Kirby Smart isn't losing sleep over whether Georgia gets back into the College Football Playoff. He's losing sleep over what the Bulldogs do once they're in it. Speaking this week at SEC Media Days in Tampa, Smart laid out the blueprint for 2026: the roster is deep, the culture is set, and the quarterback is proven. What's missing is the explosive-play juice that turns good playoff teams into champions.
Pete Thamel relayed Smart's blunt framing of Georgia's playoff math heading into the season.
"We've got to find a way to, whether we win the SEC or not, to get into that playoff and play better and play bigger in bigger moments." Story on Georgia, which is well positioned again for a CFP bid. Can they find the offensive explosion? https://t.co/fXwbX9N25F
That quote cuts right to the heart of it. Georgia doesn't necessarily need to win the SEC to make the field again, it just needs to stop leaving points and possessions on the table once it gets to December and January. That's been the program's soft spot the last couple of postseasons: get in, control the clock, grind out first downs, but come up short when the game demands one explosive strike to change momentum.
Gunner Stockton is at the center of that conversation whether he wants to be or not. He's not exactly a hype-man for himself, quiet by nature, but Smart made clear that's not a knock. It's basically the whole point.
Brett McMurphy passed along Smart's assessment of what makes Stockton the right guy to lead this team, even if he's a man of few words.
Georgia's Kirby Smart on QB Gunner Stockton: "We can't get the guy to talk half the time. But he leads from the front. He takes hits, he embodies everything our program is about: toughness, culture & the love for his university."
Stockton enters the season with two playoff runs and two SEC title games already on his resume, plus a 7th-place Heisman finish last year after throwing 24 touchdowns and rushing for 10 more. Smart has compared this offense to an anaconda: control the ball, wear teams down, win time of possession by a wide margin around 33 minutes a game, best in the SEC. The problem is that Georgia's offense generated a play of 10-plus yards on just 19% of its snaps last season, fourth worst in the entire conference. Suffocating an opponent for 3 quarters only to stall in the red zone or need a 15-play drive to find the end zone isn't a formula that survives a playoff bracket full of teams that can strike fast.
Smart isn't pinning that issue solely on Stockton, either. He's pointed to the offensive design and the play-action passing game as areas that need to evolve to complement what Stockton already does well: extending plays, making defenses miss, and creating something out of nothing when the structure breaks down. If Georgia can marry that improvisational ability with a scheme that actually threatens defenses vertically, the whole equation changes.
None of this is new territory for Smart's program. Georgia has been a fixture in the Playoff picture, but the sport's expanded format and the brutal layoff between the regular season and the bracket have exposed exactly the gap Smart is now trying to close. Toughness and leadership got Stockton and this roster back to the doorstep. Whether Georgia finally breaks through in January comes down to whether the offense can start hunting explosive plays instead of just abundance of snaps.