Joel Klatt applauds Kirby Smart's 'ruthless' play during CFP National Championship game
Georgia solidified its place in college football lore by becoming the first back-to-back national champion of the College Football Playoff era.
The Bulldogs 65-7 win over the TCU Horned Frogs lacked drama after the first 10 minutes and by the second half it was just a question of how long Kirby Smart would keep his starters in and how many points would they pile up.
This included the Bulldogs going for a fourth down in the second half and keeping many starters on the field as they broke the 50-point barrier.
Fox Sports College Football analyst Joel Klatt described the play as “ruthless”, but he applauded Kirby Smart for keeping up the pressure.
"This is why Georgia is now running college football." ??@joelklatt believes @GeorgiaFootball is the TOP DOG of CFB ⬇️pic.twitter.com/iGJjOJcmjp
— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) January 10, 2023
“Part of me was like ‘is this necessary? do you really need to do this?’,” Klatt said. “And then you know what, it’s a game, so you got to go out there and play the game.
“Kirby is under no obligation to call the dogs off, no pun intended. I think Sonny Dykes would probably agree with me on that.”
Klatt also acknowledged that Georgia had backups in the game when they went for the fourth down. And the fact is the backups want to play hard as well.
“[Georgia’s] got backups in on offense when they go for it on fourth down. So it’s like listen, if you can’t stop our backups, that’s not my problem.”
Did you have a problem with the Bulldogs continues to play with a sense of urgency despite the blowout nature of the game?
I’d like to hear what ol’ Erik Ainge has to say… Stenquavious shuttin’ folks up since 2021…
I was actually hoping Beck would get a chance to throw a TD and get that momentum rolling.
TCU had their starters in when Kirby initially pulled the offensive starters…..and they still couldn’t stop them. If your 1’s and 2’s can’t stop the 3’s and 4’s you don’t belong.
I do think TCU deserve to be there, but I also didn’t like that it seemed like they gave up.
Kirby said the plan was play aggressive. Seems like he didn’t overthink it. He realized that despite the talk, UGA outmatched TCU in every matchup. The way to win was to own that and play hard so you don’t outsmart yourself thinking there’s got to be more to it. He’d also learned not to let up and give the other team a chance when you’ve got the edge. That was arguably the last lesson Saban taught him.
Taking Bennett out was Smart extending an olive branch and Dykes chose to ignore it and kept his starters in and kept trying to score. So absolutely Smart should have gone for it on 4th down. If TCU is going to keep trying to score, then so should we.
I had not one problem with it. TCU had been a strong 2nd half team, and keeping the first string in through the 3rd quarter was completely understandable. TCU failing to stop Georgia’s 2nd string is also not Georgia’s problem.
I thought Kirby handled it with class.
Georgia could have scored over 100. They had the second team inn all the 4th quarter
TCU going for it, at about their own thirty on fourth down, when the game was salted, is all I need to know.
I think Kirby’s response was justifiably reciprocal.
You wanna play that way?
So can we.