They’re like a sitcom that never loses its charm: All 10 seasons of “Friends” or “The Office,” before Michael Scott leaves. To them, the offseason is merely a pause button, and as the first game approaches, they waste no time pressing play.
After winning the College Football Playoff in 2021, the Georgia Bulldogs lost 15 players to the NFL. While that number was a historic one, Georgia has grown accustomed to replacing NFL-caliber talent season after season. It’s a program that doesn’t rely on its personnel alone to sustain success. Instead, the Bulldogs have remained a consummate contender due to their unwavering identity — one that’s predicated on taking the game to their opponents.
“We talk about playing as if we’re hunting,” Bulldogs head coach Kirby Smart said. “We play connected. We play aggressive. We want to be the hunter.”
It’s clear the message resonates with each player who comes through the program. In the waning minutes of Georgia’s 49-3 win over the Oregon Ducks, a Bulldogs defense — led by a slew of second-teamers — made a goal-line stand to prevent a touchdown.
“One of our mottos is: ‘No one in our end zone,’” defensive back Chris Smith said. “We pride ourselves on that until the zeros show up on the clock. Twos and threes got in, and we wanted to hold the standard. They did a great job of that.”
A consistent identity, however, isn’t exclusive to the nation’s top teams. For example, the Brigham Young Cougars and the Utah Utes are known for overcoming porous recruiting classes. The Cougars rarely make mistakes on offense and tend to rely on pocket-passing quarterbacks who go through their progressions. They’ve enjoyed nine winning seasons in the last 10, sending guys like Zach Wilson and Taysom Hill to the NFL. The Utes, on the other hand, seek aggression by beating you in the trenches with the run game. It’s an ideology that helped them to win the Pac-12 championship last season.
The Oregon Ducks football team used to be recognized as the West Coast’s powerhouse, known for having a dynamic offense that tore apart defenses with a balance of speed and creativity. The mindset peaked during head coach Chip Kelly’s four-year tenure, when he and quarterback Marcus Mariota led the Ducks to their first BCS championship appearance: a 22-19 loss to Auburn.
Mariota outlasted Kelly and found his way to another BCS championship with Mark Helfricht, but when Kelly left in 2012, a part of the Ducks’ identity went with him. They cycled through three head coaches and five different starting quarterbacks in the next eight years, in search of rediscovering an identity.
It’s what the program did again in December when they hired Dan Lanning. Now it’s his chance to rebuild the program in his image.
“Identity happens every single day in our program,” Lanning said soon after he was hired. “The question is: what’s our identity? You don’t necessarily know that until you see how you operate, you know? So your players are going to take on that identity through time and we’re going to define our DNA traits.”
Teams such as the Bulldogs, Cougars and Utes enter each season with a profound understanding of how their teammates operate and what the collective goal of their program is. Each of these schools has had continuity at the head coaching position for the last six seasons.
The Ducks, however, haven’t enjoyed that luxury. Now, Lanning is adopting a team of guys that he did not recruit. His goal will be to instill his coaching philosophy in his current players before his future recruits arrive. His first season will act as a breeding ground. Lanning and his players will learn about each others’ tendencies as they formulate an identity and build toward a prosperous future. A rediscovery process will include losses and turmoil, but it’s how the Ducks grow from those monumental obstacles.
And the first: a 49-3 loss to the Bulldogs. While it was ugly, it presented a chance for Lanning and his staff to see how their players would respond to adversity. Do they succumb? Or do they grow?
