ATHENS — Kirby Smart knows where the conversation is going, and he wants to make sure Georgia football fans get it right.

The changes you see to the Bulldogs’ offense have much less to do with who is calling the plays than who is pulling the trigger at quarterback and running and catching the football.

In other words, it’s not necessarily a Todd Monken-Mike Bobo thing when it comes to evaluating the direction of the offense.

And yet, there has been some off-season trepidation that Monken’s move to the NFL makes for an imminent offensive drop off.

This, even though it could be argued that Bobo did more with less than Monken had — and certainly without ultra-talented defenses that most often allowed a wide margin for error in games where the offensive sputtered.

Indeed, the highest-scoring Georgia offense was the 2014 Georgia unit quarterbacked by first-year starter Hutson Mason.

A look at Bobo’s resume reveals he also coached …

• The SEC’s all-time leading passer (Aaron Murray)

• Georgia’s richest No. 1 overall pick (Matthew Stafford)

• UGA’s all-time winningest quarterback (David Greene).

Oh, and Bobo played quarterback for the Bulldogs, too, and he was pretty solid in his own right.

So when Smart was asked about replacing Monken last week, he provided an in-depth answer aimed at educating the general football audience.

“I think a lot of people look at offensive coordinator as an island and this guy that sits over there and comes up with this stuff himself,” Smart said.

“Well, they have 15, 20 meetings a week on Sunday night, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, where each coach gives a presentation of ideas or things they can do offensively, and he gets to sit back and be the decision maker on what’s in and what’s not.”

Yes, Monken was elite when it came to orchestrating and isolating matchups with shifts, motions and formations with an experienced quarterback.

But Georgia’s success was as much about gifted players who could execute, whether that was Kenny McIntosh not dropping a pass throughout his UGA career, Darnell Washington creating a physical mismatches at 6-foot-7 and 280 pounds or Brock Bowers turning short throws into explosive plays.

“I don’t know what it will look like; the offensive staff has to make a decision because you don’t replace Darnell,” Smart said during a Radio Row interview in Nashville with Atlanta’s 680 The Fan.

“The most common fan would say, ‘well you just put another tight end in there.’ No, (because) they might not be able to do exactly what Darnell did. So we may have a third receiver in there, or we may have to use an extra back, or we may have to open things up.”

For that matter, Stetson Bennett’s scrambling abilities were at times the difference when plays broke down and the pass rush closed in.

“A lot of times your offense is predicated off your quarterback play,” Smart said, " so how well will our quarterback play, and that’s the question.”

And there it was, the money quote from the head coach, and the takeaway for those wondering about the Georgia offense.

The Bulldogs will only be as good as their quarterback play, regardless of how powerful their offensive line or deep the receiving corps.

Smart says Georgia has yet to settle on quarterback.

The Bulldogs players have followed Smart’s lead in expressing confidence in all three candidates and saying nice things about whichever one they are asked about individually.

“Each one of them has individual things they need to work on,” Smart said last week, “but for the whole I want to see them manage the offense, understand the offense, get people lined up and execute.

“The guy that does that best in critical situations will be the guy that becomes the quarterback.”

And the guy that determines the ceiling — and floor — for the Georgia football offense.

“We’re not who we were last year,” Smart said at SEC Media Days. “We don’t have Stetson Bennett, he was a good athlete, he could improvise, so we’re a different team

“So Mike has to take this team and figure out his strengths and weaknesses.”