Georgia might be the defending champions and the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff, but coach Kirby Smart said there's just as much pressure now as there was during his first season in 2016.
"The standard doesn't change," Smart said Friday on the eve of a Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl matchup against No. 4 Ohio State. "Players change."
But Smart acknowledged the difficulty in trying to repeat as national champions, which hasn't happened in college football since Alabama did it in 2011 and 2012.
Smart left Alabama to become the head coach at Georgia before the 2016 season, but he said he remembers that experience as an assistant on Nick Saban's staff with the Crimson Tide.
"I knew the kind of year it would be," Smart said. "It's always a little tougher to bring everyone back to home base. It was much easier for us this year because we had so many players leave and we had a hungrier young team."
