The Georgia Bulldogs transformed their wide receiver room over the last three months following a 2024-25 season which felt underwhelming at times. Dropped passes and a clear lack of explosiveness cost them opportunities to win games and, clearly, something needed to be done.
Kirby Smart joined The Steakhouse on Thursday morning amid the Bulldogs' spring practices. They discussed several different things during their time together -- you can hear that full interview in the link above -- but his comments on the state of the wide receiver room stood out.
"I want to be better there, too," Smart said to Steak Shapiro when said how he wants to see improvement out wide. "That's one where we had a lot of guys back last year but it was weird because it wasn't that we had the guy, like the go-to guy whether that was Ladd [McConkey] or Brock [Bowers] the year before or George [Pickens] before. You just had that guy."
The Georgia offense had a few good options, led by Arian Smith and Dominic Lovett, but no true top option for Carson Beck to fall back on. Despite winning 11 games and an SEC Championship, it became abundantly clear that this team was missing something at pass catcher.
So much so that Kirby Smart and his coaching staff added eight new players, five from the high school ranks and three more from the transfer portal, to help get this unit to where it needs to be.
"What's good about that group now is there's some depth and competition there," Smart continued. "There are some young ones who practice one day, right now, and I'm like 'Whoa, these guys look good. They look like they can help us.' Then we've got some old ones like Dillon [Bell], Colbie [Young], Cole Speer, and a lot of the older guys that [also look good]. Then you got [Zachariah] Branch and Noah Thomas.
"There's just a lot of competition. There's a lot of answers, we've just got to figure out what the new guys do best and we've got to bring the freshmen along now. We can't wait until halfway through the season because these freshmen are going to be talented players."
Georgia will be breaking in a new starting quarterback in 2025 with either Gunner Stockton or Ryan Puglisi. There should be plenty of talent in the room at pass catcher, but there is a critical need to be better here than they were at any point last year.