Kirby Smart: "It’s not clear-cut that offense is more important than defense in CFB"

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Following Alabama’s 41-24 win over Georgia last week, Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban said in an interview with ESPN that it has officially become an offensive game.

He said that in the matter of when an elite offense faces the same level caliber of defense, that the offense will most likely prevail.

Georgia head coach Kirby Smart met with the media on Monday and was asked about Saban’s comments. He offered a different perspective than what his former mentor said.

“I think if you look at recent history, elite offenses have certainly done well in the Playoff and have really won most of the championships,” Smart said. “If you look across the board at the biggest offensive numbers and the output of those offensive numbers, whether it be Clemson, whether it be Alabama, whether it be LSU, I would argue that each one of those teams had pretty good defenses, so it’s not a clear-cut question, it’s not a clear-cut answer.”

“It’s not easy to say this or that,” Smart said. “There’s a lot of factors that go into it, but scoring offense and being able to score points is a tremendous factor, and a lot of the offenses have been ahead. The really good offenses have been ahead of the really good defenses, I don’t disagree with that. But, if you look across the board, there’s some teams that have really dynamic offenses and don’t have defenses, they struggle, they struggle when they go play really good teams.

“You’re really looking to have both, but I do respect that Clemson’s won championships with good defenses, and Alabama, when they won and beat us, they had a dynamic offense, but they had a good defense,” Smart said. “Then, when you go to LSU last year, nobody even talks about their defense, but they obviously had a good defense because they’ve got players playing all over the NFL.”

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