Kirby Smart is more creative than people give him credit for. His latest hire proves it.
Stroke of genius or bewildering hire?
Time will tell how Kirby Smart’s decision to hire Scott Cochran from Alabama to fill two roles that he has never served will play out. Prying the most iconic strength and conditioning coach away from college football’s premier program and coach was a coup.
Whether Cochran can channel his legendary motivating techniques — that booming, gravelly voice and restless energy — to covering returning kickoffs and punt protection or sitting in the homes of four-star prospects and cultivating relationships remains to be seen.
Not to sound simplistic, but it’s not as though Cochran was hired as passing game coordinator. Special teams are 99% desire and discipline. The special teams coordinator’s job is to find the best players who will give maximum effort to do unglamourous work and do it exactly right every time.
To be clear, there are a lot of nuances to special teams. But there are only so many ways to line up for and execute field goal attempts.
Maybe that’s why Cochran is perfectly suited to fill that role. Motivation and discipline. Add the word energy and you have the perfect description of Cochran, the only strength and conditioning coach ever featured on CBS’s “60 Minutes Sports.”
Even so, his hiring was not without risk. The first time Georgia has a critical special teams breakdown — a punt blocked or kickoff return for a touchdown — there will be critics who will second-guess Smart’s decision. Not that he cares. Smart’s staff moves this offseason have proved that he is willing to think outside the box rather than acquiesce to public opinion.
The moves also serve as a message to the rest of the staff: Be comfortable being uncomfortable. That’s a message that Smart has drilled into his players’ head since arriving at Georgia four years ago. Embrace the loftiest of expectations. Pursue perfection.
And now, Smart has issued that same challenge to his coaching staff. He has gone out of his way to publicly support his coaches, especially last season when former offensive coordinator James Coley took a disproportionate amount of blame for an inconsistent offense.
But Smart’s actions since the end of last season have sent notice to everyone in football operations, from the coordinators to the grad assistants breaking down tape for the staff to review.
Produce results, or find work elsewhere.
That standard may seem unreasonable. But it’s hardly unfair, because that expectation of perfection begins with Smart himself. He was hired for one simple reason — to win a national championship.
While the Bulldogs came up one defensive stop short of winning it all in the 2017 season, the trend since then has been undeniably downward. OK, it’s been only two seasons. Still, the direction is troublesome, especially as Florida has trended up. That near-miss in 2017 was followed by the close loss to Alabama in the SEC Championship Game in 2018. Then there was the embarrassing home loss to South Carolina and a blowout loss to LSU in the SEC title game last year.
Never mind that most schools would take that. That’s not why Smart was hired.
The staff and roster changes that Smart has made prove that he is far more calculating, creative and demanding than some may think. If he was going to replace Coley, the simple and popular move would have been to hire his old friend and Georgia teammate Mike Bobo as offensive coordinator. Certainly bringing Bobo back would have been a recruiting boost. He knows the state as well as anyone in the profession.
But there’s a problem with that. Bobo’s strength is a deep understanding of the running game and power football. If the goal was to modernize the offense and make it more explosive, Bobo didn’t fit the job description. Todd Monken did. Eight years of NFL experience and a reputation for pushing the ball down field.
How all of these decisions play out could determine Smart’s legacy as a head coach. But for a man labeled by many as too conservative and uncreative, these hires prove that Smart is anything but that.