Kirby is an elite coach. One of the best if not the best coach in NCAA. That is still true. What is also true is that this season amplified some problems that need to be corrected in the program. We cannot keep doing things the same way and expect to win championships.
1) Resource allocation for the roster. For all the players that were on the field last night, UGA only had ONE SINGLE top 150 recruit from rivals on offense. That was Nate Frazier. Why this has been an accepted practice for the offense but not for defense is beyond me. We were overmatched on the line of scrimmage, at receiver, at tight end. We cannot keep sticking out head in the sand and expect "player development" to be the solution for underrecruiting at offensive line and receiver. Time and money need to be shifted towards these areas. I think Coley is on the right track at receiver, Hartley goes without saying, but our offensive line played subpar all season. Which brings me to point two.
2) Kirby is going to have to have some uncomfortable conversations with his best friend. Drew Bobo was the ring bearer at his wedding. That makes this harder but still needs to be done. Mike Bobo can stay on staff. As a consultant. But that needs to be all. I haven't been a "fire Bobo" guy, but at no point this past season (other than Tennessee, which the fact that it's only one game makes my point) did I ever look back at what we did on offense and say that we had an advantage because of our OC. This also speaks to Kirby's one weakness as a hire-er. His OC appointments have been lacking to say the least. From Jim Chaney (meh), Coley (bad OC), Monken (homerun but the exception), and Bobo (mixed bag at best), he's only hit on one out of 4 OC hires. It's almost to the point of George Costanza where he needs to do the opposite of what his gut is telling him for whom to hire as the OC. The fact that we've had multiple people as DC go on to be head coaches but not a single OC tells you what the level of performance has been on the offensive side. If things stay the same, well, that's the definition of insanity. Same discussion needs to be had with Searls. The product on the field and the recruits is not good enough.
3) Spend baby spend. Whatever we are spending on NIL isn't enough. We just got outbid for Key going to Nebraska. We got outbid for Downs. David Sanders went to the Vols. There are more. Yes there are wins for us with NIL, and what Radi shared about us opening the checkbook for players to stay, I'm sure there is a lot of information about NIL spending that we don't know about but the truth is whatever it is isn't enough. Part of it has to do with what we do on offense. Players aren't going to want to come because of that. But it's also that we haven't spent there. We can all b*tch about how NIL is ruining the game (that's another thread) but until it changes we need to get better at playing the financial game.
We do not need to throw the baby out with the bath water. We're close. We won the SEC and even with a flawed team played the toughest schedule in the nation and were still the #2 seed for a reason. Kirby doesn't need to go anywhere. But there are things that we need to either tweak or change moving forward.
