Smart follows other coaches going through growing pains in first year

Almost five decades ago, Bobby Bowden was in a similar situation to Kirby Smart.

In 1970, Bowden took over a West Virginia program coming off of a 10-win season. It was a tough task to keep a program like West Virginia, steeped in at least local football tradition, afloat to the standard previous head coach Jim Carlen set.

At the same time, Bowden was in a different circumstance as he was already familiar with West Virginia’s personnel since he was an assistant prior to the promotion. Even so, Bowden knows that each head coach has his own vision for how he wants to run a football program.

Bowden went through some growing pains in an 8-3 season, which included a heartbreaking loss to rival Pittsburgh.

Eventually, Bowden concluded his tenure with the Mountaineers with a 9-3 record in 1975 before becoming the legendary head coach at Florida State who won two national championships.

Bowden said it could take some time for Smart to adjust to everything that’s new about going from a defensive coordinator to a head coach.

“He has to learn their personnel, and then he has to be able to recruit his kind of players,” Bowden said of Smart, who was on his Florida State staff in 2002 and 2003. “He’s going to sign the kind of guys Alabama signs. It doesn’t happen overnight.”

While Smart’s defense started the season slow, highlighted by allowing Mississippi to total 510 yards, the group has shown improvement with his and defensive coordinator Mel Tucker’s scheme. The offense, however, has struggled with various inconsistencies throughout the season as it enters a 7:30 p.m. kickoff Saturday at Kentucky.

That adjustment has been a bit difficult based on the kind of philosophy both Smart and offensive coordinator Jim Chaney are trying to implement with the Bulldogs.

This part of the process of going from long-time assistant to first-year head coach is something everyone in the business deals with. Rarely do first-year coaches have title-contending success.

“You got to get over the hump,” Bowden said. “They would’ve won more games if (former and current Miami head coach Mark) Richt was still there because he was familiar with them, right? So Kirby comes in, and he’s got to rebuild it the way he wants it rebuilt. He’s smart enough to do that.”

LSU interim head coach Ed Orgeron remembers what it was like to be a first-year head coach at Mississippi after spending 21 years as an assistant. Orgeron’s situation was a little different as he was USC’s defensive line coach before making the jump to run the Rebels.

For Orgeron, the adjustment of being familiar with one way of thinking as an assistant to manning an entire program was a bit tough during his time with Mississippi, which contributed to his eventual dismissal.

“I found out that you can’t treat your coaching staff the way you treat a defensive lineman,” Orgeron said. “You can’t treat a quarterback the way you treat a defensive lineman. They all respond differently. I think those are the things I learned. I learned to let my staff manage their position and have confidence in them doing it, and those things have worked.”

Orgeron hasn’t been a full-time head coach since his stint with the Rebels but he was previously an interim head coach with USC in 2013 and took over for LSU after the athletic program fired Les Miles earlier this season.

Since his hiring, Orgeron’s team has won its past three games (outscoring opponents a combined 125-38) and in impressive fashion, which has put himself in position among others as a candidate for the LSU head coaching job.

“Some guys adjust to it better than others, sure,” Orgeron said. “Some guys have started off with their first coaching job and have done very well. I know (former USC and current Seattle Seahawks head coach) Pete Carroll, it took him his third coaching job for him to realize the type of coach he wanted to be. Here is my third coaching job, and I really feel we’ve identified some things. But as a first-year coach every day is a new problem, every day is, ‘How are you going to handle it?’ ”

One factor magnifying Smart’s first season is that he went from assistant to head coach at a major SEC program.

Florida’s Jim McElwain got his first head coaching job at Colorado State, a program where not as much attention was placed upon him. Being in that position helped McElwain learn the ropes of what it’s like to be in control of a football program.

“Sometimes you don’t know the pitfalls here and there,” McElwain said. “Obviously, I don’t make the right decisions all the time and never will, but at the same time, that was an invaluable teaching experience or learning experience for me.”

There was hope from at least a portion of the Georgia fan base that Smart would be able to pick up where Richt left off. Through eight games that hasn’t seemed to be the case.

But Bowden said patience is key when a coaching change like this occurs.

“They’ll give you more than one year, won’t they?” Bowden said with a chuckle. “They’ll usually let you coach three years before firing you.”

The Telegraph’s Ron Seibel contributed to the reporting of this story.

This story was originally published November 4, 2016 at 1:45 PM with the headline "Smart follows other coaches going through growing pains in first year."