaches who could’ve taken the same roster and had a better team. I doubt anyone thinks they actually maxed out their potential.” Followed by: “Which says both good and bad things about Kirby Smart as a head coach.”
I’m not concerned, mind you. They can be mad at whatever; they’re not my audience and I don’t care what they think.
Side note: apparently their new thing to respond to Florida fans is to say “2008” and similar, which is completely ineffective since UF has won three times as many titles in my lifetime as Georgia has. It has been 40 years since they last won it all, so I’ll give them a pass for being inexperienced at being on top. They can’t act like they’ve been there before because so many of them actually haven’t.
I got a few “they won the title, what else do you want from them?” remarks, which shows they completely missed the point. I stated up front that UGA was the best team this year. The point was that they didn’t reach their ceiling, or even completely try to. That kind framing is one I used a lot this past fall, whether talking about Dan Mullen not building enough margin for error or not trying to hit the Gators’ ceiling of potential. Building margin for error, ceiling strategy, and maxing out all are variants on the issue of whether someone is attempting to get the best possible output from his team.
Just take the actual head coaches and staffs of the 2021 season. Nick Saban and company easily could’ve put a better product on the field. Dabo Swinney probably would’ve too, and I’d bet Lincoln Riley and the Oklahoma staff would’ve done it as well. Probably not Ryan Day and the Ohio State crew given how Day had to show a couple of assistants the door this month, including the former defensive coordinator he demoted mid-season. Luke Fickell and Brian Kelly probably could’ve gotten something pretty similar, maybe a little lesser.
My favorite response was that Georgia won a title “with Stetson Freaking Bennett”, as though that’s a point in Smart’s favor. There are no style points awarded for unnecessarily upping the degree of difficulty. Smart has at least one quarterback who’s better in J.T. Daniels; Brock Vandagriff has a better toolset if nothing else.
This is what I was getting at: the 2021 season says good and bad things about Smart. Bad, that he will not try to get the most possible out of his team. Good, that he was able to assemble a roster so talented that it ended up the best team anyway.
This is why I think that, if Billy Napier turns out to be someone special as a head coach, it’ll be harder to pass up Alabama and maybe Clemson (pending how the new assistants turn out) than Georgia. Saban and Swinney have been presented the choice of playing the higher ceiling younger guy over the lower ceiling veteran before, and both made the higher-ceiling choice. They won their titles because of their personnel management, not in spite of it.
They also don’t meddle in the opposite side of the ball from them to make it worse. I saw what Todd Monken did a ten years ago at Oklahoma State. It was fresh and creative. Even given that a decade has gone by since then, it’s still largely fresh and creative compared to what UGA did with its offense this year.
There’s only one explanation as to why Monken ran a scheme built around bullying the opponent while only taking the occasional shot downfield: he wasn’t given another choice. I think there’s a reason why, as Bruce Feldman reported, Monken is thinking about heading back to the NFL. It partially could be that he doesn’t want to recruit anymore; that’s a common reason coaches go or return to the pro ranks. I suspect it’s also because he’s an offensive guy and doesn’t want to be handcuffed by the conservative stuff Smart wants him to do.
Georgia is going to lose a ton of good players from the title team, but there’s enough in the pipeline to keep the Bulldogs in Playoff contention for at least another 2-3 years. I’m not predicting an immediate slide, even if they do drop an extra game or two next year.
However longer term, I don’t think it’s as sustainable there if Florida starts blocking UGA’s recruiting incursions into central Florida (including IMG Academy in Bradenton) while poaching guys from across the border. It will start to look more dicey if Mario Cristobal manages to put a fence around greater Miami, though that would affect UF as well.
It’s different than Bama because Saban is now everyone’s acknowledged best coach ever. No one will be able to lock him out of anywhere, recruiting-wise. He also is able to take a team like this year’s squad, which had an iffy offensive line and youth in a lot of key spots, and go to the national title game anyway. Smart probably would lose at least three games with that Crimson Tide roster and his ’21 coaching staff because he doesn’t go for the ceiling strategy in the way Saban does.
I have no idea if Napier will consistently go for the ceiling strategy at Florida. He hasn’t coached a game yet. He certainly did well at Louisiana. It’s true he ran a lot by today’s standards, but he also had a running QB with limited passing skills most of the time. Running a lot with that behind center probably is the ceiling strategy if you can’t get someone better — and at a Sun Belt school, it can be hard to.
But if Napier does try to max out his team’s potential, and also his early recruiting returns are representative of what’s coming, I don’t see Smart and Georgia as an impossible hill for him to climb.