Why the Georgia football marriage of Todd Monken and Kirby Smart is a perfect match
ATLANTA — Todd Monken was out of a job after a stint as Cleveland Browns offensive coordinator when he met in person with Kirby Smart who was looking to take his Georgia football offense to another level after the 2019 season.
The three-year football marriage between the defensive-minded Smart and the veteran offensive coach Monken could hardly have gone better.
It has helped lead to one national championship and the Bulldogs are two wins away from back-to-back titles heading into Saturday’s 8 p.m. Peach Bowl matchup with Ohio State in Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
“It’s been everything he said it would be when he hired me,” Monken said Wednesday morning. “He said, ‘I’ll let you do what you want to do. Yeah, I’m the head coach and there are certain things I believe in, but I want someone that can come in and run it and I don’t have to worry about it,’ and hopefully I’ve done that.”
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Monken said he wasn’t sure at the time if he believed what Smart said.
“I didn’t know if it was a sales pitch or not because he wanted me to come, but he’s done exactly that,” Monken said.
Monken’s name was mentioned on head coaching hot boards in recent months for places like Purdue, Georgia Tech and South Florida, but he said most of what gets put out there he hasn’t been involved.
With this cycle seemingly closed, the former Southern Miss head coach isn’t about to take over a program of his own again and he seems more than fine with that.
“Well, first off, no one wants my old ass so that’s usually why that’s the case,” said Monken, who turns 57 in February. “I’m joking in general. First of all, I have a great job. I said that many times. I fell into this job and the culture was already set. I landed here with good players, the culture was already set. My job was just to try to do the best I could to make it better the best way I could. Fight my ass off to help make it better. Hopefully I’ve done that.”
Georgia’s offensive numbers have gone up across the board from the 2021 national championship season.
The Bulldogs are 7th in total offense (491.9, up from 442.8 and on pace to top the school record of 484.3 in 2013), 18th in rushing (207.0, up from 190.9) and 11th in scoring (39.2 from 38.4).
Most notably, Georgia has jumped from 51st to 19th in passing offense at 284.9 yards per game, up from 251.9 last season.
“It's a complete offense,” Ohio State defensive coordinator Jim Knowles said. “It's developed like an NFL offense, and they have a bunch of tools at their disposal. So we need to be sound across the board and really play hard with great effort.”
The Bulldogs are throwing the ball 33.1 times per game compared to 27.1 last season which ranked 103rd in the nation, according to cfbstats.com.
Georgia ranked tied for 6th in yards per attempt this season at 9.3 compared to 8.6 this season which is 13th nationally.
“The style of football he coaches and the tenacity he has, he’s aggressive,” offensive tackle Broderick Jones said. “We can slow it down. We can go fast. There’s just so many things in our offense that he implements that are great just because we keep the defenses on their toes.”
Monken held court for 27 minutes at the Westin Peachtree Plaza in his most extensive interview session since he’s been at Georgia. That followed a similar session at a podium before a bank of TV cameras.
The Peach Bowl here two years ago came during the COVID-19 season and last year’s playoff run interviews were held via Zoom.
He offered insight into what attracted to him to Georgia in the first place to work with Smart.
“He wanted to change the perception of Georgia's offense,” Monken said. “Now that's easier said than done but he wanted to be aggressive in that regard to be able to get the right skill guys and quarterbacks.”
Smart is hands-on with the defense whether its Mel Tucker, Dan Lanning or now Glenn Schumann and Will Muschamp as coordinator.
Less so with the offense.
It took Georgia a while to settle on the quarterback.
Stetson Bennett had the job in 2020 after coming off the bench in the opener, lost it to J.T. Daniels and got it back again in 2021 and the rest is history still in the making. Under Monken, the former walk-on became a Heisman Trophy finalist.
Smart paid Monken a big compliment of sorts in passing last week when talking about Georgia not signing a quarterback in this recruiting class.
“And none of the skill players made it about that because they know what we've signed the last really three or four years,” he said. “They know what we have the potential to sign in '24. So it's one of those deals that the quarterback position kind of sells it based on who your offensive coordinator is and how your offense does, and we've excelled in that.”
That came in the same month that Monken spoke highly of Smart at the Broyles Award banquet where he was a finalist for nation's top assistant.
“I've been doing this a long time and been around a lot of great coaches and my whole family's in coaching, and there's nobody I trust more than Kirby Smart in terms of we're going to win, we're going to work, we're going to recruit,” Monken said. “And that's over 56 years.”
Monken comes from a family well-known in coaching circles, particularly in Illinois. He’s from Wheaton, Ill., and played quarterback at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill.
His son, Travis, now is a student assistant at Oklahoma State where Ohio State defensive coordinator Jim Knowles came from before this season and where Todd served as offensive coordinator in 2010 and 2011 under Mike Gundy.
After taking over a Southern Miss program that had gone 0-12, he led the program to 1 to 3 and 9-win seasons. He left to become offensive coordinator in the NFL for four seasons including what he called a “really frustrating year,” in Cleveland in 2019 in a job he wasn’t the play-caller.
Things didn’t come easy right away at Georgia, especially in preseason practice in 2020 after spring ball was cancelled during the pandemic.
Those five first-rounders off the defense from last season? Monken’s offense had to go up against them before his first season in 2020.
“We just got knocked in the dirt every day in fall camp,” he said. “I was thinking this sucks. Why did I think I was coming here? It was a matter of what we did offensively and trying to morph into NFL things that guys can handle and other ideas that guys have because it’s a collective effort by everybody.”
Running back Kenny McIntosh has been there every step of the way. He was a freshman in 2019 when Smart made a move following that year after one season with James Coley as offensive coordinator.
The Bulldogs did not top 27 points in eight of its last nine games that season. It surpassed that number of 10 of 13 games this season.
McIntosh, who has scored 11 total touchdowns and is the team’s top rusher and third leading receiver, on the evolution of the offense under Monken: “Man, it’s been amazing. From now to my freshman year we talk about plays that we used to run that we don’t even run no more. The offense changed. I know we have a different OC but just the way we do plays at Georgia. Monken does a great job of calling plays and changing them and making them look like one thing from another.
“He's got a creative bent to him that's a little bit different than what they had in '17 and '19,” said LSU coach Brian Kelly who faced two other offensive coordinators at Georgia those seasons when he was at Notre Dame.
Brock Bowers, who Monken lines up as an in-line tight end, out wide and gets the ball in his hands on jet sweeps, said last season “every single week they were putting in new plays and that would kind of mess with my head a little bit,” in his first college season.
Bowers, the John Mackey Award winner for nation’s top tight end, leads Georgia with 52 catches for 726 yards and six touchdowns and has another three rushing touchdowns.
When Georgia makes a big play for a score, Monken—with a Diet Coke nearby--is fist pumping in the coaches box and often high-fiving tight ends coach Todd Hartley next to him.
“I think it’s really funny to see him slam on the glass and high-five him,” Bowers said.
Monken is already well-paid as the highest compensated assistant in the country at $2.005 million this year which goes up to $2.105 million next season.
“When you have a good job and they pay me a lot of money, we all know that, you have to be careful,” Monken said. “The grass isn’t always greener and money isn’t everything. Now I value getting paid. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t do this for nothing, but the reality is you have to be careful because your happiness is in winning. It’s about winning. It’s the fight song in the locker room. That’s what it’s about. Anybody that says, hey I’m at school A and boy the city is great, I love it. It’s great for my family and we’re 4-8 and I’m happy as hell. That’s not me. I’d rather be winning in Alaska than losing in San Diego. The reality is this is what it’s about. This is about winning; this is the fight song in the locker room. It’s about a feeling of self-worth.”
This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Kirby Smart found right fit in UGA football OC Todd Monken
