Kirby: "Pressure is a privilege"
ATLANTA - Somewhere between the sixth and sixteenth question about last year’s national title game, Kirby Smart got to the point of this season and his program.
“We don’t run from pressure. Pressure is a privilege,” he said. "We’ve earned the right to have pressure on our program.”
He’s right on all accounts. UGA has earned this, and the pressure is there.
Georgia is expected to get back to Atlanta for a winner-take-all fight with Alabama (or Auburn) in December. The Bulldogs are betting favorites right now to play in the College Football Playoff. Those expectations have always surrounded UGA - but not like now. And expectations are the main reason Kirby is in Athens now. The hope that expectations can be completely fulfilled was the entire point of pushing Mark Richt out.
Let’s be clear that those goals are very much achievable now because of the meticulous way Kirby has and is running this program. He is leaving nothing to chance - recruiting, planning, practice… which tie to wear for Media Days (Kirby is a non-bow tie guy)
Everything matters.
Players describe practices as being far more challenging than games.
“Guys going for one another’s necks, and then brothers right after that,” UGA DL Jonathon Ledbetter said. “We practice so hard you would think practice is the game, and the game is practice. It is something beautiful - poetry in motion.”
“Going for one another’s necks” is “poetry in motion.” - Wu Tang would be proud.
“Kirby makes practice harder than the game,” UGA WR Terry Godwin said. “We are not fatigued. We are not breaking down. When he brought all of that in he knew the program was changing.”
We can use past tense now: Georgia is no longer changing. It has changed.
Talk with folks who cover teams on the ground, and they will tell you: The Gators are nervous that they won’t get past Georgia too many times in the near future because of recruiting; the Chickens are doing their usual nervous summer crowing, but they know hosting Georgia in the second week gives them a shot to beat the Dawgs - it doesn’t make them the favorite to win that game; and mighty Alabama, and the Tide is mighty for sure, are looking over their collective shoulders like they’ve done with no one else in the league since LSU at the turn of the decade.
So the pressure is on for Kirby and company to keep this up - to meet and even exceed expectations. Again, nothing is left to chance. The Bulldogs won’t redshirt Justin Fields. Fields will develop while playing... not watching. Something that seemed pretty improbable a few weeks ago - getting Demetris Robertson eligible to play this fall in Athens - doesn’t seem out of the question suddenly. This program is going to make a run at it all every single season, and it is going to do everything it has to in order to be in that position.
“There is no magic pill. It takes what it takes,” Kirby said.
Other things learned today:
1. According to the UGA contingent here today last year doesn’t matter.
2. Kirby brought J.R. Reed to Media Days because of the leadership he showed at the end of 2017.
3. Reed is a “bad man” according to Jonathon Ledbetter
4. Terry Godwin wants the UGA receivers to “be the best in the country.”
5. Godwin thinks that Jake Fromm “knows what the defense is before they do it”, and that Justin Fields has “shown us why he was the No. 1 player in the nation.