Kirby Smart had just finished his fifth season as Georgia football coach with his team finishing with another top 10 ranking, but at something of a crossroads.

"Man, we just won the Peach Bowl and it’s like nobody's even happy,” Smart said. “Where are we headed here? Where is our relevance?"

Smart had won four national championships at Alabama as defensive coordinator and took the Bulldogs to the national title game in 2017 in his second season before losing to the Crimson Tide in overtime.

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Back-to-back losses in the SEC championship game in 2018 and 2019 and missing out on the title game in the COVID season of 2020 had him feeling the program was going through "three or four, I guess it was, stagnant years," after the Peach Bowl win over Cincinnati. “I say stagnant. They were successful years. We’d won the East, we’d won bowl games, but they weren’t where we wanted to go.”

Smart’s introspective comments were made on the podcast “The Growth Project,” with Drew Brannon, the Greenville, S.C-based sports psychologist who has worked with the UGA football program in recent years.

UGA football coach Kirby Smart reveals a change in mindset

Smart recounted about wondering what Georgia could do differently to further elevate the program. Brannon sent Smart a text in early 2021, apprehensive about how he may react to putting a focus on improving the culture of the program.

"I was like, well, here we go, we'll see,” Brannon said on the podcast. “To your credit, your openness to sit down and have those conversations, not all leaders are that way.”

Smart had his coaching staff critique him anonymously and offer ways he could better help them.

“That was a big moment for me in my career,” Smart said. “It wasn’t that I was anti-doing that before, but it never had been presented that way. It never had been presented to me.”

Georgia has preached “connection,” since the 2021 offseason and it’s helped turn a talented roster into a championship team in back-to-back years. Smart said he’s had buy-in from players, his coaching staff and support staff.

“The biggest difference in the last two years has been the players themselves believing in each other and kind of buying in and connecting,” Smart said. “I can’t say the other teams weren’t. They were connected. They had good buy-in and good culture, but the last two have just been different. It might be three players difference in terms of leadership, not in terms of talent because we’ve had talent.”

Georgia has taken time away from football for the now much talked about “skull sessions,” where players get in front of the team share their personal stories.

“I think we’ve got a really good return on that investment based on the last two years seeing us grow these young men into really good leaders,” Smart said. “I’ve heard it and you’ve talked about it before, if you invest in human capital, it’s the best investment you can make bar none.”

Georgia has gone 29-1 the last two seasons, beating Alabama for the national title in the 2021 season and TCU in the 2022 season.

“There’s no greater feeling of accomplishment than to raise that trophy, hug the neck of someone who you know sacrificed so much and you get to see them after the game, in the locker room and after,” Smart said. “That feeling is probably the greatest satisfaction there is in all of sports, maybe in all of life of accomplishment.”

He said it’s also gratifying at fundraising and booster events to hear stories from Georgia fans about how much it means to them and seeing them tear up after waiting 41 years for a national title.

“That makes me proud,” he said, “because it is my alma mater.”

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Kirby Smart on changing his mindset ahead of UGA football title run