2015 Georgia, a decade later: How the season that sparked the Richt-to-Smart transition holds up

New York Times

6 days ago

ATHENS, Ga. — That season, that most dramatic of seasons, has gone down in Georgia football legend. Not for the glory but the drama. The popular head coach who was watching his Hall of Fame tenure end. The rumors of dissension among his assistants. The quixotic quarterback decision that sealed the end.
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And yet what gets forgotten is how well, even a month into the 2015 season, things were going. Greyson Lambert breaking an NCAA record and helping send Steve Spurrier into retirement. Brian Schottenheimer looking like a good hire. Jeremy Pruitt saying all the right things. The confidence within the administration and fan base that the Georgia Way was the right way and could still work.
Then came the rain. That's the first thing people remember about the afternoon. The good feelings were washed away, precipitating a downfall that in retrospect was inevitable. The day Nick Saban and Alabama came to Athens and told everyone that no, the old Georgia way could no longer work.
One image remains from that dreary — at least for Georgia — afternoon: During pregame, an Alabama assistant standing alone near midfield, looking at his players with a contented smile. Almost like Kirby Smart knew something.
The Georgia Way was shorthand for the school and athletic department resisting what was seen as the Saban-ization of college sports: wild spending on facilities and football staff; win at all costs, literally and figuratively. Georgia did spend, but it was the last school in the SEC to build a full-length indoor facility, which became symbolic. After one short, pointless practice in a 30-yard indoor facility late in the 2014 season, Pruitt, then in his first year as Georgia defensive coordinator, sat with beat writers and bemoaned that other schools recruited against Georgia by saying: 'How important is football to Georgia if they don't have an indoor practice facility?'
Pruitt's comments ruffled administrators, not for the first or last time. Still, his defense and recruiting had energized the program and head coach Mark Richt, for whom 2015 would be his 15th season as head coach.
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Longtime offensive coordinator Mike Bobo had left to become Colorado State's head coach. Richt replaced him with what seemed like a coup: Schottenheimer, who left his job as the OC for the St. Louis Rams. Richt had also made another change, hiring strength and conditioning coordinator Mark Hocke, who had never been a coordinator but had been the No. 2 at Alabama.
Neither hire would pan out. But outwardly, the signs were good through September, as Georgia started 4-0 and rose to No. 8 in the AP poll. The high moment of the run — and the season, it would turn out — was a 52-20 win over South Carolina, in which Lambert set an NCAA record for single-game completion percentage (24-for-25). Lambert had transferred in from Virginia just a month before preseason practice and won the starting job in an upset. Spurrier, long Georgia's nemesis, retired less than a month later.
It set up a showdown with another nemesis, Alabama, which came into Sanford Stadium on Oct. 1 already with one loss. Georgia was slightly favored, and during game week, several Georgia boosters spoke proudly about the way their school conducted its business.
'I'm not willing to sell my soul to the devil just to say we won,' Dink NeSmith, a former Board of Regents chairman, told USA Today. 'There's a certain pride, without being condescending, where we try to hold ourselves to a higher standard.'
It didn't take long for people to change their thinking.
'We were looking at it through rose-colored glasses,' said Jon Stinchcomb, a former Georgia and NFL offensive lineman and member of Georgia's Athletic Board. 'The perception didn't match reality. Very quickly after that Alabama game, there was a realization: 'Oh, boy, we aren't what we thought we were.' In so many different ways.'
Smart, asked what he remembers about that game, first mentioned the rain. Then Alabama tailback Derrick Henry and receiver Calvin Ridley making some big plays. And also, late in the game, Alabama's sideline getting angry because Georgia tailback Nick Chubb broke a long run.
'They didn't want to give up 100 yards to him,' Smart said. 'He had had a streak going, but I think that long run gave it to him. But it was later in the game.'
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The final score: Alabama 38, Georgia 10.
Jere Morehead, then and now Georgia's president, said the game brought home that there was still a lot of distance between the programs.
'I think so. Because you remember going into that, I believe the point spread was about 1. It was expected to be a highly competitive game,' Morehead said. 'So I think people were surprised it wasn't a competitive game.'
A week later at Tennessee, Chubb suffered a season-ending knee injury early in the first quarter. Georgia still jumped ahead 24-3, only to blow the lead and lose 38-31. The next game, Georgia pulled out a 9-6 win over Missouri. But the offense was sputtering, and with a bye week before Florida, the coaches decided to try something.
Faton Bauta, the third-string quarterback, had not played that season. But he had running ability, and his teammates liked playing for him. So with much secrecy, the Bulldogs gave him first-team practice reps, then unleashed him as the starter in Jacksonville — but with Schottenheimer's calls not catering much to Bauta's running ability. The result was four interceptions and a 27-3 loss.
That was it for the power brokers. Stinchcomb, then in his first year on the athletic board, said there were 'tangible conversations by significant people' that it was time for a coaching change. Morehead also remembered that as a key point.
'There was just a lot of things going on that were certainly creating anxiety among our supporters,' Morehead said.
Indeed, there were a lot of things.
Richt, Pruitt and those on that staff have never divulged specifics on the dissension among them. Defensive line coach Tracy Rocker came the closest after the season, alluding to a 'mutiny,' without elaboration. (Rocker was hired by Pruitt when he became the Tennessee coach in 2018.) Morehead acknowledged he was also 'hearing a lot of things' from athletic director Greg McGarity, who declined to comment for this story.
'But I certainly heard the same things that other people were hearing,' Morehead said. 'How much was true and not true, I don't know. I'm not really sure how much of that entered into the decision.'
Players were mostly in the dark. Jeb Blazevich, a tight end on that team, told me for the book 'Attack the Day': 'We heard about a lot of stuff on the second floor (where the coaches' offices were). We'd be hearing all this drama, and we were wondering: Are we still practicing today? How's this going to work if all this stuff is going on?'
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There was a rumor at one point that Pruitt had been fired, and Richt felt the need to put out a tweet to assure the public that Pruitt was very much in his office working. Pruitt had been hired before the 2014 season, turning around the defense and bringing ideas about practice and recruiting that he'd learned working for Saban. Pruitt had also seen how Alabama gave Saban financial support and wasn't shy about expressing what he saw in Athens.
'He wasn't wrong in a lot of his critique,' Stinchcomb said. '(But) it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. It's not like you're wrong. But how you're doing it is.'
Richt had been a good soldier about the administrative support, never complaining publicly or even much privately. He didn't complain that Georgia was one of the only SEC schools to test and suspend athletes for marijuana, causing him to lose key players for key games. When previous AD Damon Evans declined to sign off on raises for assistants, Richt personally paid them, leading to an NCAA secondary violation in 2011.
Two years later, Morehead became Georgia's president, after rising through the academic ranks at the school. He told The Athletic recently that he thought the school's approach needed to change.
'Well, I had the view that we have to be excellent in academics and athletics and that you can do both, and you can do both well,' Morehead said. 'And I felt that we needed to get our alumni believing in both the academic and athletic excellence of the institution. And over time, I think we've demonstrated that we could be successful, not only in producing record years in federal research grants and Rhodes scholars, but we could also win national football championships. I really thought that was possible here.
'And so I understood we have to spend money to do it.'
Georgia finally signed off on the long-awaited indoor facility, and another project — a renovation to Sanford Stadium to include a swanky recruiting area — was also being discussed. But as the 2015 season neared an end, it became clear Richt would not be the coach to benefit from it.
South Carolina officials, looking for Spurrier's replacement, were in Smart's kitchen in Tuscaloosa the first Sunday morning in December, when phones started buzzing: Georgia was firing Richt. That was the day after Georgia's final regular-season game, a win over Georgia Tech, the fourth straight to finish the season. Everyone still liked and respected Richt, who had won two SEC championships, six SEC East titles and 74 percent of his games. But 9-3 wasn't good enough that season, especially with everything going on. The offense had been a disaster under Schottenheimer. Pruitt had alienated the administration. Player development didn't seem up to par, which spoke to the offseason program.
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'There's a lot that needs to change,' Stinchcomb said. 'And sometimes that's easier to accomplish when there's a big change.'
Morehead had known Smart since he was an undergraduate and even had Smart in one of his classes, and they had stayed in touch. Other names were thrown out as possibilities — Dan Mullen, then at Mississippi State, most prominently — but Georgia's search zeroed in on Smart pretty quickly.
'You don't make a change without considering who the other options are,' Morehead said. 'And there were several that were going to be well known, that were going to be available, and (Smart) was among them. And in my mind, at the top of the list.'
Still, Smart's being successful was by no means a slam dunk. He didn't have any head-coaching experience. Other coaches from the Saban tree had flopped, like Will Muschamp (another Georgia graduate) at Florida.
'Is it just a homer pick, that former player who is in the right place at the right time, or is it actually a great coach?' Stinchcomb said. 'It certainly was no certainty.'
Smart's first season amplified the uncertainty: 8-5, with home losses to Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech. Meanwhile, Richt went 9-4 at Miami, a one-win improvement. Morehead said he heard from 'plenty' of people questioning Georgia's decision.
'But I still felt that the end of that first year that we were on a trajectory for greatness,' Morehead said. 'I didn't know it would happen the very next year where we, you know, came within one play of winning the national championship (in his second year).'
That would be the infamous second-and-26 loss to Alabama.
'But you know,' Morehead added, 'We came within one point of winning a national championship in 2012.'
That would be the infamous end of the SEC championship, another loss to Alabama. This one when Richt was coach.
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That remains a hanging regret around Georgia and among the fan base: Richt not getting a title. He remains popular, especially after moving back to Athens following his retirement from Miami. Georgia's program, meanwhile, took off under Smart, aided by financial support from the school, including support staff, the recruiting budget and a fundraising push for facilities.
Of course, Smart did plenty himself to take Georgia to the next level, from recruiting to development to coaching. He ended Georgia's national championship drought in 2022, then won another, all with his own players. But when he made the national championship the first time, in 2018, many of the players were holdovers from 2015, recruited by Richt or Pruitt.
Richt declined an interview request for this story but wrote in a text, 'I only wish the best for Kirby and Georgia football.'
Pruitt went back to Alabama in 2016 as defensive coordinator, then two years later became Tennessee's coach. He was fired after the 2020 season amid an NCAA investigation and is now a high school coach. Reached recently by The Athletic, he said he remains fond of his time in Athens and with Richt.
'In my opinion, coach Richt is one of the best coaches — and men — I have ever been around,' Pruitt said. 'It is amazing, the run coach Richt had, because at the time Georgia was behind in facilities and spending.'
Otherwise, Pruitt did not want to comment. Other than one final thought on how much the sport has changed since 2015.
'We look back on that season and think it's a disappointment,' Pruitt said, then started to laugh. 'But nowadays we might make the playoffs.'