ATHENS — Georgia coach Kirby Smart was back in front of the podium on Tuesday, as he answered a number of questions regarding the 2025 Georgia football team.
Smart clarified that Colbie Young is back with the team, as well as noting which players will miss the spring due to injury.
Below is a full transcript of Smart’s remarks. Tuesday will be the first of 15 spring practices for Georgia football, with the last being G-Day on April 12.
What Kirby Smart said Georgia QB battle, newcomers and G-Day as Bulldogs begin spring practice
Opening statement...
“Welcome back guys. I’ve got to go over probably in a little bit of time. I know you guys probably want to ask a bunch of questions, so I want to try to get all the information I can.”
“We’re getting ready to start spring practice today. I’m excited. This group has worked really hard since the end of the year last year. We’ve had a bunch of time to spend together as coaches, our staff, skull sessions have started. We’ve got a lot of new players. It feels like more new players than ever before, which I think I say that every year. The numbers don’t say that it’s more new guys, but it certainly feels like that. We’re averaging about 33 percent new per year, which you’d like for that number back in the old days to be 20-25 percent new every year. It’s turning over more and quicker, which we have less turnover than most places. We pride ourselves on retention, stability. The foundation of this program is built through high school programs and bringing good kids into the program that can become good football players.”
“As we do every year, I’m going to try to make as many announcements as we can quickly. Colbie’s with us. Colbie’s going to be practicing with us. He’s cleared, so he’s practicing. He’s been working out with us.”
“Guys that are out for spring, I think we have nine total guys, which looking, I do a year-to-year average. I think 2024 we had 12 out, 2023 we had 8 out, 2022 we had 14 out. This year we’re down about 8 or 9 depending on how you classify a couple guys. We’ve got five shoulder surgeries that happened at the end of the year. Those are all rehabbing right now. They’re in really good progression in terms of getting back: Monroe, Gabe, Colton, Christen Miller and Jaylan Morgan all had labrum repairs, which is very common. I had it when I played here. That’s five of those -- we’ve averaged 5-6 every spring. Then we’ve got Ryan Montgomery whose had the ACL repair, Branson who had the PCL repair, Rod Robinson who had the ankle repair, and then Thorson who you know had the ACL-MCL repair. Those are all guys that are working through things. They may be available for maybe some things, like walkthrough type things, but not in practice spring. Limited, Joseph Jonah-Ajonye is coming off the foot navicular surgery he had. He looks great. He’s working out running. He’ll be limited to start spring and try to get to work his way back. That’s kinda where we are from a medical standpoint. We do have some soft tissue injuries coming out of the offseason, but nothing substantial there. I’m excited about where we are in terms of guys being able to be out there because we’ve got a lot of healthy guys that can get reps.”navicular
“I’m excited about where we are for the spring and looking forward to getting out there to seeing our guys. You guys will have a lot of questions, I’m sure, about new guys. I don’t know because I haven’t gotten a chance to really see them. I can tell you what they look like in shorts and running around at workouts, but we haven’t done a lot of football work until we start up today, so that’s what we’ll be doing today. With that, I’ll open it up for questions.”
On areas of improvement year-over-year...
“Yeah. I mean, you do it every year regardless of the year. I’m sure the outside world thinks if you win every game or win a national championship or you lose every game that the sky’s falling or everything’s hunky dory. For us, it’s always an approach of how do we get better? How do we improve? The first way is through recruiting, through the transfer portal, through talent acquisition. The next is through looking at other things other people do. Special teams was a big emphasis for us. We spent a week on that with quality control. We spent each side of the ball had two full weeks in. Then the week before spring break. We got really three weeks, 15 days, on each side of the ball, to look introspective and out to see what we can do to be better everywhere. 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. We do a very, very intensive study of, not only ourselves, but other people. When you go back and watch everything you watch, you take into account, who are you playing against? What is the caliber of the opponent you’re up against? What did we do well? What did we do poorly? What do we have to do better? There’s just a lot there, and I could sit up here for days and talk about that.”
On Noah Thomas/Zachariah Branch additions...
“Yeah, I’m excited about both those guys. Both really good players. Both have been successful in their organizations where they’ve been. They’re both talented pass-catchers, which seems to be the largest turnover position there is, outside of quarterback where there’s only one. That’s the one that has the most transfer at its position. Receiver is probably next. Both those guys are high-caliber athletes, but they’re high-caliber people. I’ve enjoyed working with them. The Branch brothers have been a great injection into our offseason energy and workouts. They love working out. Their father trains guys, so they love training. The culture and work ethic that it requires to be successful here, they jumped right in and done a great job. Noah has too. He’s played in the SEC. He’s been successful. We’ve still gotta go out and do it on the field, but I’m excited about who they are.”
On the criticisms of his assistants, specifically Mike Bobo and Stacy Searels...
“To be honest with you, I don’t get into it much. I worked in a place for 10 years before I came here, and this is my 10th spring, so that’s 20 years that I don’t really pay much attention to anything outside. I’ve got a lot of confidence in this organization, the foundation we’ve built. I’ve got the best staff in the country, and I have no doubt about that. I’ve got one of the most experienced SEC staffs there is, and to be honest with you, there’s a lot of confidence in that, and I have a lot of confidence in it.”
On Gunner Stockton since the Sugar Bowl...
“He’s a tremendous leader, but that’s nothing I didn’t already know. I would be remiss if I said he’s done this or that. He’s done everything right since he’s been here. That’s really what he embodies. He’s a tough kid that loves football, that loves his teammates. You’re not going to get a lot of rah-rah out of Gunner. He doesn’t feel like that’s his role. He earns people’s respect by how he works and he carries himself. He’s got a tremendous amount of confidence in his ability. He’s got a lot of knowledge of our system. I think that kinda resonates with the other players. They kinda rally around Gunner because they’ve got a lot of respect for him.”
On bringing back all 10 on-field assistants...
“Well, I could be sitting here before you last year on this exact day and had four new coaches, and there’s a lot of positive about that. There’s a lot of positive about having everybody back. I think we built our program around retention. I think we’ve got the most stable, not only staff, but stable organization in all of college football.
I think that’s what we’ve hung our hat on. We have stability. We have retention. We have a great foundation. We’re built to last. We don’t have to worry about year-in, year-out, tons of change. I think this league will chew you up and spit you out. This league is brutal when you look across, and I’m sitting in an SEC head coaches meeting, and Stoops and I are the most tenured guys. There’s a lot of guys that are in their first 3-4 years. You look at their staffs, and there’s a tremendous amounts of turnover, and then you look at their rosters and there’s even more turnover. So, who does the best job retaining their players and coaches? I take a lot of pride in that, and I think that’s one of our weapons."
On offensive line heading into spring...
“It’s going to be interesting because there were a lot of snaps there that were lost. A lot of that have started games and have played, which that’ll be evident tomorrow in the Pro Day. I think we’ve got a chance to get four guys drafted, which is unusual that you’d have four draft picks on the offensive line, meaning four guys leaving. That’s hard to replace. We’ve kinda had this coming for a while, so it’s been an anticipation of how we can create depth in our signing classes. We’ve got a lot of young offensive linemen in our signing classes who haven’t played who need to grow up and play.
“To be honest with you, it’s a problem across the NFL, where they don’t have enough offensive linemen. I know nobody in the country right now in college football is saying we’ve got enough linemen. We’re good. There’s not enough quality offensive linemen out there, and you’re trying to build quality depth across the board at the position. What helps with that? Mid-years. Sometimes transfers, but offensive line aren’t your most transfer portal type player position. Not a lot of people get success through doing that. We’ve found success through developing guys. This group that’s about to take the field or get their opportunity, a lot of them have been on that scout team for two years. They’re not where they need to be, but we’re going to push them and do the best combination to get 8-10 guys that can play winning football for us, which is our goal every year.”
On balancing dominance with schedule difficulties...
“I think you hit it dead on. The mature view of this, the 10,000-feet view of this is we’re in a different climate than we were previously. We’re in a different scheduling model than we were previously. The addition of Clemson on top of people in our league, on top of the schedule that we had, I don’t make any excuses about it. It’s going to be really hard. I mean, we repeat that schedule next year with the exception of the Clemson out-of-conference game. It’s not going to get any easier. The norm is it’s going to be challenging for everybody. The 2-3-4-5 autonomy 5 power conference, you’re going to play better and more competition, which is going to make things more challenging. I don’t run or shy from that. I think that is very true that -- now, there may be an outlier. There may be a team out there that has the right mix and does it exactly right. But you’re going to see teams, we thought going into last year, that we would have to deal with more adversity, more failures. How we dealt with them would indicate our year. I was very pleased with how we responded to losses to keep ourselves afloat and to win the SEC Championship. That’s not going to change for the years to come.”
On Daylen Everette’s status this spring...
“He’s limited. Daylen will be limited for the spring. He’s not out, but he’s out there working out now, doing things coming back from a sports hernia. Prognosis is great. He’s doing things, limited. He’s moving around. He’s being a great leader, all the things we expected.”
On bringing in safeties from the portal...
“We had Dan and Malaki leaving with a tremendous amount of snaps there with those guys going out. We needed to make sure we’ve got depth at the secondary and growth. We’ve signed some good young ones who are here now. They’re working with us. Some of us were with us in December. Then we were able to get the two guys out of the portal that we think are going to help us, as well.”
On Andrew Thacker role change...
“His role’s changed. He’s taking on a position. He’s going to be working almost primarily with the secondary, specifically the Stars. He’ll be with those guys, the nickels. Those guys are kinda a quasi-position now. They’re half outside linebacker, half linebacker, half DB, a little bit safeties. They’re special teams players. He’ll take on a role with those guys and spend time with them.”
On Will Muschamp’s role this spring and going forward...
“We’re probably going to decide that at a later time.”
On competition at QB and how NIL has changed roster management roles...
“Not specifically. We’ve got a lot of people in charge of roster management, including myself, including our football ops staff is involved. Our operations/player development/player personnel staff, everybody gets involved in that. It’s a team effort. We’ve reorganized and restructured some things in terms of what falls under whose duty and whose aspect, but at the end of the day, I’m not ready to run off and hire somebody who makes all the decision for what goes on on the football field. I think I’ve gotta stay involved in that heavily. We’ve got the capacity and the quality of people in the areas that I think we need. I think we’ll be fine in that world as it changes.”
“As far as quarterback, it’s just like every position guys. Every day, you’re competing and fighting and doing the best you can to compete with every guy. You think it’s redundant or coach-speak, but there really isn’t a depth chart. It’s just reps. In the spring, we’re giving reps out. We’re giving four reps with four groups at some positions, and we want to see all of those guys compete and get better.”
On Pro Day...
“I’m not going to be at Pro Day tomorrow to be able to do the media, so I wanted to be able to give you guys an opportunity if you wanted to. I’m going to be here tomorrow for most of the day, but I’m going to have to leave at some point, so I won’t be out there for the Pro Day, during it. If there’s any questions you guys have or the Pro Day or those guys, feel free to ask. I’m really concerned with my guys, not concerned with the Pro Day, but the Pro Day is certainly important to a group of players who have been tremendous for Georgia. We all have talked about all the accolades they have and the winningest record in the history of the school. They’ve done a lot of good things, and I know a lot of them will do well tomorrow, but I’m not going to be out there the whole time for that.”
On the future of spring games...
“First of all, I think there’s a lot, everybody wants to talk about that and make it about the portal, make it about this decision to have spring games based on the fluidity of players. I don’t know that that’s every coach’s reason. There’s a lot of coaches that didn’t like the spring game before the portal ever came about. Everybody has different approaches. My approach has been, I like to have spring football games. Every year, we make that decision based on where we are. We haven’t even practiced yet, so it would be remiss if I said 100 percent, I’m dead-set, we’re having a spring game. I leave every option open. That’s my 15th practice. So we can do what we want to do.
We’re planning to have a spring game. I’ve talked with Josh Brooks several times about it. We’ve had conversation, but that doesn’t mean that can’t change. Last year, I think Kentucky didn’t have any defensive linemen healthy. They weren’t able to have a spring game. We don’t know. I can’t forecast the future to know exactly what’s going to happen 15 days from now. I do know we have to get better, and we’ve gotta practice football, so when that happens, as it goes, we spread ours out over more time than most people. We have five weeks and three practices a week, so we want to try to get recovery and stay healthy so we can have really good practices.
I like spring games. I want to have a spring game because it allows kids to play that don’t typically get to play. You sometimes allow fans to enjoy an experience in Athens that they normally wouldn’t get, but I’m not ready to say that it’s 100 percent."
On Malaki Starks' versatility and Mykel Williams playing through injury...
“Yeah, Malaki is a very, I guess, futuristic safety. I mean, he can play nickel, he can play man to man. More and more the safety is not what the safety was. The safety has evolved in the NFL because they’re in open sets, they’re playing more middle field coverage. He has to be able to play man to man, he has to be able to cover people, match up on tight ends as they bring more and more tight ends to the league. Like, he fits what teams wanna do, so he has a lot of value in the National Football League in terms of matchup and cover. Because every game comes down to matchups in their league, so everybody’s asked about that, and more teams are intrigued at his versatility.
As far as Mykel, he was a warrior this whole year. He was dead set: he wanted to play in the Alabama game and pushed so hard to come back. And he wasn’t 100% then, and there was a lot of games he only played a few snaps in because he wasn’t 100%. If you go back to the Auburn game, he was jumping and tearing at the bit to get in those games.
And I think when those teams look and they see how you create value for yourself, there’s more of a time in the National Football League where people have to play at 80% and 90% health because they don’t have another option. And their 80% and 90% is better than the guy that could get off the streets at 100%. So they want kids that have toughness and can play, and I think Mykel battled through that all year. And it was really tough on him because he had one of the best fall camps that I’ve ever seen. And the good news is all those scouts saw that too. I think that’ll pop up where he gets drafted at because for a guy that’s going to get drafted really high, he wasn’t 100% all year. But they respect the fact that he pushed through and competed."
On what he hopes to learn about this team this spring...
“Yeah, I want to see the fire. I want to see the passion, the energy. I want to see who wants to be a good football player, who really cares about this game. They care more about the game than they do about their NIL revenue stream. Like, if you really, really, really care about the game and you want to be good, it doesn’t matter about any kind of money. It matters how I play the game. And more and more we’re seeing across college football, the purists — the ones that care about the game the most — play the hardest. And usually the team that plays hardest wins. I know everybody thinks it’s just whoever’s more talented, but there’s a whole lot to how hard you play and how much you care about it.
So my goal is to find out how hard do you want to play? How much do you really want to be great? Because if you do it’ll show by how you practice."
On Dan Jackson and Chaz Chambliss not getting NFL Combine invites...
“Yeah, no, I can’t really speak on that. I can only defend my players and the character that those two have. They’re tremendous football players and even better people. Do I think they were deserving? Absolutely. But do I know what goes into it to sit here and be critical of an organization that runs one of the biggest businesses in all the world? One of the most successful businesses in all the world? They have a limited number of spots. They have to base that on some criteria, and I’m sure they have a rhyme or reason for what they do in terms of getting looks at people.
They also get lots of looks at our guys because they’re open to come here every single day. They get a lot of opportunities to see our guys. They got to see Dan at the Senior Bowl. They got to see Chaz at the other bowl, which he got injured at. So I don’t know what all goes into that. I’m not here to be critical of some people who make those decisions. I think they know what they’re doing when they make them. But I can certainly tell you those two players are going to make somebody’s team a lot better in the National Football League."
