This is Part 16 and the final entry in a series breaking down and analyzing each position group for the Georgia Bulldogs in advance of spring football practice, which is scheduled to begin on March 19.

ATHENS — Georgia fans believe strongly in coach Kirby Smart, and Smart believes strongly in himself. That will come in this handy this season as the Bulldogs and Smart will go to battle with a much less experienced coaching staff surrounding them.

Smart lost at least 97 years worth of experience off the staff that helped him compile a 24-5 record over the last two seasons. That included veteran offensive and defensive coordinators Jim Chaney and Mel Tucker, respectively, as well as some behind-the-scenes personnel that had more to do with the Bulldogs’ success than a lot of people might realize.

Tucker and Chaney had both been with Smart since he first became Georgia’s head coach 2016. In fact, Chaney was Smart’s first hire in December of 2015, and that proved critical for Smart to land his second hire, which was offensive line coach Sam Pittman.

Retrospectively, Tucker was in the plans all along. But Tucker, then the defensive backs coach at Alabama, wasn’t officially on board until he and Glenn Schumann accompanied Smart on a UGA-provided private jet back to Athens from Phoenix the morning after the Crimson Tides’ win over Clemson in the College Football Playoff championship. Schumann had been a defensive analyst for Smart at Alabama.

That gave Smart two solid foundational keystones on which to build his staff. In Chaney and Pittman, he was able to hand off the offense without needing to provide much input over and above broad philosophical parameters.

Meanwhile, in Tucker, Smart had a near-perfect pragmatic task master. A former NFL defensive coordinator and interim head coach, Tucker had the knowledge and insight to be able to implement whatever it was Smart was demanding, either in the meeting room or in the heat of the moment on the field. Tucker also lacked ego, so he was able to readily defer to Smart whenever needed. He was also comfortable and confident enough in his own knowledge to put his own spin on things, or to overrule Smart in some cases.

From that, the Bulldogs will be moving to a young duo of first-time defensive coordinators in Dan Lanning and Schumann. The 32-year-old Lanning, who will be calling the defensive plays and have the most seniority, hasn’t coordinated a defense or offense even on the high school or small-college level. Same for the 28-year-old Schumann, who will serve as co-coordinator.

On the offensive side of the ball, James Coley succeeds Chaney as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. He was co-coordinator last year after moving over from wide receivers. Coley had been a coordinator before at Florida State and Miami, and he coached quarterbacks with the Hurricanes. But this is the first time at Georgia that Coley will have total charge of practice planning and play scripts, in addition to game-day play-calling. It’s a big job that Chaney was probably under-appreciated for outside of coaching circles.

Equally unknown will be the effects of Smart losing some accomplished coaches off his support staff. Foremost among those is Jay Johnson. Johnson joined the Bulldogs as an offensive quality control consultant in February of 2017 after losing his job as Minnesota’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. After Johnson left to join Tucker as offensive coordinator, Georgia quarterback Jake Fromm called him, “the unsung hero of Georgia football.”

“He did wonders for me in that quarterback room,” Fromm said during Sugar Bowl preparations.

Smart knows this, of course. So he went to the proverbial “coaches waiver wire” to find a replacement for Johnson. That brought the Bulldogs Shawn Watson, who was similarly dismissed as Pitt’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. Watson previously held coordinator positions at Texas and Louisville.

On the defensive side, Georgia is sure to miss the services of Tyson Summers, who joined Tucker as Colorado’s defensive coordinator. Summers assisted Tucker with the defensive backs as a quality-control analyst last year. That’s after being a head coach at Georgia Southern and a defensive coordinator at Colorado State.

Smart lost two other members of his defensive support staff to Colorado: Travares Tillman, who will coach defensive backs, and Brian Michalowski, who will coach outside linebackers. Also, Jesse Stone, a graduate assistant who helped Georgia’s offense, accepted a full-time position as an offensive analyst at Miami.

None of this caught Smart by surprise. For every exit, Smart has located and brought in a replacement.

Such staff transitions are something Smart witnessed up close and personal as Nick Saban’s defensive coordinator and right-hand man at Alabama. But this is the first time he has had to deal with it en masse at Georgia.

The Bulldogs can only hope the transition is as seamless for them as it has been for Saban and the Crimson Tide. The expectations are equally as high, that’s for sure.

Let’s look at the changes that are known at this point:

NEW ASSIGNMENTS

This concludes DawgNation’s Spring Football Analysis series. Following are the previous submissions:

SPRING FOOTBALL ANALYSIS