LOS ANGELES—There won't be the daily drives between Athens and Atlanta this week for Chidera Uzo-Diribe like there was last week, but Georgia's first-year outside linebacker's coach is keeping tabs of his growing family back home via FaceTime three time zones away.
The 30-year old and wife Hana welcomed twin girls Amara and Amani on Dec. 28, three days before the national semifinal Peach Bowl game against Ohio State. He rattles off the times they were born—5:27 a.m. and 5:29 a.m.—like a proud poppa.
"Man, it was hectic," he said. "Me and wife talked about it. It was one of the best weeks of my life. To have those two little baby girls and being able to spend time with them now has given me a whole different perspective that you can't put into words."
Now he's finishing up his first season at Georgia by going up against TCU and Sonny Dykes Monday night. He coached under Dykes as defensive line coach at SMU in 2021 and followed him to Fort Worth on his new staff. Weeks into the job, Georgia coach Kirby Smart plucked him away.
Uzo-Diribe was hired By Dykes from Kansas by defensive coordinator Jim Leavitt who he worked under as a graduate assistant at Colorado. That's where Uzo-Diribe was a standout defensive end. Uzo-Diribe was impressed with Dykes' CEO mentality.
"He was one of those guys that you knew early, he was destined to be really good," Dykes said Saturday. "He's got a great disposition when it comes to coaching and communicating with players. Really, really effective communicator. Does a really good job of walking the fine line between having great relationships with players, but at the same time having that authoritative part of that relationship that's important."
Georgia coach Kirby Smart said Saturday that Dykes gave "rave reviews" about Uzo-Diribe during the interview process that Smart let co-defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann and Will Muschamp manage the interview process because they would work more closely with him.
Smart took part in the interview and made the final call on what he called "a really good hire," nearly a year later.
"We had done a lot of research across the country and were familiar with a lot of coaches who could have come into our system and probably know our system better, but we wanted to get the best coach, not the most familiar," Smart said. "Once we interviewed him, we saw what people told us."
TCU freshman defensive lineman Damonic Williams said he and Uzo-Diribe "really locked in," during the recruiting process. Uzo-Diribe offered him when he was at Kansas, SMU and then TCU where he signed.
"He went to TCU and said come on, you can be part of the family," Williams said. "One day I just got a call and he said stuff happened and I'm going to take the job at Georgia. I was like, OK, you've got to do what you've got to do. You can't be mad at that."
Uzo-Diribe calls his year at Georgia a "great learning experience," working with Smart and the defensive staff led by co-coordinators Glenn Schumann and Will Muschamp.
"You can't put a value on some of the information I've been able to learn and pick up this year," he said.
Uzo-Diribe is returning close to home to his hometown of Corona, outside of Los Angeles, for the championship game.
"This is home, man," he said. "I lived 20 minutes from here. All my family is down this way. This is home."
The national championship game is a tough ticket so Uzo-Diribe said he capped off tickets.
"Not everybody gets to come to this one," he said.
Uzo-Diribe's outside linebackers room took a big blow when Nolan Smith, one of Georgia's top defensive players, was lost for the season with a torn pectoral muscle.
Smith credited Uzo-Diribe "with a different type of mindset in which he thinks from pass rush and also the different things he taught me in the run game."
Smith had 3 sacks, 7 tackles for loss and 18 tackles in eight games before his injury.
"I don't want to call him old, but he played when fullbacks were in the game," Smith said. "We don't play runs like that no more. Those guys had fullbacks back when he played at Colorado against Stanford. I took run keys and pass keys from him."
Uzo-Diribe said he was attracted to Georgia by the brand of defensive football established by Smart at Georgia.
"Just to learn from one of the greats," he said. "That was my mission to learn from a guy like that."
Dykes expects Uzo-Diribe to be in demand in the years to come on the coaching market.
"He's one of those guys, I expect him to be a coordinator, head coach pretty quickly," Dykes said. "I think he's on a really rapid rise. And I think a lot of him and got a great family. And he's going to be a real star in our profession."
This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: UGA football assistant Chidera Uzo-Diribe juggles family, playoff run
