The wheels were set in motion somewhere during the 2019 SEC Championship.

Georgia was taken to the woodshed by an LSU team who became one of the most dominant offensive forces ever after Ed Orgeron brought in Joe Brady to implement modern spread passing concepts. Brady went on to win the Broyles Award as the nation’s top assistant during LSU’s title season before jumping back to the NFL.

What was clear that day as LSU fans took over Mercedes-Benz Stadium was that Kirby Smart needed his version of Brady. It’s not that Smart needed a 20-something wunderkind who was plucked out of obscurity to run a high-profile college offense. What Georgia needed was the right offensive mind to maximize the gobs of talent that Smart brought to Athens. It wasn’t acceptable that the Dawgs scored just 20.8 points per game against teams who finished in the AP Top 25, and with Jake Fromm moving on to the NFL, UGA got a chance to turn the page. That meant a philosophical change to hire someone who could utilize more disguised looks with a bit more tempo.

That meant hiring Todd Monken.

Like Brady, Monken came from the NFL. Unlike Brady, he wasn’t some young up-and-comer. Monken was a 53-year-old former offensive coordinator who wasn’t retained by the Cleveland Browns new coaching staff and he was in search of his next opportunity after working for 5 different teams (3 NFL, 2 college) in the 2010s alone.

Fast forward 3 years later. Monken’s offensive play-calling fueled Georgia to its best unit in program history for a Dawgs team who clinched a repeat national championship with a 65-point outburst in the title game.

Even the most optimistic, message-board posting Georgia fan couldn’t have predicted Monken would put together that type of run. Dare I say, Monken has not only proven to be a slight step above Brady because of the whole “repeating” thing, but I’d argue that he was the best assistant hire of the Playoff era.

Here’s what my list would look like:

  1. Todd Monken, Georgia OC
  2. Lane Kiffin, Alabama OC
  3. Joe Brady, LSU WRs/passing game coordinator
  4. Steve Sarkisian, Alabama OC
  5. Ryan Day, Ohio State OC

You’ll notice a trend at the top of that list. All 3 of those coordinators were brought in to overhaul their team’s respective offenses, and ultimately, they had a major say in teams who won titles.

As great as Sarkisian was — he led Alabama to its 2 most prolific offenses in school history — he wasn’t tasked with the schematic overhaul that Kiffin had when he was hired following Alabama’s frustrating end to the 2013 season. Kiffin’s spread concepts established the new standard, and he had a major contribution to the Tide’s second wave of its current run under Nick Saban. But of course, Kiffin’s Year 3 at Alabama ended awkwardly with him leaving for the FAU job and not calling plays in the title game during the repeat bid in 2016.

Monken, on the other hand, was very much calling plays during Georgia’s repeat bid on Monday night.

We probably should’ve known that Monken was saving his best for last when we saw that creative little screen to manufacture Brock Bowers a touch on the first drive. It was actually a concept that was utilized in the Kentucky game but Dominick Blaylock couldn’t hold his block and it was stopped short of the sticks.

After hearing about Bowers’ lack of targets for the majority of the Peach Bowl, Monken dialed up looks that were specific to the All-American tight end. Watch this video and count all the ways in which Bowers was utilized:

You’ve got a screen, a couple skinny posts, a reverse handoff, a drag, a wheel route after lining up inline, an end-around handoff, a misdirection play in the flat and that back-shoulder route to the pylon. That’s 8 different ways that Monken got the ball into Bowers’ hands.

Remember the pre-Monken days when Georgia’s best passing game play was a low-percentage back-shoulder throw? Or better yet, remember when it was all about who “the next great Georgia running back” was?

Now consider all the misdirection and window-dressing we see from Monken concepts. You’ve got plenty of 12-personnel (1 receiver, 2 tight ends) bunch-receiver sets, 5-wide sets, etc. Georgia’s offense found more versatility than ever before, and while Stetson Bennett IV deserves a ton of credit for that during a year in which he became the program’s first ever 4,000-yard passer, so does Monken.

They shared on the ESPN broadcast on Monday night that the duo actually had a bit of a love-hate relationship. Whatever disagreements they had clearly yielded the best possible Georgia result. Beating elite competition with a versatile, high-octane offense was always the goal.

Monken inherited an offense who struggled in those spots in 2019. To say that he turned it around drastically would be a wild understatement:

UGA offense
2019
2020
2021
2022
Scoring/game
30.8
32.3
38.6
41.4
Pass yards/game
223
249.9
251.9
295.8
Yards/play
6.1
6.2
6.98
7.17
Scoring vs. AP finishers
20.8
25.3
28.0
46.6

That last number — 46.6 points per game vs. AP finishers — was the best in America and it was only boosted by 1 non-offensive touchdown.

Regardless of how things play out for Monken in the post-Bennett era, you can’t take that away from him. Coordinators usually don’t stick around for title No. 2. They often use title No. 1 as the stepping stone to take the next opportunity, just as Sarkisian did. Shoot, I guess you could argue say that same thing about Kiffin’s awkward pre-title game exit.

We don’t know what the plans are for Monken. We do know that he rebuilt Southern Miss and then jumped back to the NFL after Year 3. If there’s any sort of itch to run his own program — and not just run his own high-powered offense — one would think that he’ll have opportunities. But there aren’t any FBS head coach openings, so one would think any sort of decision to leave Georgia would be about considering a return to the NFL.

Then again, he saw with the Browns how easy it was to be a casualty of a bad situation. Brady learned the same lesson with the Carolina Panthers when he turned down a significant raise at LSU to join forces with Matt Rhule. Monken certainly has more stability in Athens, where he’ll continue to get to work with elite talent and have total autonomy to run his offense.

Oh, and that raise is coming. Obviously.

Monken became an invaluable piece of the Georgia machine. If he were to leave, he’d be the new, remarkably high standard for all future offensive play-callers to live up to. The combination of a revamped scheme and top-tier talent worked wonders, just as it did at other elite programs in the Playoff era like Alabama and LSU.

But none of them yielded the result that Georgia got on Monday night. Monken did everything and more that Smart could’ve hoped for back in 2019.

All Smart can hope for now is that Monken isn’t finished dialing up his magic in Athens.