ATHENS — Georgia football coach Kirby Smart said he doesn’t want new offensive coordinator James Coley to “recreate the wheel.”
But Smart opened the door for some changes on Tuesday, explaining how Coley’s philosophy has impressed him.
“Look, we’ve been really successful at running the ball, that’s who we are at Georgia, we’re not going to go recreate the wheel and say, ‘okay, now we’re going to open and be an empty spread team every down and go high tempo,’ “ Smart said.
But at the same time, Smart said, Coley said being a balanced team doesn’t necessarily mean a 50-50 ratio of run to pass plays.
“You do what makes you successful, and (Coley) had a meeting with the offense yesterday, which I sat in, and he talked about balance,” Smart said. “What is balance? People think balance means 50-50. Balance is not 50-50. Balance is being able to run the ball when you have to run the ball and being able to throw the ball when you have to throw the ball. So can you do both? Yes, you can be successful at both.
“That might be 70-30 one game and then 30-70 the other way the next game. So I think we’re going to be successful at that because I think that’s going to be based on having good players.”
Indeed, Smart said, Georgia will continue to build its offensive tendencies around its talent.
“I don’t think that we’re going to say, ‘okay, we’re throwing out everything we’ve done; we’re starting over,’ “ Smart said. “We’ve really had one coaching change on the offensive side of the ball, and every year when you go reinvent yourself, you say, okay, who are my best players, how are we going to get them the ball what are our strengths, what are our weaknesses, what are the things we’ve gotta really work on? And we’ve done that for almost two months now, because our signing class was pretty much done in January.
“We’ve been working on us and saying, okay, what can we do better, and I think James brings a lot of that to the table.”
