Todd Monken has a brilliant offensive mind. He also has a witty, sarcastic mind, and one of the cracks he made six weeks ago was about Mike Bobo’s return to Georgia and how Kirby Smart presented the idea to him: “I knew he was going to join the staff whether I agreed to it or not. It didn’t matter. So he made it seem like it was my choice, but it really wasn’t.”

That brought laughter from the media contingent, but with the news that Monken is off to the Baltimore Ravens and Bobo is stepping into his (old) role as Georgia offensive coordinator, it’s worth recalling what Monken said next. He mentioned how Bobo had shown a “lack of ego” in his role as an analyst, drawn up play cards “like a 22-year-old” and generally been invaluable.

“And to have guys like that that check their ego and have to put up with my ass every day, and the way I am, and to add an extreme amount of value to our staff,” Monken said. “I’m fired up that Mike’s here, and I hope he’s here for an extreme amount of time.”

Yeah. So, about that …

What’s old is new again, with Bobo’s promotion to offensive coordinator being announced within an hour of Monken’s hiring being announced by the Ravens on Tuesday. There were two other options for Smart to go in replacing Monken, and each had its upside but also a downside:

• Look outside the program. Smart may have done that quietly behind the scenes, the same way he hooked up with Monken after the 2019 season for a job that technically still was filled by James Coley. But there may not have been a home-run hire available: Look at the trouble Nick Saban had finding a new offensive coordinator before landing on Tommy Rees, who had an uneven past few years at Notre Dame. And now Notre Dame is having trouble finding a replacement for Rees.

• Promote Buster Faulkner, who spent the past three years working with Monken as an analyst after serving as the offensive coordinator at Southern Miss. While Faulker was intriguing because of his youth, and the unknown that comes with perceived rising stars, he also never has called a play in the SEC. There was some thought he was being groomed as Monken’s eventual replacement, but when Faulkner accepted the job as Georgia Tech’s offensive coordinator, that indicated he knew he wasn’t in line to get the job immediately if Monken left.