Can Kirby Smart explain the inconsistency Georgia's defense has dealt with this year?

"No, I don't know that I can," Smart said.

It has truly been a bit of a confounding year for the Bulldog defense, a unit that has been so rock solid for the vast majority of Smart's tenure in Athens.

The dominant force has sometimes shown up—the win over Clemson, the second half against Alabama, and the majority of the wins over Texas and Tennessee. But the defense has also struggled plenty of times against the run and against the pass.

Smart noted that the defense played well when the execution was on point. Resiliency has also been a key trait, although even that has been inconsistent.

"Like any explosive play or any penalty that extends the drive has almost been catastrophic. Like, we can't stop anybody if that happens, and we have not overcome that well," Smart said. "What we have done is stop people when we've had to, played well in the red area. For a while there we played really well at third down, but you can't put a finger on exactly what it was. If I could do that, then we'd certainly put a stop to it. But we've played well at times and we've tackled well at times, and then we haven't at times."

Safety Malaki Starks provided his own thoughts on the situation.

"I think sometimes when you look at it, we just need to all be on the same page instead of going out there and, you know, playing as individuals instead of playing as a whole group, a whole 11," Starks said. "I think that's the biggest thing is, you know, we're all connected, we're all on the same page. We're doing things really good, or we're not. We're not doing things so good. So I think that's the biggest thing."

Starks added the defense can help recover from mistakes within drives by "not pointing the fingers, not complaining, coming together as a group and figuring it out and trying to move on to the next play."

There have been some bright spots. As Smart mentioned, the Bulldogs have been able to come up with timely stops when needed. Most recently, the defense forced a late turnover against Georgia Tech and then held strong in the face of multiple two-point conversion attempts in the eight-overtime win over the Yellow Jackets.

But with a sharp uptick in competition looming this weekend and beyond, Smart said the Bulldogs can't lean on that trait.

"You need to play well throughout, right? You need to start fast. You need to get off the field and give our offense field position. One of the things we haven't done a good enough job this year on our defense is creating field position advantage for our offense," Smart said. "We want to stop people and force them to have to throw long third downs and then get the ball back to their offense. I don't think you can say we're confident that we can stop them when we have to. We need to be confident that we can stop them."

Georgia will face Texas again this weekend after having one of its best defensive performances of the year against the Longhorns in October. Another effort of that caliber is needed if the Bulldogs want to reclaim the SEC crown.

"We've been battle-tested for sure," Starks said. "We've kind of figured out what our strengths and our weaknesses are. We're just trying to hone in on those and just get better day by day. Take the steps that we need to take to be able to be the best team that we can be.”