Start of Kirby Smart's Georgia career continues to be eerily similar to Mark Richt's

Heading into the 2016 season, the Georgia Bulldogs parted ways with coach Mark Richt and hired Kirby Smart to try to take the next step as a program.

Instead, Smart’s career at Georgia has been insanely similar to Richt’s through his first 3.5 years in Athens.

As you can see below, with the exception of two more games played by Smart’s squads, the records are nearly identical:

The starts of Richt & Smart at Georgia continue to amaze:

RICHT
2001: 8-4
2002: 13-1 (SEC #1)
2003: 11-3 (SEC #2)
2004: 5-1

SMART
2016: 8-5
2017: 13-2 (SEC #1)
2018: 11-3 (SEC #2)
2019: 5-1

— David Paschall (@DavidSPaschall) October 13, 2019

Richt had a long career at Georgia, and Smart is also off to a good start. However, fans were expecting great things from Smart, so we’ll see if he can start differentiating himself from Richt moving forward.

As of right now, those records and the Dawgs’ finishes in the SEC are eerily similar.