Kirby needs to get smart and find Georgia’s version of Joe Brady

If the 2019 SEC Championship taught us anything, it is the Georgia Bulldogs need to hire their own version of Joe Brady to transform their passing game.

Georgia really could use an innovative offensive coach like LSU’s Joe Brady.

We thought it was going to be a close game. Sure, the LSU Tigers were a touchdown favorite on a neutral-site vs. the Georgia Bulldogs, but what we got instead was an LSU blowout victory. In one of the greatest games of his college career, LSU quarterback Joe Burrow carved up the Georgia secondary by completing 28-of-38 passes for 349 yards and four touchdowns.

Once the Heisman Trophy frontrunner got rolling, there was no hope for Jake Fromm and the Georgia offense to keep pace with the vaunted aerial attack of the Bayou Bengals. LSU embarrassed Georgia to the tune of 37-10 to win the SEC Championship and presumably earn the No. 1 seed in the 2020 College Football Playoff. Georgia will have to settle for the Allstate Sugar Bowl yet again.

Yes, Georgia was able to win the SEC East for the third year in a row by having the second-best scoring defense in the country through 12 games. It’s a testament to the job that Kirby Smart has done as Georgia’s defensive-minded head coach. That being said, his defense has no answer for Burrow and the LSU offense marvelously orchestrated by Brady, a finalist for the Broyles Award, given to the nation’s top assistant coach.

Simply put, if Smart wants to get back to the College Football Playoff and maybe even win the damn thing, he needs to get smart and hire his own Georgia version of Brady. This time last year, Brady was on Sean Payton’s New Orleans Saints staff as a lowly assistant. In his early 30s, Brady has transformed a once-moribund LSU passing game into the most exciting in college football.

We know that Smart can coach defense, make halftime adjustments and above all else, recruit. However, those are three things that Nick Saban has done for a decade at Alabama and what Ed Orgeron is doing in the last few years at LSU. Both Saban and Orgeron are like Smart in that they are defensive-minded head coaches, but had the awareness to rectify a major blind spot.

Saban had brought in Lane Kiffin as his offensive coordinator in 2014 and they had great success together for three years. Since Kiffin left for Florida Atlantic, Saban has had quality offensive minds like Brian Daboll, Mike Locksley and Steve Sarkisian serve as his offensive coordinator.

Smart let his former offensive coordinator Jim Chaney leave for rival Tennessee this past offseason. He promoted from within James Coley and while many people thought Georgia could offset this loss of coordinator, the Dawgs’ inability to move the sticks was a yearlong problem. Coley’s play-calling was predictable and his offense never seemed to bring the best out of Fromm.

So if Smart were to move off Coley, who should he look to replace him? One of his former college teammates is now looking for a new job. Former Georgia quarterback and offensive coordinator Mike Bobo is no longer the head coach of the Colorado State Rams. A polarizing coordinator previously at Georgia, Bobo’s return could work just as well as it might be reaching in the past.

Georgia will likely look at Bobo, not just because he’s family and was good as an offensive coordinator, but SEC East rival South Carolina might look to hire him as their new offensive coordinator. Bobo, Smart and South Carolina head coach Will Muschamp were all in Athens around the same time.

Should Smart want to upgrade from Coley beyond Bobo, he may want to see if Georgia is willing to get into a bidding war with Texas for USC offensive coordinator Graham Harrell, the former NFL and Texas Tech Red Raiders starting quarterback. A disciple of the Air Raid may not work in the SEC as well as it does on the West Coast, but Georgia has to do something different offensively.

Outside of Harrell, the Dawgs might want to look for a strong offensive mind from the NFL game whose coaching staff might get the ax at the end of the year. Kellen Moore of the Dallas Cowboys, John DeFilippo of the Jacksonville Jaguars and Scott Turner of the Carolina Panthers fit that mold. Daboll might be from the Saban coaching tree, but he’s having too much fun with the Buffalo Bills.

Overall, this latest loss of Georgia’s was certainly revealing. We saw Fromm regress all season long to the point where he’s definitely coming back for his senior year in Athens. The running game was not as dominant as we’re used to with Georgia football. Most importantly, LSU proved to us once and for all Georgia cannot continue to win with defense alone. Georgia must act accordingly.

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