ATHENS — Kirby Smart was blunt when asked what he had been up to since the end of Georgia’s 2025 season.

“Utter [expletive] chaos,” Smart said in an interview with Jeff Dantzler of Glory, Glory. “It’s been wild, to say the least. So the portal’s going on when the season ended, and probably the hardest part is managing our roster. We took days, weeks to get that fixed.  So since the game, we had a goal of, you know, keeping the players on our roster that we could, and we went through agents, players, parents, meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting to try to retain our roster, which I think we won that battle.”

Georgia had just 12 players depart the program via the transfer portal. The Bulldogs also made some additions, bringing in nine new players from the transfer portal.

Smart shared his thoughts on some of the more marquee additions the Bulldogs made.

The Georgia coach hasn’t been able to spend much time with his team to this point given all that had to be settled. But he gave a strong early review of defensive end Amaris Williams.

“We’ve got Amaris Williams, a kid coming from Auburn who’s a really violent rusher, twitchy,” Smart said. “We had problems blocking. We’re excited as hell about what he can do because one of the things we got to improve is pass rush. Gabe Harris is going to do that. He’s going to do that. Getting Q (Quintavius Johnson) back is going to do that. So we were able to put some pieces together.”

Williams will have two years of eligibility remaining at Georgia after spending the previous two years at Auburn. He is viewed as the biggest addition on the defensive side of the ball.

On the offensive side, Smart spoke highly of Georgia Tech transfer Isiah Canion. He’s expected to help the wide receiver room, which must replace Zachariah Branch, Colbie Young, Dillon Bell and Noah Thomas.

“We got a receiver [Isiah Canion] that we probably should have gotten out of high school,” Smart said. “We didn’t. He went to a rival school and he got better. He got developed. We think he’s really talented. We’re excited as hell about Canion, and he’s going to be a good player. Like, we know him. He’s got two players on our team that played with him in high school.” 

“So we don’t go after necessarily the flashiest, biggest guy. We go after the guy that fits — the guy that is a fit for us.”

Canion caught 33 passes for 480 yards and 4 touchdowns last season.

Georgia made four additions in the secondary, adding Gentry Williams from Oklahoma, Braylon Conley from USC, Ja’Marley Riddle from ECU and Khalil Barnes from Clemson.

Riddle and Barnes played their high school football in Georgia, while defensive backs Donte Williams coach knew Gentry Williams and Conley well from recruiting. That helped give Georgia an edge in terms of understanding what they have in their transfer additions.

“We had already done our research on them. We’d already been in their high school,” Smart said. “We had recruited them. Donte knew Gentry really well. He was really close to his family. He knew things about him. 

“So we’re not the blind leading the blind. We don’t know what the hell’s going on sometimes. We knew these kids, we felt good about them, and they fit our culture. And we’re trying to keep a culture right, wrong, or indifferent. You can debate it. We’re trying to keep our culture first and win with that culture.”

Georgia didn’t build the biggest or most expensive transfer portal class. That is by design, with Smart very much wanting to lean on high school recruiting.

He wants to build a team that is close-knit and grows together. He believes Georgia has done that once again.

“We reiterated to them that we wanted them here because I think a lot of the portal is kids get enamored with what’s out there, and they constantly look at their phones,” Smart said. “They go down their feeds, and all they see is other people jumping ship to go other places. The whole grass is greener. Is the grass greener or not? We think the grass is pretty damn green where we are.