Kirby Smart and Georgia suffered a brutal loss to Alabama but the head coach made sure to speak to every single player following the game.

The loss was brutal in the sense that the Bulldogs pulled off an epic comeback but fell to an insane play on the road. The 41-34 loss was considered the best game of the year, so far.

Smart wanted to make sure he showcased his leadership and kept his team together after the team’s first loss of the year.

“Well, there’s no greater response of a leader than to be with the guys who go to battle with you and those kids went to battle tonight,” Smart said postgame. “But make no mistake about it, that group we got in there, man, they’re connected. They’re proud, they got pride. And I told our guys, I don’t know what the second has to look like, but I do know this, when we watch it we’re gonna find out a lot about ourselves. 

“We’ll see what kind of character we got. I thought we were the team that was in really good shape and felt that we could play with the fourth quarter. Once we were in the situation we were, we said, one moment at a time. And I didn’t want to get off the field without telling each one how much I appreciated them. We went through some tough adversity there.”

Smart has six career losses to teams not named Alabama. The other six in his career are all to the Crimson Tide: five to Nick Saban and one to Kalen DeBoer.

“What’s everybody else’s record against them? Anybody got one better than 1-6?” Smart asked, rhetorically, in his postgame presser. “That’s played them six times? I don’t think so. I think they’ve got really good players, they’ve got a great program. I’ve got an immense amount of respect for ’em. They do a great job.”

Smart went on, complimenting the work done by Saban to lay the foundation over his long tenure of storied success in Tuscaloosa, and DeBoer for taking what was given to him and evidently running with it.

“I mean, Nick’s recruited good players, Kalen’s got good players in here. It’s a tough battle. Two of them have been here. And they’ve been tough, they’ve been really tough battles. So, a lot of credit to those guys and a lot of respect for them.”

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