ATHENS – UGA Kirby Smart’s top-ranked Georgia Bulldogs are preparing for Tennessee Tech; here’s what he said on Monday.
Head Coach: Kirby Smart
Opening Statement…
“I’m excited to be here and to get started working on improving myself. We’ll start with Tennessee Tech practice today and then target these guys. They played a tough game against Middle Tennessee the other night. They made an outstanding comeback and earned a lot of appreciation for their performance in the game. “Our guys will start preparing for them today.”
When facing a man-to-man defence…”Not necessarily. They’ve been a pressure squad, but it’s not always man-on-man pressure. They use a variety of pressure strategies, including zone, simulation, and two traps, as well as man-to-man. They most likely played a lot more single high, man, and zone than usual to load up on the run. But I wouldn’t say anything our offence receives surprises us because we have a massive amount of defence. As a result, they are frequently exposed to a wide range of protective structures. But that is neither here nor there. You may do a lot but be terrible at it, or you can do a lot and try to be good at it. That’s a lot.
More on the players.
Which athlete will wear a green dot on their helmet?
“I hadn’t really considered it. I mean, we all know who uses it every day in practice. I’ll be honest: I don’t know. I mean, CJ [Allen] had some, so did Smael [Mondon], and Raylen [Wilson] might have had some. We have two helmets, so it depends on the pairing of players. We have other players with green dot helmets in case they have to play a position they are not used to. And we had a few of scenarios like that on Saturday that we felt would result in injury. So we got the other people ready and prepared to use the green dot. Regarding Arian Smith…
“Yes, we want to rely on everyone because we don’t want to be a one-dimensional squad. So, since we’ve been here, the objective has been to spread the ball around. We’ve got a lot of guys with a lot of touches, but no one with a tonne individually. And Arian has been an excellent example of this, since he has touched the ball vertically. He has touched the ball sideways. He’s improved his receiving and route running abilities. Aside from the rocket sweeps and edge runs, I believe he made some plays catching the ball outside. And that’s significant for him. That is growth for him. We need more men to rise forward and be able to do this.
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.”
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Regarding London Humphreys…
It’s great. He does a terrific job. He’s probably more of a relief for Arian [Smith], and he did an excellent job. He has SEC experience. I believe that’s what the gateway allows you to do: find a man who has been successful and played well in our conference. He has done that. He’s shown himself as a playmaker, and he was prepared when his number was called. We discuss it all the time. Your opportunity is coming. Will you seize the opportunity when it presents itself? “He did it.”
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.”
Regarding player growth across games…
“Each squad is unique, and they evolve over time. I can’t compare 2018 to 2020 to 2022 because the teams differ in maturity and experience. It appears that as we get younger, the older players bear a greater load and struggle in setting the standard and holding people accountable for how we approach preparation and moving on to the next game. It’s the same for the coaches, and we don’t modify our approach week to week. We have a protocol and a checklist, and we follow them.”
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