Georgia Bulldogs LB Nolan Smith Admits To Fueling Narrative Around the Dawgs
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ATHENS - It was not that long ago when Kirby Smart and the Georgia Bulldogs stood inside of Sanford Stadium at Georgia’s second-straight national championship celebration and announced to the world that they had proven their doubters wrong.
Convincing the team that everyone was doubting them and raging on the internet with their “Georgia is going 8-4 or 7-5” takes is high on the list for most impressive things that Smart has done in his time in Athens- a list that includes two national championships and a perfect season.
Pundits and the national media, and even the Dawg Post crew, weren’t sitting around last offseason saying “Yeah, the Dawgs are going to steamroll almost everybody and go 15-0,” but it is hard to find takes from a year ago that were that negative about Georgia. You can go back and watch all of the videos. Winning the national championship again was something people thought was realistic. Yes, Georgia was losing all of those first rounders from that generational defense, but the team was also bringing back experienced leaders, like Stetson Bennett and Nolan Smith.
Smith is… outspoken. Smart even commented the other day that he was a huge personality. If there was going to be somebody that admitted that this mysterious doubt was indeed fabricated, Smith was a candidate to do so, and he finally did.
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He recently spoke with Connor O’Gara of Saturday Down South and O’Gara was straight up with Smith by asking him where the 7-5 narrative came from because it was untrue.
When O’Gara called Smith out he laughed and responded with a simple “Yes, yeah, yeah.”
So, here is the answer. Nolan Smith is at least partially responsible for the delusion that everybody thought Georgia was not going to be a playoff-caliber team.
“You gotta create the whole narrative, man. Sometimes you gotta put the chip on your own shoulder, but we did have a humongous target on our back, as we saw in the Missouri game,” Smith said.
People did become unsure of the Dawgs after they barely escaped Columbia, Missouri with a comeback victory. That only really lasted for a few days.
Georgia followed up that struggle fest by dominating the SEC over the next five weeks. They cruised over Auburn, shutout Vanderbilt, scooted past Florida, bashed Tennessee in and handled Mississippi State. Very quickly did the Dawgs reassure the country that they are still the best team in the country and they were not going to be easy to dethrone.
And maybe they would have been dethroned if Smart and Smith did not do their best to motivate the team.
“Sometimes you gotta juice it up for the guys, especially when you’re the old man,” Smith said. “I said it the whole summer. ‘They think we’re going 7-5. They aren’t even thinking about a 2-peat.’”
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