It’s been a rough weekend in Athens as Georgia not only lost the 2019 SEC Championship Game by a wide margin to LSU, costing the Bulldogs a shot at a return to the College Football Playoff, but the Bulldogs lost ace recruiter and offensive line coach Sam Pittman to Arkansas.

While things may be bleak now, SEC Network host Paul Finebaum cautions that things could remain this way for the Bulldogs unless Kirby Smart is willing to change and adapt with the times.

During his weekly Monday morning appearance on Birmingham-based WJOX 94.5 FM radio show “The Roundtable,” Finebaum was asked to share his thoughts on Georgia’s latest tough loss. According to the SEC Network host, Georgia’s lack of high-level success comes down to the failures of Smart to adapt to modern college football.

“Listen Kirby Smart is trying to run Alabama 2.0 and it’s not working,” Finebaum said during his latest appearance on the show. “I say it’s not working because they’re not winning and competing seriously for national championships… You can’t end the season like that and you know I hear Georgia fans saying, ‘Well we didn’t have Cager, we didn’t have -‘. Hey, when you recruit at the level that Alabama and Georgia recruit, you don’t have excuses, because nobody else is in that league other than maybe Ohio State or Clemson and now LSU.

“And listen, I think everyone talking right now is a fan of Kirby Smart but he’s going to catch a lot of heat, and you know it started with the bowl game (the Sugar Bowl loss against Texas) which everyone wrote off as they didn’t care and this season has been a roller coaster. And the one thing this season didn’t have until Saturday was that predictable one-off Kirby Smart blowout. Got that now!”

It’s hard to argue with Finebaum on that point as Georgia’s offense has been stuck in the mud for much of the season, despite having a third-year starting quarterback, arguably the nation’s most talented and deep offensive line and perhaps the most explosive running back in the nation all to work with in Athens.

Following Georgia’s 2019 SEC Championship Game loss, Smart suggested that Georgia is running the same plays as LSU, the Bulldogs just aren’t having the level of success as the Tigers on the field with those plays. If that’s really true, or what Smart believes, that may be an even more damning statement as any casual fan can see the difference between these teams when it comes to an offensive identity on the field.