Football has officially arrived as Kirby Smart addressed the media today at his first press conference to start fall camp.
As you can imagine, not only was he was asked about playing time, but also whether or not recruits are concerned about getting playing time when arriving on campus to find an already stacked roster.
“I don’t know if that’s true or not,” Smart said. “I think that’s a media perception, and obviously I think maybe other schools would use that and say that. But I mean, do you see what’s going on in basketball right now? Do you see guys that value a championship over maybe playing as much? They put the other stuff aside. To me if you recruit the right kind of kid, he’s saying, can you win a championship? I want to win a championship. It’s really important that I win a championship. Those are the kind of kids you want in your organization. You want guys who want to win championships.”
The new #1 recruiting class set a new standard for Georgia football and will put added pressure on current starters to hold their positions. However, freshmen do not often get an opportunity to play, and this can be concerning for a guy who has always played throughout his career.
At Georgia stakes are high and the quickest avenue to playing time will be hard to come by but is realistically obtainable for this absurdly talented class.
“You want guys who want to be the best they can be,” Smart said. “Does that necessarily mean they play every snap as a freshman? Not necessarily. And a lot of the accolades that have been given to this signing class, they weren’t earned, they were given. They were given by people that may or may not be able to rate players. I don’t know. I certainly think that that’s a judgment call on each and of itself. What we’ve driven home to those guys is everything you get here, you will have to earn. You will have to go out there and earn it, and you say, where can this class impact you.”
Special teams will be the first shot for these young players get a chance to grind it out on the field and give the coaches something to evaluation points. Smart mentioned this when talking about how a lot of great players he coached in the past earned their starting roles by doing the dirty work first.
“We watched a tape last night of Reuben Foster hitting Leonard Fournette his freshman year, Trent Richardson making a tackle of kickoff his freshman year, Sony Michel making a tackle against Clemson his freshman year, and there was two common themes to every guy we showed: All four went in the first round, none started their freshman year, and all of them were on special teams.”