During his seven seasons at Georgia, Kirby Smart has talked often about the importance of having “player-led teams.”

As the top-ranked Bulldogs (12-0) make final preparations for Saturday’s SEC Championship (4 p.m., CBS), this year has proven to be no exception.

“Good teams are going to be player-led. I don’t know a good team that’s not player-led,” Smart said during Thursday’s Zoom Webinar to preview the game. “There’s probably some bad teams that wish they had better leaders; but the good teams that I’ve been a part of, they’ve all been player-led.”

It starts with quarterback Stetson Bennett, but others have led as well, including center Sedrick Van-Pran Grainger, right tackle Warren McClendon, and wide receiver Kearis Jackson.

On defense, injured linebacker Nolan Smith, safety Christopher Smith and, perhaps surprisingly, sophomore linebacker Jamon Dumas-Johnson are names you hear mentioned the most.

“If you do your job, the players follow the directive to appease the other guys, and this team has done that,” Smart said. “They’ve tried to emulate, kind of mimic the group that did it last year. They saw those guys do it. They set a standard, and they’ve tried to emulate that. They’ve done a good job, and they continue to do so.”

AD Mitchell is back working full-time with Georgia’s other receivers, but Smart did not tip his hand on how much playing time the sophomore could potentially see on Saturday.

“He’s very similar to recent weeks. He’s been able to do some practice stuff. He’s been able to go out and rep,” Smart said. “The hopes are he’s able to contribute.”

Mitchell made one appearance in last week’s game against Georgia Tech, but was not credited for an actual rep due to a timeout being called.

He last repped in Georgia’s win over Auburn, the same game in which he re-tweaked the high ankle sprain he originally suffered in the Bulldogs’ Week 2 win over Samford.

Bulldog true freshman safety Malaki Starks has been named one of five finalists for the fifth annual Shaun Alexander Freshman of the Year Award, according to an announcement from the Maxwell Football Club.

Starks, a native of Jefferson, joins LSU’s Harold Perkins Jr., Ole Miss’ Quinshon Judkins, North Carolina’s Drake May, and Penn State’s Abdul Carter as finalists. Current Bulldog tight end Brock Bowers was named the 2021 Shaun Alexander Freshman of the Year. In addition, former Bulldog and current New York Giant Azeez Ojulari was another finalist for the honor in 2019.

The winner of the Shaun Alexander Freshman of the Year Award will be unveiled on Dec. 29. The formal presentations of this award will be made at the Maxwell Football Club Awards Gala hosted by the Mohegan Sun Resort in Pennsylvania in March 2023.

What are your thoughts, thinking back when you were a young assistant at LSU, did you have any thoughts of being a coach in this position, coaching a national championship program? What did you aspire to back then?

Smart: “Survive the day back then. That was quite some time ago. Was my first full-time SEC job. I'd come off being a graduate assistant. It was my first time coaching in the SEC. Really competitive environment. It was the year following their national championship there, so a lot of tough times, getting acclimated. I had a lot of expectations after winning the national championship.

"We had a lot of good players coming back on that team. I think most of the defensive players were back from the national championship team. It was an exciting year. I learned a lot. But as far as aspiring to where I am now, I'm not really thinking about that.”

The last time we talked to you, you were starting your preparation, taking a look at LSU. Does anything kind of stand out now that you've had additional days to break down their film?

Smart: “Yeah, they got a lot of talent, a lot of really fast, athletic players. You look across the skill level on both sides of the ball for them, great size, great speed. They got one of the most physical offensive lines we've played. They're really, really talented in the red area defensive area and the red area offense, which we went hard yesterday. Third down, they do a great job offensively on third down, because they don't get in very many third-and-long situations.”

How big would it be to essentially have a home-field advantage if you end up making the playoffs in Atlanta for that first round? Does that add any to the motivation of winning on Saturday?

Smart: “Not really. There's no thought of the next step. There's such a long break between this step and the next step. This is the culmination of a season. The next opportunity, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

What science is there to keep your defensive linemen fresh? Obviously, they can't play every down. They're so impactful. What goes into keeping those guys fresh, not wearing out?

Smart: “Well, conditioning is the number one thing. It helps to have depth where you can play multiple players and not have players drop off. I don't think anyone in the country will tell you they have enough defensive linemen. It's a rotational position. It requires effort and strain. We do conditioning all year. We condition multiple times a week. If you want to be a really good football team, you have got to be in the best condition. Best conditioned is not a word, it's a requirement and a strain that you have to put in. We've conditioned enough to be at our best in moments like this Saturday.”

What is your thought on looking at freshman linebacker Harold Perkins after you watched him on film?

Smart: “Extremely athletic. Very twitchy. We've had a crossover with them on several teams we've played this year, whether that be Tennessee, Mississippi State, Florida, a couple others, Auburn, I think. He's just extremely athletic. I think they do a tremendous job utilizing his skill set, an edge rusher, zone coverage guy, and a man-to-man guy. He's a force to be reckoned with. He's very talented.”

I wanted to ask you, we're starting to see all sorts of names pop up announcing who's going in the portal, and who is not. Is there a protocol that your program has established as far as when guys will announce? Have you already heard from the players? I wonder about the new housekeeping item that coaches now have to manage, part of this new roster management.

Smart: “Yeah, we're really focused on LSU, to be honest with you. That's where our concentration is. We'll deal with that when the time comes.”

Obviously, this is a tough game. What makes this such a tough game to win?

Smart: “You're playing the best team in one of the best conferences—the team that won the most games or won their division on the other side. It's a matchup of the two, what usually is the two best teams in the SEC, which is a very competitive conference. It's a championship game. It's an opportunity to win the conference that has represented [the best in] college football in recent years.”

Competitively—the fact that an 8-4 team upsets an undefeated team takes away from the post-season opportunity. If you have the two best, that enhances a conference's ability to get two in.

Smart: “Sounds like you answered it. I'm not following what you're asking. In my opinion, the two best end up in this game. Take the divisions out, you're going to get the two best, maybe the best. I mean, one team could have had a harder schedule than the other. In some of these conferences, everybody plays everybody. I don't think you're looking at that ever happening in the SEC. It's hypothetical to assume you're going to get the two best. You're going to get closest to the two best records based on that with tiebreakers. With the expansion looming, I don't think this game is going to be a make or break, get you in or out in most cases. It's probably going to be a situation to maybe move up or something.”

Obviously, news today about the expanded playoffs in 2024: the seasons have continued to be expanded recently. How does that play into how many snaps you play guys? Is there any saving players, any conscious effort to try to keep guys fresh going into late November, or early December, or is the league just too competitive?

Smart: “I think you're way overthinking it. The objective is to win your football games. In our conference, you don't go in and say, 'Can I play this guy 20 snaps and not 60 snaps?' I mean, you practice every day out at practice, and you're practicing 30, 40 snaps. A lot of our guys may play more snaps in practice than they do in a game. They're going against pretty good competition like this. So, I don't look at the games as if I'm trying to not play my guys. I think they earned the right to play the game. You're trying to win each and every opportunity. That means putting the best players out there."

With the transfer portal heating up next week, have you identified as a staff [players in this] cycle in terms of positions [of need]?

Smart: “We have a process in our organization; we have different divisions. Everybody has a timeline for what they're working on. We have player development, staff recruiting. We have all these facets within our organization that work their parts year-round. The most important thing right now is staffing our team, preparing for LSU. That's really where our focus is.”

This is the third time you've matched up with Brian Kelly. How important were the two previous wins for your program, building into what this has become today?

Smart: “Well, I think they were great matchups. They were national exposure games. Any time you're playing Notre Dame, it's not just about Brian Kelly, it's about Notre Dame's name across the country. Certainly, helps you maybe recruit across the country, become a national brand, play on a national stage. That's what it gave us an opportunity to do. Both were hard-fought, physical football games in both cases. Got a lot of respect for Notre Dame's program. I thought it was great college ball to have Notre Dame and Georgia matched in those two games.”

Several years ago, I think under Mark Richt, they talked about knocking the lid off the program, and how that's an important function to be able to achieve higher. Do you feel like you've been able to knock the lid off this program?

Smart: “Yeah, I don't know. I don't really understand. Lids on programs? I'm doing the best job we can for our young men each and every year. I think that would be a subjective question that each person, each fan that has an opinion might see a different way. I'm doing the best we can for our guys every year.”

What mindset do you want your players to have going into this game? What are some of the things you've said to them this week to prepare them for this weekend?

Smart: “That preparation is the key to any game. This is no different. Our other SEC games we've had in terms of the difference, we're playing at a neutral site. It's an opportunity to go out there and play. Nobody else is playing in our conference but us. Our peers get to watch this game, one of the most watched games of any football season. We talked long and hard about being at our best as needed. Those critical situations in games that decide games, they'll decide this game no different, whether that's turnovers, explosive plays.”

When you're looking at this LSU team, there are a lot of transfers on this team. When you're scouting them over this week, how much are those transfers standing out?

Smart: “Yeah, a lot. When their staff got put in place, it's hard to compare that against other programs across the board in the SEC. I would argue they did the best job of filling holes and creating roster opportunities for guys coming in. You start with the quarterback. I mean, the quarterback has played phenomenally for them. He's a tremendous athlete. He's been a tremendous asset to them. But also filled some really big holes on defense. Probably, if they don't do as good a job, it's hard to say where they would be right now. They put together some really good defensive players as well as the quarterback.

Georgia and LSU have matched up five times in the SEC Championship, second most of anybody. What is it about these two programs that they've been able to sustain success over the course of several different coaches?

Smart: “Yeah, it's the geographic areas. They both have great high school football in and around their universities, the proximity to good players. You’ve got New Orleans and Atlanta. Per capita, when you look across the NFL, the state of Georgia and Louisiana are always near the top. It has a lot to do with the success of the programs.”

You were asked earlier about the playoff expansion. What are your general thoughts on that coming up? What will it mean for the sport?

Smart: “I'm not really sure. I think only time will tell. I read and saw a lot of opinions out there. Length of games, number of games. I don't think we'll truly know. Like when we went to the four-game model, there were a lot of questions involved there, too. It's not something I've got a huge opinion on right now, especially right now because of what we're focused on. In the off-season, I'll think about it a lot more.”