Kirby Smart has a line coaches are going to love that he keeps coming back to, and he reached for it again Saturday after No. 3 Georgia buried Tennessee State (FCS) 63-3 at Sanford Stadium.
Asked about the return of one of his defensive players that brings a veteran presence to that side of the ball, he shared that line again when talking about how important pursuing the football is.
"Effort counts twice," Smart said. "If you have talent, that's great, but effort counts twice."
Coming from a guy who has stockpiled more talent than just about any coach currently in the sport, that carries significant weight. Georgia scored 28 in the first quarter, led 35-3 at the half, and outgained the Tigers 660 to 109. Gunner Stockton went 15 of 16 for 202 yards and three scores before Smart started emptying the bench. Nate Frazier ripped off a 48-yard touchdown on the third play of the game and finished with three of them on four carries. Seven different Bulldogs found the end zone.
The defense set the tone early, holding Tennessee State to zero yards in the opening quarter. Georgia finished with seven tackles for loss and three sacks, and freshman linebacker PJ Dean logged 1.5 of them in his college debut.
The message traces its way back to recruiting. Smart is in his 11th season in Athens, and through his first 11 signing classes he has inked 47 five-star prospects, a number that nearly matches Alabama's 49 over the same stretch, the most in the country. Nine of his 21 first-round NFL picks were five-star signees. He has won two national titles, in 2021 and 2022, and four SEC championships, the latest a 28-7 handling of Alabama last December.
Georgia's 2026 class landed sixth nationally in the 247Sports Composite. That's a ranking celebrated nearly everywhere else, but for Smart at UGA, it's tied with his first class for the lowest ranking of his tenure. In fact, it's the first class under Smart in Athens without multiple five-stars. Five-star tackle Ekene Ogboko, the No. 36 overall prospect, headlined a group that still brought in 23 four-stars and 23 blue-chippers, a blue-chip haul only Notre Dame and Texas A&M topped. Smart lost five-star quarterback Jared Curtis to a Vanderbilt flip and missed on five-star linebacker Tyler Atkinson, and either one would have pushed the class near the top of the board nationally.
For a program that reloads instead of rebuilds, a sixth-ranked class is still elite. It's a sign that the recruiting math is tightening across the board, and even Georgia isn't immune to the portal-and-NIL churn reshaping how modern rosters get built.
Smart sounded more interested in the young reps than the scoreboard. "The hardest job we have is promising those families and kids that we're not going to sit your kid on the shelf and not let him grow," he would go on to add.
Georgia is coming off a 12-2 season that ended with a 39-34 loss to Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl quarterfinal, one game short of the semifinals. The Bulldogs host Western Kentucky next Saturday at 12:45 p.m. on SECN+.
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