Kirby Smart has heard Georgia football fans’ complaints about the team’s offense and appears to be making moves to fix the issues on that side of the ball in Athens.
According to multiple reports on Friday, the program is set to hire recent Cleveland Browns offensive coordinator Todd Monken for a role on the offensive staff. While it’s not known if that will include some sort of co-offensive coordinator title, UGASports.com says that he will assume play-calling from current Bulldogs OC James Coley.
Monken has extensive experience in both the NFL and college football, having left as head coach of Southern Miss to serve as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator in 2016. He’s highly regarded for his development of wide receivers over the years and also has stints at LSU, Oklahoma State and Louisiana Tech among other stops.
Bringing in Monken should help juice a Georgia team that was 49th in FBS last season in scoring offense. It also forms a nice one-two pairing in recent days between him and Wake Forest transfer quarterback Jamie Newman both joining the team. While we don’t know how much the latter knew about the former before his decision, it nevertheless has resulted in quite the overhaul on the offensive side of the ball this month.
The combo of Newman, Monken and a host of four- and five-star skill players is still no guarantee of success after a very interesting offseason in Athens but it’s hard to deny that the reigning SEC East champs didn’t address some of their big structural issues going into 2020 in the past week. Whether that still makes them the division pick this summer over a surging Florida team remains to be seen but it definitely amps up competition in a league where there is no shortage of it on or off the field.
Either way, it should make for an even more intriguing opener against Virginia on Labor Day at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.