Success is defined as “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose”, and I don’t think that I’d get much pushback on that definition. Defining the aim or purpose that qualifies success, though, I’d bet any person I asked would give me a different answer. To understand if a person or organization is successful, we have to understand what their aim or purpose is.
Every college football team starts fall camp with the aim or purpose of winning the National Championship, and while that’s only realistic for a handful of teams it’s still what everyone is playing for. With that definition only one team was successful in the 2021 season, and that team was the Georgia Bulldogs. Lifting the National Championship Trophy for the first time since Herschel Walker can’t be defined as anything but a success.
The question for Georgia becomes how many National Championships do they want to win? Do they want to be compared to Alabama or Auburn? There are one hundred & twenty-nine FBS football programs, and one hundred & twenty-eight of them would define winning a National Championship as success; Alabama defines success as winning every National Championship.
Kirby Smart was hired at Georgia in December of 2015, so the 2016 season was his first season as head coach. The 2017 recruiting class was Smart’s first full class. According to 247 sports, the lowest that Georgia has finished in recruiting rankings is fourth, that was in 2017, and twice they finished with the highest ranked recruiting class in the country. Georgia is the only school to finish with the highest ranked class besides Alabama since 2011 (Texas A&M is expected to finish with the highest ranked class in 2022).
Georgia has been proving for years that they can recruit head to head with Alabama, they finally proved this year that they can go toe to toe with Alabama on the field and come out on top as well. Why did it take so long though? Until the Title game Georgia hadn’t beaten Alabama since 2007, and Kirby Smart was 0-4 against Nick Saban. If Georgia is just as talented as Alabama (they are) then why did it take so long to not only beat them, but to finally win a National Championship?
The answer: Stetson Bennett
Bennett is the living, breathing personification of Georgia football under Kirby Smart. The former walk-on who had to transfer to a junior college and then back to Georgia was a huge piece of the title game puzzle, and a symptom of a larger disease that has plagued the Bulldogs and held them back from at least one other Championship, and who knows how many future titles.
Georgia proved that you can win a National Championship with a quarterback who can’t consistently push the ball down the field and an out of this world defense; it’s just wildy harder to do so. That’s a lesson Nick Saban learned almost ten years ago at Alabama. Saban got to Tuscaloosa in 2007, and by his third year he was playing against Texas for the National Championship. Alabama cruised to their first title under Saban behind a 6/11 for fifty eight (58!) yards from Greg McElroy. 6/11 is a Jimmy Garoppolo stat line, Julio Jones had one reception for twenty three yards AND WAS THE LEADING RECEIVER!
In the game of the century against LSU in 2011, A.J. Mcarron had just under two hundred passing yards, which is close to what he averaged for the whole season. Eighty of those yards went to running back Trent Richardson, who happened to be the leading receiver that game.
That’s how Nick Saban wanted to win, and that’s how Nick Saban won. He played mistake free offense and suffocated your offense to the point where you only had a handful of legitimate scoring opportunities throughout the game. To beat Nick Saban your offense had to execute perfectly every single chance they got. He left no margin for error in a sport that’s essentially designed to force errors.
While Saban was dominating college football, with Kirby Smart having a front row view on his staff, college football was undergoing an offensive revolution. Schools like Oregon, Baylor, Texas A&M, Hawaii, Texas Tech and others were tinkering with every mismatch and rule loophole they could to re-write efficiency records every year. Nick Saban had really no reason to change or adapt to anything, after all he was the one that was winning all the National Championships so it’d be logical to think that everyone should be adapting to him instead of the other way around.
To his credit though, and to me this is what makes Saban the greatest coach of all time, he did change and he did adapt to get better when he didn’t have to. Everybody wants to win, Nick Saban wants to be the best; which is what separates him from everyone else in college football.
In 2012, a season that Alabama won the National Championship, Nick Saban watched a young Johnny Manziel run around the back field and miraculously find receiver after receiver and upset Alabama. In 2014 he brought in Lane Kiffin as his offensive coordinator, who at the time was still trying to get back his shine after head coaching stints at Tennessee and USC. Kiffin was the first real modern/spread offensive coordinator to coach under Saban. In 2016 he had two pro-style quarterbacks on his roster that fit the McElroy/McCarron mold to a T (Cooper Bateman and Blake Barnett) but instead, he rolled out Jalen Hurts in the season opener and never looked back. Jalen Hurts was ultimately replaced by Tua Tagovailoa, who set the NCAA record for passing efficiency (199.4) and yards per attempt (10.9) among other NCAA records. At the time I was blown away at Tua’s passing efficiency record, and I (like an idiot) thought it was going to be one of those Cal Ripken Jr, John Stockton type of unbreakable records. It didn’t even last a year; Joe Burrow broke it the next year becoming the first quarterback to eclipse a 200 efficiency rating with 202. Mac Jones brought the record back home to Alabama in 2020 with a 203.4 efficiency rating, which re-wrote the record-book for the fourth year in a row (Tua broke Baker Mayfield’s record of 198.9 at Oklahoma). Crazy enough, Mac Jones’ record was broken by Grayson Mcall at Coastal Carolina who posted an unreal 207.6 rating in 2021, rewriting the record for a fifth consecutive year.
All of this is a long-winded way of saying that the offensive revolution in college football is far from over, and Nick Saban is right in the middle of it.
Bryce Young this year quarterback was probably the best quarterback that Saban has ever had. He was second in the country with 4,872 yards and 47 touchdowns (Bailey Zappe, Western Kentucky), and became the first Alabama quarterback to ever win the Heisman trophy.
Jalen Hurts was a second round pick (after transferring to Oklahoma) and helped the Philadelphia Eagles make the playoffs this season. Tua and Mac Jones were both first round picks, along with the four primary starting receivers they both had (Henry Ruggs, Jerry Jeudy, Jaylen Waddle, and Devonta Smith). Bryce Young will possibly (I think likely) be the number one overall pick in 2023, almost certainly a top five pick
Alabama is producing NFL talent at every offensive skill position; they’ve had a quarterback, running back, and wide receiver all win the Heisman within the last six years. Mark Ingram, Derrick Henry, and Devonta Smith are the only non-quarterbacks to win the Heisman since Reggie Bush. They’ve also won six national titles since 2007, the next closest schools are LSU and Clemson with just two.
Meanwhile, in Athens, they’ve had no quarterbacks drafted in the first round of the NFL draft since Matt Stafford, no player win the Heisman since Herschel Walker, and just won their first National Title since… also Herschel Walker.
Kirby Smart has been recruiting at an Alabama type level since he got to Athens, but it took him five tries to actually beat Saban. Georgia’s roster has been just as talented and they play in the less competitive SEC East (because they play Florida at a neutral site they essentially never have a must-win divisional road game). If Florida is at their A game then Georgia and Florida are two of the closest programs in the country, and one of the best and most important rivalry games in college football. Problem is Florida hasn’t been on their A game for a while, they haven’t been at their peak since Tebow left. Until Florida can figure it out, and I do think new head coach Billy Napier can do that, there shouldn’t be any reason Georgia isn’t playing for the SEC Championship and competing for a playoff spot every year.
The only tangible, on-field difference between Alabama and Georgia the last few years has simply been quarterback play, meaning which quarterbacks were actually on the field playing. Kirby Smart has recruited quarterbacks as talented as Tua and Bryce Young, he just hasn’t allowed them to see the field.
After five star quarterback Jacob Eason had a season ending injury in the first game of the 2017 season four star true freshman Jake Fromm took over for the rest of the year. Georgia went all the way to the National Championship, losing in overtime. Georgia could not have gotten closer to winning the title that year without actually winning it.
Fromm, a top fifty national recruit himself, played well all year and was obviously a good quarterback on a very good football team. Good players can have limitations, though, and Fromm’s are what ultimately held Georgia back.
Kirby Smart runs the same blueprint that Nick Saban ran in 2009: run the ball, stop the run, and don’t turn the ball over. That worked great for Georgia in 2021, great for Alabama in 2009, and great for Army in 1927. Just because something can work though doesn’t mean it’s the best way, or even the easiest way. That's why Nick Saban completely changed the way he ran his program, and why it’s so puzzling that Kirby Smart hasn’t followed suit.
In 2017 and 2018 with Fromm, Georgia was so good defensively that they were never trailing enough to have to chase games. Georgia’s offensive line was dominant enough that Nick Chubb, Sony Michel, and D’Andre Swift could do whatever they wanted and Jake Fromm was almost never playing behind the sticks.
In third and three situations Jake Fromm was awesome; in those down and distance situations you can run any play you want and linebackers have to respect their run responsibilities first, which opens up both sideline checkdowns and intermediate throws over the middle. If it’s third and eight, though, that’s a completely different ball game. In obvious passing situations (third and long) when the playbook is limited for the offense it allows the defense to pin their ears back and force Fromm to beat them with his arm and push the ball down the field.
Problem is pushing the ball down the field is simply something Fromm couldn’t do. In the overtime of the National Championship game Georgia got into a third and seven situation. Alabama simply rushed four and dropped everyone else, but because there was no run threat the edge rushers came in hot, and Fromm never had a chance. He got sacked, and Georgia knocked in a Field goal.
When Alabama got the ball they got themselves into an even worse situation. Tua took a sixteen yard sack, putting themselves in a second and twenty six on the forty-one yard line. If Fromm and Georgia had been in that situation it would have been game over. When teams take a loss on first down the philosophy is to try and get half of it back, so from second and twenty-six to third and thirteen to give yourselves a more manageable third down opportunity. There’s not a chance that Fromm can generate two explosive plays to convert a first down in that situation.
What does Tua do? He just throws a forty-one yard bomb to Devonta Smith to walk-off and win the National Championship.
If a few things go differently in that game then Fromm is a National Champion, it’s not fair to say that Georgia lost because of him. What is fair to say, though, is his inability to push the ball down the field consistently put Georgia in tougher positions, both in the title game and every game he started for Georgia.
You know who didn’t have limitations pushing the ball down the field? Justin Fields came into his freshman year as the third highest rated player in the history of the state of Georgia, and the highest rated player the University of Georgia has ever signed. His freshman year was 2018, the season following Georgia’s loss in the national championship game. Jacob Eason, the former five star who Fromm replaced after his knee injury in 2017 transferred shortly after the title game, so the 2018 off-season quarterback competition was just between Fromm and Fields. It wasn’t much of an open competition though, which was great for Fromm but bad for Georgia.
To Kirby Smart, Fromm had “led” them to a national championship game, and he hadn’t done anything to lose his job to the better, more talented Fields. In reality though, not being the best option should be the only requirement to lose your starting gig. If a stud linebacker comes into the program then he’s going to play, no matter who’s ahead of him. The receivers that create the most separation are the ones that see the field, doesn’t matter how long they’ve been on the team. With every other position coaches play the best player, but with quarterbacks for some reason if you’re not abjectly horrible you’re trenched in as the starter no matter what? In what world does that make any sense?
“But Jake, Georgia WON the National Championship WITH Stetson Bennett this year, what are you talking about?”
People assume if a team is good then a quarterback must be good. Rex Grossman went to a Super Bowl with the Bears, Jimmy Garoppolo played in a Super Bowl with the 49ers, Trent Dilfer even won a Super Bowl with the Ravens. Average quarterbacks can be on great, and even championship winning teams. But just being on a great team doesn’t make them a great quarterback.
Georgia’s defense this year was probably the best college defense of all time. So ya, if you have a historic level of elite defense then why not roll Stetson Bennett out there just for kicks. In Georgia’s first game against Alabama this year in the SEC Championship Alabama did everything they could to put everything on Stetson Bennett’s shoulders, and golley it didn’t look good. For the first three and a half quarters of the National Championship game Bennett looked even worse somehow. He was throwing the ball into the dirt, panicking at the smallest semblance of pressure, and handling the ball like it was a hot potato.
To his credit, he made a huge throw down the sideline that ended up locking up Georgia’s first National Championship since 1980. The path he took to get there though probably gave every Georgia fan life long anxiety.
Georgia was almost too good for their own good in 2021. They were only challenged twice all year, both times against Alabama. Every other game they played was a cakewalk, Bennett didn’t have to do anything. Bennett had twenty-one pass attempts against Auburn and twenty-nine against Tennessee, and those were his only regular season games with over twenty pass attempts. In the SEC Championship game against Alabama, Georgia’s only loss and a game where they looked pedestrian to say the least, Stetson Bennett had forty-eight (48!) pass attempts.
If having your quarterback throw the ball more than forty times makes your team look more like Georgia State than the University of Georgia, then you need to find a different quarterback. Bryce Young’s lowest number of pass attempts against a Power Five opponent was twenty-six against Ole Miss. He averaged over thirty-six attempts a game in 2021. For context, Greg McElroy averaged just over twenty-four attempts per game his senior year. Stetson Bennett only averaged thirteen (13!!!) this season, half of what GREG MCELROY averaged more than ten years ago, and a third of what Bryce Young averaged this season.
Georgia has quarterbacks who can put up thirty plus pass attempts a game, Smart just doesn’t play them. Imagine Justin Fields with that 2018 Georgia team. They wouldn’t have been a lock to win a national championship, but they certainly would have finished better than thirteenth in the country. Former five star and USC quarterback JT Daniels, who Bryce Young actually replaced at Mater Dei high school, isn’t perfect but certainly is a better passer than Stetson Bennett. Georgia also had former four star Carson Beck and former five star Brock Vandagriff on their roster who are all more talented passers than Bennett. You can say they're young and inexperienced, but Kirby Smart had no problem playing true freshman Jake Fromm in 2017.
Why recruit the best players if you refuse to play the best players?
Nick Saban could win anyway he wanted to, he could run the wish-bone if he wanted to and he would still probably be winning national titles, but what’s the point? Why not give yourself the best chance to win in every game, and the best chance to win the National Championship each season? Having a quarterback who can push the ball down the field, convert in obvious passing situations, and be the catalyst to your offense as opposed to simply a cog is the easiest, most consistent way to win football games. Nick Saban figured that out in 2012, Kirby Smart apparently hasn’t wrapped his head around that yet.
-By Jake Cowden
Photo: Kevin C. Cox/Getty