Reports from Athens this spring suggest Georgia’s offensive line is having its way against the team’s defensive line. While that’s good news in one sense, the program’s defensive-minded coach doesn’t seem to be very thrilled with the development.

In fact, Kirby Smart and his coaches even flipped offensive lineman Chris Barnes to the defensive side of the ball to help out the thin unit. During his latest media availability, Smart addressed how well Barnes has adjusted to his new role thus far in spring camp.

“He’s still learning where to line up. I’ll be honest with you. We are so low numbers on the defensive line, we are extremely struggling on the defensive line from a depth standpoint,” Smart said. “We have so many guys banged up with injuries, but Chris has been over there.”

The plan this offseason wasn’t to move the redshirt sophomore, but it appears the switch was done more out of necessity than anything. Smart offered up that it’s hard to judge the former offensive lineman on defense because he’s still learning even the terminology of the defensive side of the ball.

“Unfortunately for him, he didn’t get to go thru the meetings in the offseason. He doesn’t know what the words mean,” Smart continued. “He’s playing really hard but he’s got to play with better pad level, he’s got to play lower, and that’s really on us. We haven’t had a chance to work with him. He has been very open, he knows it gives him a chance to contribute.”

Smart was later asked about his team’s inability to stop Alabama from running the ball during the second half of the National Championship Game. The Georgia coach noted that will likely continue to be the case until the coaches can recruit enough big bodies to plug up those issues on defense.

“They ran the ball well on us, especially late in the game. It wasn’t so much the overtime, it was more the fourth quarter, and we certainly have to get better at defending that, especially against big, physical people like them, like our offense. The way you do that is to have big people to combat big people with,” Smart said in a bit of a recruiting pitch. “We don’t have a lot of big guys so we are working to recruit, trying to find 290-pounds plus guys that can help us become more stout for us to play the way we want to play, we have got to have physical guys.”

For any big recruits out there listening, Smart made it clear the Dawgs need some help up front. Will the challenge be accepted?