The Georgia Bulldogs are set for their first spring practice on Tuesday afternoon as they turn the page to getting ready for the 2025 College Football season.
Following a 2024 season that culminated in a loss in the quarterfinal round to Notre Dame, there are plenty of areas for improvement. Sure, it was a season that “only” ended with another SEC Championship trophy being added to the trophy case in Butts-Mehre hall. Though there were some shortcomings throughout the year.
Georgia head coach Kirby Smart met with the media on Tuesday and he discussed areas of improvement that his coaching staff and program were focusing on during the self-assessment portion of the offseason.
You do it every year, regardless of the year. I’m sure the outside world thinks if you win every game, or you win a national championship, or you lose every game, that the sky is falling or, you know, everything’s hunky dory for us. It’s always an approach of, how do we get better? How do we improve? The first way to do that is through recruiting, through the transfer portal, and through talent acquisition. The next is through looking at other things people do. Special teams were a big emphasis for us. We spent a week really on that in quality control. We spent time on each side of the ball. Had two full weeks in and then the week before spring break. So we got really three weeks, 15 days of work on each side of the ball to look introspective and out to see what we can do to be better everywhere. And you know, some of that’s utilization of your personnel, which you don’t actually know that yet. You’re still trying to figure that out. We’ve got new players coming in on both sides of the ball. We’ll find out a lot about them this spring, but we do a very, very intensive study of not only ourselves, but other people. And when you go back and you watch everything you watch, you’re taking into account who are you playing against, you know, like, what is the caliber of the opponent you’re up against? And like, what did we do well, what did we do poorly? What do we have to do better? And there’s just a lot there. I could sit here for days and talk about that.
Smart and his staff remained in tact this offseason for the first time in his coaching career. All (10) position coaches and coordinators from the 2024 season remained in Athens for the 2025 season. That type of continuity and retention of talent is something that Kirby Smart accredits to the Georgia program’s success.
