ATHENS — Georgia head football coach Kirby Smart, along with several players, met with the media on Monday to preview the Bulldogs’ home opener against Tennessee Tech and offered the following comments.
HEAD COACH KIRBY SMART
Opening Statement…
“Excited to be here, excited to get moved on to pursue getting better. We open with Tennessee Tech practice today, and we'll start attacking these guys. They played a really hard-fought game with Middle Tennessee the other night. They had a great comeback and got a lot of respect for the way they played in that game, for sure. Our guys will start getting prepared on them today.”
On facing a man-to-man defense…
“Not necessarily. They've been a pressure team, but they're not necessarily man-to-man pressure. They play a lot of forms of pressure, very similar to what we do in terms of zone, sims, and two traps mixed in with some man-to-man. They probably played a lot more single high, man and zone, than they have in the past to load up on the run. But I wouldn't say anything our offense gets surprises us because we have a huge volume of defense. So, they typically get exposed to a lot of defensive structures. But that's either here nor there. You can do a lot and be no good at it, or you can do a lot and try to be good at it. It's a lot more about the players.”
On which player will wear the green dot on their helmet…
“I hadn't really thought about it. I mean, we share who uses it every day in practice. I'll be honest with you; I don't even know. I mean, CJ [Allen] had it some, Smael [Mondon] had it some, Raylen [Wilson] might have had it some. We have two helmets, so it depends on which pairing of players are in. We have other players that have green dot helmets in case they have to play a position that they're not normally playing. And we had a couple situations like that Saturday that we thought might happen with injuries. So, we had other guys ready and prepared to use the green dot. But as far as I know, we just had the linebackers using it.”
On Arian Smith…
“Yeah, we want to depend on everybody because you don't want to be a one-dimensional team. So, the idea ever since we've been here is spread the ball around. We've had a lot of guys with a lot of touches, nobody with a ton individually. And Arian's been a great case study in that because he's touched the ball vertically. He's touched the ball sideways. He's become a more complete receiver and route runner. I thought he made some plays out on the – besides the rocket sweep things and the edge runs – he made some plays catching the ball outside. And that's big for him. That's growth for him. We need more guys to step up and be able to do that. And we've got to be innovative in ways to get touches that make us hard to defend.”
On player injury updates…
“Joenel [Aguero] was close to being able to play. Worked out before the game. Thought he might be able to go in an emergency. I don't really know today anymore. We just had a walk through. He walked through and hoping he'll be able to go this week. Warren [Brinson] got a little bit of an ankle/contusion, wasn't able to go. We're hopeful he's able to go. Mykel [Williams] has an ankle sprain. It's a grade two, but it's stable. He'll be week-to-week. Probably questionable this week, but not going to be a long-term ankle and we'll see.”
On navigating NIL and the transfer portal…
“Just an organizational conglomeration of information. I can't answer that question. I'm very process, detail oriented. We have a way we go about things. We talk about it. We visit with others. We brainstorm. We do what any good business would do, and we try to make the best decision. When it comes to NIL, what can we raise? What do we have? What do we have available? What's the best value and what kids fit our culture and who's going to be unselfish and come here and play for the University of Georgia and not just for the money? There's a lot of things that go into that decision, and those other decisions you talked about, there's a ton, especially in the offseason.”
On Jared Wilson…
“Knock on wood, I don't think we had an errant snap, and that was something that was really important. We chart his snaps every day, and he's been about 95%, 96% snap accuracy, and that's something that you can't afford to have. It's got to be 100%, and I thought he did a good job of doing that in the game. I think if you ask Jared, there's some things that he should have done better, he could have done better, and he didn't play his best football game. But, like I tell kids all the time, if you miss time in training camp, it tends to show in the first game. He missed some time. He did some really good things, some really athletic things, and then he had a couple plays that he didn't make. I think he was the first guy that came up to me walking off the field and said he screwed up a couple plays, but, you know, that's football.”
On London Humphreys…
It's great. He does a good job. He's probably more in relief for Arian [Smith], and he did a good job. He's got SEC experience. I think that's what, you know, the portal provides you to go get a guy that's been successful and played well in our conference. He's done that. He's proven himself as a guy that can make plays, and he was ready when his number was called. We talk about it all the time. Your opportunity's coming. Are you going to seize the moment when the moment jumps in front of you? He did that.”
On Malaki Starks playing the STAR position…
He did a nice job when he played the star, especially for a guy that didn't rep there, but last week a few times. He didn't get any reps in camp there, so he did a good job jumping in and filling that role. Flexibility, it just depends on the depth at other positions. I mean, Malaki can be our best player at five positions, so it's more a matter of what's around him and what's healthy, working, and what are we going to do defensively. He plays a role at safety. He plays a role at strong safety. He plays a role at the star, so he does a tremendous job. It gives us some depth, but I'd rather not have to be relying on the depth than rely on the guys that practiced all camp.”
On Jalon Walker his ability to play multiple positions…
“We're unique in our defense. I shouldn't say unique. I don't know how many others do what we do defensively because I'm not in their programs. We're very different in regard to what NFL scouts and personnel tell us, that we still train outside backers to be SAM outside linebackers. I learned a long time ago that you need to develop two skill sets because the game has changed and evolved to be more spread-oriented. So, these guys that played outside linebacker against a two-back asset, they weren't finding homes. They might have a home in the NFL. They'd have a home in college, and we make promises that we're going to develop you in multiple ways. Going back to Natrez Patrick, he could play end-of-the-line backer, and he could also play inside backer, and he was used to rush and do things here. Lorenzo [Carter] was that way. Quay Walker started as an outside backer, an inside backer, and had flexibility. So, we think it's part of your growth. We say all the time you're going to get 98% of your football reps in practice, so why not experiment and grow. That 2% you get to play in the game, you get to show off all these things you learned. And then when the next level comes calling, they've seen you do multiple things. It's really important to them that you can still play end-of-the-line backer because their style of football still has some traditional nature to it as opposed to college. It's very different now. So, I'm very proud of Jalon because he's had to really grow and get uncomfortable at inside backer. He's more natural at his outside backer position.”
On KJ Bolden…
"KJ is very confident. He's played more football than most seniors. He's been playing since he was six years old, in the heart of Atlanta, in one of the toughest leagues there is to play football, and he's played up against older kids all his life. He's extremely athletic. The moment's not too big for KJ. He's very gifted athletically, but he also has great football instincts and intuition. He's been coached by his father, and he's tough. So, I think that gives him a leg up on other guys coming in because he's just been playing football so long."
On Damon Wilson II…
"Effort, like I did last year. There's things he's got to improve on and do better. He missed a couple opportunities to make a couple plays that I thought he should have made, but I don't judge Damon on that body of work of those snaps. I judge Damon on the body of work of the 1,000 snaps he's had in camp, and he's had a really good camp. He's improved himself physically. He can play more downs now. He's got to continue to get stronger and maintain his weight, but just the few snaps that he – I mean, our guys didn't play many snaps. I think we had 56 or 57 snaps, so we didn't have – I think we had 18 guys that played over 28 snaps on the whole team. So, there weren't a large number of snaps played by anybody. So, that body of work is not real big."
On limiting Clemson’s offensive touches and snap count…
"I really don't know what their decisions are for their offense. When you stop people on third down and you're hard to run the ball on, you're not going to have a lot of snaps. And we were fortunate to get off the field on some third downs. They were also unfortunate. They had a couple drops early that would have gotten them rolling. So, it is what it is. As far as the snap count numbers, I think people, with the headsets, you may end up with less plays than normal because of people wanting to wait and talk."
On Arian Smith’s improvement and work ethic…
"Oh, Arian works. There's no harder worker on our team than Arian Smith. I mean, he's a product of a really tough physical program. He'll tell you today, he stands in front of the team and he is just a completely different person. He had never had to practice and strain like he does here. He has made decisions that he wants to be really good, so he works really hard at it. I mean, there's not a play that I can find where Arian doesn't run hard to the ball or try to block somebody and do something extra and it's that way on special teams. He made a huge special team play in the game and continues to improve by doing those things."
On Lawson Luckie…
"More confident in the system. Healthy, tougher and more physical, but needs to improve on that. And just a passion for the game. He's really, really football savvy. He understands football and leverages and has made a lot of plays in the passing game and continues to play more physical."
On the freshmen receiving playing time…
"I know for you guys everything is about that small snapshot you see of a game, but for me it's what are you going to do today? What are you going to do tomorrow? Because you're going to get 40 or 50 snaps against a really good football player today and tomorrow. And we really try to impress upon our guys, there's so much value in our practice that it's held at higher esteem a lot of times by NFL organizations than the game is. And that's not understood by the common fan, that practice is more important than the game, but it certainly is here."
On Micah Morris…
“Micah’s has to continue to improve. It's one of those deals where we're going to play the guys that practice the best, and when he practices better, he'll get to play more.”
On Anthony Evans III on punt return…
“I thought he did a great job of fielding the ball. The ball hits the ground, and it bounces, and I watch all these games in college games where the ball bounces 20 and 30 yards. Field position wise, it's getting flipped. It takes a lot of confidence to go and judge the ball, especially in that dome. And there were some strange punts. There were some balls doing some crazy spin. It was a left-footed punter. So, one of the wins of the game for us was not letting the ball hit the ground and bounce. He did once and it went in the end zone, which was a judgment call by him. So, I was very pleased with what he was able to do in terms of punt returns.”
On making improvements after the first game…
“I can't pick one thing on improvement. There are so many things that we've got to do better. There's just a lot there that we want to improve on, and some of what you're doing is dictated by who you play. People just think it's a stat game. It's not a stat game. It's who you're lining up across from and how good that football player is because that does dictate things, the matchups.”
On using the in-helmet communication…
“In terms of Carson and Mike, we've done it every day for 32 practices. So, it wasn't any different than the 32 practices that we did. It shuts off at 15, and you talk before it. It wasn't any different than our scrimmages, it was exactly like we practiced, and we've had probably 60 walk-throughs. So, between the walk-throughs and the games, we've got some form of communication. Walk-throughs, it can't be a helmet, so it's an earpiece, but he's heard it all.”
On the players’ growth from game to game…
“Every team's different in terms of – and over time they change. I can't compare 2018 to 2020 to 2022 because the teams are different, the maturity level, the experience level. It does seem that every year we get younger, so every year it's a greater burden and challenge on the older players to set the standard and hold people to how we go about our preparation and putting a game behind us and moving on to the next one. It's the same for the coaches though, and we don't change how we go week to week. We have a protocol, we have a checklist, and we follow that.”
#7 LAWSON LUCKIE | SO. | TE
On his big catch against Clemson…
“That is one of the plays that we had been practicing all week. We hit it a bunch of times going into the game and then we got the coverage we were looking for. Carson (Beck) gave me a good ball and we had a big score to start the drive.”
On the emotions during plays designed for him…
“It honestly happened so fast. I am not even thinking about that. I am just getting lined up, checking the defense. Looking on how I am going to run it. There is a couple of different ways I can take that route. I just see what the defense can give me and just run in there. I try not to think about it too much.”
On the depth of the offense and moving the ball to different players…
“I think it shows that Carson (Beck) has a great ability to read the field. I think it shows how deep our offense is. We have so many weapons in each position. This is a good thing that our team has going for us. That obviously showed on Saturday.”
#20 JACOREY THOMAS | JR. | DB
On his big pass breakup against Clemson…
"Usually when the receiver comes their eyes get big, or their hands go up. When their hands go up, you want to mirror their hands, so where you think the ball is going to come to and kind of break their hands away instead of just going for the ball. Sometimes if you just go for the ball, you can miss and they can still catch it, but if you rake out the elbow or rake out one of their hands it'll be a way harder catch to make."
On his first career start…
"You just come out there and play every day, so I really didn't know I was going in at first to start at the beginning. Sometimes you might come in different packages, so you could start out on a reg, and I wouldn't have been out on the field, but instead we started on a nickel, so I was the first one on the field. My mom was there. She was pretty happy to say so herself, so she was there."
On staying locked in during a game with a rotation of players going in…
"Being here at Georgia, they teach you how to focus for longer times. During fall camp we have longer meetings, so your focus stamina needs to be really good. As to when you get in the game, you need to focus on what package is being called, when you're in and when you're out, so as long as you're able to lock in to do what you need to do, you'll be fine."
Transcript and Photo via UGA Athletics Communications
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