Kirby Smart has had an Alabama problem. Was it just Nick Saban or something worse?

We know Kirby Smart had a Nick Saban problem. You could see by the tension on his face, the uncharacteristic gambles he made and the unusual ways that games would go sideways for Georgia when Smart had to face his mentor.

But we’re about to find out if Smart also has an Alabama problem.

When you’ve won two national championships before turning 50 years old and carry a winning percentage that places you behind just Knute Rockne, Frank Leahy and Urban Meyer in the entire history of college football, there’s not much to nitpick. As he reaches his 10th year as a head coach, Smart is undeniably on track to become an all-time great.

Smart’s record, though, has one sore spot: In seven games against Alabama, he’s lost six of them.

“What’s everybody else’s record against them?” Smart shot back to a reporter after last year’s 41-34 loss in Tuscaloosa. “Anybody got one better than 1-6 that’s played them six times? I don’t think so.”

Though Smart’s attempt to deflect an obvious point of frustration wasn’t technically accurate — Dabo Swinney managed to go 2-2 at Clemson and Gus Malzahn was 3-5 during his time at Auburn — his general point is correct. Beating Alabama has been very, very hard for most of the last two decades.

There are two reasons why that dynamic needs to change for Georgia when they meet Saturday night.

First and foremost, there’s no Saban on the opposite sideline anymore. But almost as relevant is that it’s Smart’s first shot at beating Alabama in Athens, where Georgia hasn’t lost since Oct. 12, 2019.

“I know our fan base has been hungry for a game like this at night,” Smart said this week.

Smart’s lone win over Alabama was arguably the biggest of his career: At the end of the 2021 season, Georgia secured a 33-18 victory in the College Football Playoff championship game to secure the program’s first national title since 1980.

But between the 2017 national championship game where Tua Tagovailoa came off the bench and threw the winning touchdown in overtime and three SEC championship game losses to Alabama – including 2018 and 2023 where only the winner went to the playoff – that’s a lot of damage to Smart’s résumé courtesy of one program.

In fact, if you set games against Alabama to the side, Smart’s career record would be 107-13 with a best-ever winning percentage of 89.1.

That’s not a critique, it’s just reality. For most of Smart’s time at Georgia, he was facing the arguably greatest college football coach of all time and the only program in the country that had as many blue-chip prospects on the roster. Even if you believe coaching against Saban got in Smart’s head, it was always a coin flip at best.

But Saban’s gone. Georgia’s finally at home. And after last year, when the Bulldogs’ defense gave up 551 yards in Tuscaloosa, there’s really no excuse.

“Being at home is an advantage just as I say going on the road is hard,” Smart told reporters this week. “Last year was hard. Playing at home, it helps. The atmosphere helps, the crowd noise helps, being familiar with your surrounding and all that stuff helps. But at the end of the day you have to go play football and it comes down to matchups and who blocks and tackles the best and who executes and does things in the key moments of the game. Glad it's at home but we still have to play well.”

This is a critical moment in Alabama’s season, and arguably in the tenure of second-year coach Kalen DeBoer.

Beating Georgia in Year 1 was the high-water mark in a year that started to go sideways the very next week in a shocking loss at Vanderbilt. In fact, Alabama is now just 2-4 on the road under DeBoer including a terrible performance in Week 1 this year at Florida State.

That 31-17 loss removed a significant portion of Alabama’s margin for error. A loss to Georgia would leave the Crimson Tide at 2-2 and on the verge of elimination from the CFP discussion. Alabama calmed the waters around DeBoer in a 38-14 win over Wisconsin two Saturdays ago, but that may have been more about Wisconsin’s struggles than anything. With a loss this weekend, the crisis machine will start whirring again from Huntsville down to Mobile.

The stakes aren’t that big for Georgia. With a road win at Tennessee already in their back pocket and an opportunity to play Texas at home in November, the Bulldogs are going to be positioned well for the CFP regardless of result.

But dropping to 0-2 against DeBoer would make it far more difficult to write Smart’s record against Alabama off as a Saban thing. If Georgia is the program it thinks it is and expects to be, these are the kinds of games you win.

In the past, Georgia fans would dread these moments. The last time Alabama played in Athens, the Bulldogs were a 1 1/2-point favorites. They completely fell on their face, with Alabama dominating from start to finish in a 38-10 Saban masterclass.

That was a decade ago. It was also fairly typical of Georgia at that time against the truly elite teams, which is why the school parted ways with Mark Richt and set out to build its own version of Alabama with someone who knew the blueprint.

Obviously that decision paid off. After going back-to-back in 2022, it seemed like Georgia had replaced Alabama as college football’s premier program.

But since then, Smart has lost two more times to the Tide. It’s hard to claim you’re the top dog in the sport when someone has your number to this degree.

Georgia has won enough under Smart, and the sport’s playoff system has changed enough, that these big games no longer seem spooky. Either way, it’ll probably be fine.

But an opportunity for catharsis at home against your program’s only major stumbling block doesn’t come along very often. If Smart wants to change the narrative against Alabama, he better grab it now.