Nolan Smith comes clean on accusation of Georgia being picked to go 7-5

Nolan Smith has finally come clean, nearly 3 months after the national championship.

The well-spoken Georgia linebacker turned heads after Georgia dismantled TCU in the national championship by saying that there were predictions that Georgia would go 7-5 last season. The Bulldogs used that apparent slight as motivation on the title run.

“They thought we was going to go 7-5, we ended up perfect,” Smith said in interviews after the game, including to Maria Martin.

But now, in an interview with Connor O’Gara on The Saturday Down South Podcast, Smith has admitted it was all manufactured.

“You gotta create your own narrative, man,” Smith said. “Sometimes you’ve got to put the chip on your own shoulder. But we did have a humongous target on our back, as we saw in the Missouri game.”

“Sometimes you’ve got to juice it up for the guys, especially when you’re the old man, last year, that I said. I said it the whole summer, ‘They going to think we’re going 7-5, guys, they ain’t even thinking about a 2-peat.'”

Smith then walked through the thinking behind the record, and recalled that Kirby Smart went 8-4 in his first year at Georgia.

Remember when we heard Georgia players say after winning it all that people predicted that they’d go 7-5?

Turns out, Nolan Smith made that up.

His confession on the latest @TheSDSPod: pic.twitter.com/NGsJiBQSba

— Connor O’Gara (@cjogara) April 4, 2023

Keith Farner

A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.