At Florida, they’d probably call this guy the gamechanger coordinator, but Georgia is more mundane about things.
Kirby Smart continues to fill out his support staff, as Dawgs247 has confirmed he is hiring former Duke Special Teams Coordinator/Recruiting Coordinator [Defense]/Defensive Assistant Kirk Benedict as his special teams analyst, replacing Robby Discher, who left Georgia in January to become the special teams’ coordinator at Tulane.
Part of David Cutcliffe’s final coaching staff at Duke in 2021, Benedict spent eight seasons with the Blue Devils. He was an operations assistant helping with special teams in 2014 and 2015 before spending the next two years as a graduate assistant on the offense and special teams. From 2018-20, he was the special teams coach and assistant on defense. He coached 2020 Lou Groza semifinalist Charlie Ham and Ray Guy semifinalist Porter Wilson and his coverage units routinely ranked among the best in the ACC,
Dude certainly seems qualified… as an analyst, I mean. It remains to be seen how good a gamechanger he is.
Get The Picture 
Welcome to the family cptn Kirk!
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Maybe reading into things where there isn’t anything, but my first thought was “Benedict is close to Cutcliffe, Cutcliffe is close to the Mannings, Arch is close to picking Georgia.”
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Apparently Cutcliffe is close to taking an off the field role at Texas. At this point, I’m guessing that means Arch is heading to Austin if his grandfather has anything to say about it.
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It might be nice if coach Cutcliffe ended up in Athens. Good person, no ego and excellent coach who might like the analyst life. That assumes the full blessing of one Todd Monken.
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Read somewhere Clemson is off his list. So Dawgs still in it for mellonheads nephew
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DB hire will be critical.
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It’s one of those under the radar hires that gets little or no attention that is a superb add. Lot of people wringing their hands over losing Addae to Miami. He was at West Virginia the year before and while it was considered a solid hire, nobody held a parade for the guy when he got to Athens.
At some point, somebody is going to figure out that not only is the roster deep; the coaching staff and support staff and recruiting team has a deep bench too.
Kirby just continues to get better and better at this.
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Sure hope Cristobal and Addae don’t poach our DB class. Remember, Addae brought Tykee Smith with him to Athens. Cristobal strikes me as the type who would definitely try and do that, especially the Florida guys we signed.
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I would have thought the Special Teams Analyst would be Scott Cochran?
Trying not to assume anything about that situation and hoping he is well.
I expected big things when we hired him, especially when reading about what his former players thought of him.
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I think Kirby has the whole “this is how Saban did it” thing figured out, and hopefully Josh Brooks keeps listening.
Going to be very interesting to see the $$$ and guarantee years in Kirby’s new contract.
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At Florida, he would be “daily trophy coordinator for 2-star players that embody the Gator Standard”
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