Georgia football will take on TCU in the 2023 National Championship game. Below you can find live updates, practice notes and injury news for the game.

Georgia enters the game with a 14-0 record, while TCU is 13-1. The game will be played on Jan. 9 in Los Angeles.

Georgia football-TCU live updates, practice notes for 2023 National Championship game

Jan. 3: 12:30 p.m. update: Georgia coach Kirby Smart, quarterback Stetson Bennett and defensive back Javon Bullard will speak to reporters at 12:30 p.m.

Kirby Smart: First of all, I’d like to thank the CFP for taking the time to put this together and having a great original semifinal game there at the Peach Bowl and now headed to the National Championship.

Our kids are really excited ready to head out to Cali we’ll be doing later this week. Looking forward to the opportunity. I’ve got a lot of respect for TCU and their program and Coach Dykes, what a tremendous job he’s done there.

Had the great fortune of seeing him and Max out at the Heisman Trophy ceremony and have so much respect for their program, them as people. And what a great opportunity it is to play in a large setting, in a great setting for a CFP National Championship.

Kirby, you probably know there’s a record number of points scored in those semifinals. With the playoff bracket being expanded, do you see any evidence of guys even at this point just being tired, what’s your reaction to that?

COACH SMART: I don’t know how to pinpoint it. I don’t know. Traditionally the teams that are in these games, they’re pretty good offensively. But you’d like to say they’re also pretty good defensively, but I think the studies and numbers indicate that as the season goes on and especially the semifinal and final games, scoring has to be going up. What that is, I can’t really pinpoint it. I don’t know that I would say it was just being tired because you could say that’s relative to offense as well that you can get tired on offense. You can get tired on defense.

But I certainly think it’s hard to play quality defense any more because I know we try really hard here and I know they do at TCU as well. Joe Gillespie does an unbelievable job, their defensive coordinator. And it seems that tackling becomes worse as the season goes on. And there’s more scoring. But I don’t know why that is.

I’ve been a part of some unique national championships with the LSU/Alabama ones and the rematch that was lower scoring but outside of that I’ve been part of a lot of shootouts.

You’ve been through a 15-game season. In the back of your mind have you thought what it’s going to look like with 12 or they could play 16 or 17?

COACH SMART: I haven’t really thought about it because I know that’s coming down the road. But at the end of the day, the gap, the space between the last game being the conference championships and the semifinals probably bothers me more than anything else because I think you lose rhythm there. So I don’t know that it’s the total number of games as much as it is the layoff in between. If it was continuous, I’m not saying you wouldn’t tend to see higher scoring, you probably would see higher scoring, but I don’t think it would be as bad of some of the performances.

I know you’ve taken a look at TCU. Can you kind of give us a crib notes version of what makes TCU unique offensively and defensively? And I know it always comes back to players, but they do play a 3-3-5 we don’t always see. And obviously Coach Dykes is revered for some of his offensive strategies.

COACH SMART: Yeah, tremendous team. Tremendous program. He’s won wherever he’s been. He’s done a great job. Their kids believe. They have, I feel like just reading and listening about them, a lot of similarities to our kids in terms of the culture created there, the way they play, the way they believe.

I think I saw a stat, they have the most comebacks in college football in the fourth quarter. And that shows what your mental makeup is. Their conference has been in a lot of tight ball games and they’ve won those tight ball games. And done an incredible job with what they do. And they create really tough situations defensively, do an incredible job on special teams. Have one of the best returners I’ve ever faced in the return game and score a lot of points on offense with the Heisman Trophy candidate quarterback. So it’s a recipe to be playing for the national championship.

One element of TCU’s offense is they throw a lot of passes at or behind the line of scrimmage and use those to move the chains and also get some explosive – what challenges does that present with your defense with that element of the offense?

COACH SMART: I think all of college football is that way more of the game played on the perimeter not just unique to TCU they throw the ball vertical down the field. They have a lot of size outside so they can cover you up on the perimeter game and they can launch shots and they had a ton of good plays throughout the year.

With Duggan, he completed a lot of passes when they’re behind schedule. He gets a lot of notoriety with his running ability. What have you seen from him that allows him to make those plays when the down and distance isn’t favorable?

COACH SMART: He’s got great players to do it with. He understands defenses. I think he’s very smart. There’s no defense he’s going to see that he hasn’t seen before. You’re not tricking an experienced quarterback, very similar with Stetson.

You’ve got to do it better than they do it. You’ve got to out-executed them. There’s no tricking them. And he does a tremendous job of that. They have a system to allow him to manage that and to get back to third downs where you’ve got a shot to convert them.

11:30 a.m. update: There is one final college football game left in the 2022 college football season and Georgia will be playing in it, as the Bulldogs take on TCU in the 2023 National Championship game.

The Bulldogs got here after beating Ohio State 42-41 in the Peach Bowl. TCU meanwhile took down Michigan in the Fiesta Bowl. Both games were thrillers but the Bulldogs made it known they will have to play better if they are to beat TCU.

“If we want any chance at winning a national championship, we have to play a lot better football than we played tonight,” Kirby Smart said. “We’ve got to keep the resiliency and composure along with us.”

Georgia and TCU last met in the 2016 Liberty Bowl, which resulted in a 31-23 win for the Bulldogs. It marked the conclusion of Smart’s first season at Georgia.

The Horned Frogs are led by Heisman Trophy finalist Max Duggan at the quarterback position. He has shined under first-year head coach Sonny Dykes.

TCU also has one of the top wide receivers in the country in Quentin Johnston, who took home MVP honors for the Fiesta Bowl. Given how much Georgia struggled to defend Marvin Harrison Jr. in the Ohio State win, the Bulldogs will want to put their best foot forward in defending TCU’s offense.

Georgia will be looking to become the first team to win back-to-back national championships since Alabama did it during the 2011 and 2012 seasons. The Bulldogs are 14-0 on the season and 28-1 over the last two years.

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