ATHENS — Georgia head coach Kirby Smart was in a good mood all things considered on Tuesday night. He was very pleased with how his team practiced.
Georgia hosts Mississippi State on Saturday, with the game set for a 4:15 p.m. ET start.
Below are Smart’s full comments following Tuesday’s practice.
Everything Kirby Smart said as Bulldogs have great practice before facing Mississippi State
Opening Statement...
“Two reminders first: the mental health wear this week. We’ll be wearing the ribbon on the helmets. I want to remind people of that. And then also the 10K Day in Stegeman. It’s Friday night for our volleyball team. It’s really important. We try to turn out and get that thing — get those numbers up there as high as we can.
I know you guys want to know about Colbie and want to ask about it, but it’s a pending legal matter and I don’t have any answers right now and have not even had a chance to talk to him yet. So I can’t answer any questions about it right now. With that I’ll open it up your guys’ questions.”
On if Georgia provides education about domestic violence...
“Yeah, I mean, we educate, we bring in speakers. It’s one of probably the most critical things we do. And, I mean, over the history of nine years being here, it’s probably the most-spoke on thing we have, you know? We have people come over and speak from EOO on campus every year. Darrice (Griffin) does a great job of finding speakers, but then we bring in outside speakers. I mean, we call NFL teams. Miss Mac from Atlanta does a great job. She comes over and shares with our student-athletes and talks to them and even does some role play, putting guys in situations.
I’ll be honest with you, in my years of coaching, it’s probably been the hardest thing to deal with when you deal with players and some of the decisions. And I don’t mean this in Colbie’s ‘cause I don’t know the details of that. I don’t know everything involved in that. But it’s a very sensitive matter and a tough thing to deal with, and it’s unfortunate.”
On if there’s a chance Colbie Young will practice this week and if there’s a chance he’ll play...
“Again, I don’t — it’s a pending legal matter, so you know what I mean? He’s not with us right now. I haven’t had a chance to talk to him.”
On if Georgia gets comfortable playing fast-paced offenses...
“I don’t know. I don’t know if you can get comfortable with it, I’ll be honest with you. It’s hard. It’s hard to simulate, you know, coming off the practice field. And they do a tremendous job of going nuclear fast, like number one in the country fast, like ahead of Tennessee fast. But they don’t have to. Like, they can do that, but then if they want to try to help their defense, they can slow it down. But the unfortunate thing is once they’ve shown they can go at that pace,what do you have to prepare for? You gotta prepare for that. It takes a lot of the focus off your fundamentals because, I mean, you expend a lot of energy just trying to get lined up. I don’t think people actually know how difficult these teams are to prepare for because it’s what they do. It’s not what you do, so it’s a little bit like triple option, right? Like, the greatest equalizer is when you play a triple option team and you can’t prepare for it. Now, they’re not triple option. I’m not saying that, I’m saying it’s hard to prepare for because we don’t see it very often, so it’s hard.”
On if Mississippi State is one of the teams Georgia prepared for during the bye week...
“Yeah, we do, but it’s getting more prevalent because he’s in our league, Lane is a little bit of that — Lane’s not quite that complete flavor — and then there’s Tennessee, which we drew all three of these guys and they all come somewhat from the same family tree. I think Lebby was with Lane, and then he had a little bit of flavor of Heupel. So we have to practice it every year, every offseason, and it’s a pain to do it.”
On Nate Frazier and growing in pass protection…
“It’s getting better. The first thing I found with freshmen is, do they have the courage? Okay, he has the courage. Some of them don’t have the courage. Does he have the strength? He’s got the strength. He can lift the weights, and then you’ve got 225-pound linebacker. You’ve got to be physical. The guy’s coming full speed at you and you’re standing still. He checks that box. And then is he smart enough? Can he pick it up and know mentally what to get with the pace of it? He gets a lot of looks from us. And he’s not been perfect at that, and he’s had some issues with that. And we’ve got a quarterback that we feel like is really important to protect. And Nate takes a lot of pride in his performance, and he wants to do it right. So we give him a lot of opportunities to get better at that in practice. And he’s taking a lot of ownership.”
On Christen Miller, Jared Wilson, and Jordan Hall…
“Christen’s been able to practice. Jared is still, Jared’s better than he was, but not taking full load reps. He’s taking some reps, but not, I think more than he was last week, but not full load. And Christen is taking reps… Jordan’s trying to get out there and go, man, he’s pushing so hard. I hate it for that kid, he’s had two rods, rod put it in both legs, and he’s out there frustrated. He’s doing more than he did last week, but I don’t know that I can say he’s good to play this week.”
On the NCAA shortening the transfer portal window…
“Yeah, I’d heard that was a possibility. What was it before? 30 days, maybe?...They shrunk the December window, right? And it starts after our signing date, which was the purpose of moving signing date up, they wanted to be able to sign your class. And they wanted to shrink the window there some. I think it’s going to be really weird because you’ve got this playoff thing going on. So there’s some people that feel like in the midst of a playoff, you’re going to have guys that are maybe frustrated or unhappy on the team. It’s on a playoff run, and they’re going to be checked out. So, but that has nothing to do with them shortening it, because, I mean, that was going to happen inevitably anyway. So my thoughts on it is, whatever the fair amount of time is for a kid to go look around and see what he wants to do, then I’m comfortable with that. I don’t know what that right amount is, because we don’t have a, we’re not a huge portal team, so we don’t use that a lot. Usually the teams that are doing it is the teams that aren’t playing. The teams that are playing, they’ve really got a hard time trying to shop in the portal and prepare for things. But times, they are changing, I can promise you that. There’s a lot of unknown for us moving in the future with the NCAA stuff coming down the pipe and even the portal stuff. We don’t know what the future holds.”
On Malaki Starks rotating between safety and STAR…
“Yeah, I don’t know that in the past he could do it as comfortably as he’s doing it now. He’s now rotating at star, playing snaps at star, getting practice reps at star. And Joenel I think is doing a great job. But you’ve got to have two Stars to play in every game, and we feel like he gives us the best chance to pop in there and play star. He’s such a good man-to-man cover guy. And I mean, he’s good to play safety, but he’s good to move in at star because he gives us a different matchup guy. So he’s handled it mentally very easily and it’s given us a little more flexibility there.”
On what’s on his plate as a head coach, emotional side of having to be in control without having control...
“Yeah, it’s not envious. I think I spoke two years ago about The Cost of Leadership and I read that each day I come into work. It’s right behind my desk, and I never forget what somebody sent me, and it just hits me on days like that. I didn’t find out on this one until I got up in the morning. It was one of those 7 a.m. deals, but had the ones that hit me overnight, and when you have 130 17-23 year olds, you’re gonna have issues, it’s not gonna be perfect. And I certainly recognize we got to do a better job, but it’s hard. It’s on our staff, because we’ve got really good kids. We got really good people, man and our kids go out there today and they have one of the best practices we’ve had all year on a Tuesday. They’re out there competing, working, and you just want them to make better decisions as men and off the field.
I take a lot of responsibility in that, and it’s tough, but that’s the cost of leadership. You’re going to be judged by the people you lead, you’ve got to stand up, face it, do right by the kids, and keep trying to find a better way. We’re constantly trying to find a better way to make a difference, and that’s in everything we do in our organization. That’s evaluation of the kids. That’s in the football side of it, becoming a man, graduation. It’s all wrapped into one, and we got to keep working on that.”
On if it’s harder to get a full picture on a kid out of the transfer portal given the shorter, rushed nature of recruiting from the portal...
“You could probably say that. When we go to take somebody on a transfer portal, I can’t say I’ve known them as long as I’ve known a recruit, right? I’ve recruited a kid since his junior year, senior year, but then all of a sudden, in recruiting, we’ll take a kid in the last month that we think’s a good player, and we do a background check. We check on him, do everything.
The portal, most of the time for us, you’re relying on better information, because you’re calling the school he was at. All of us know somebody, right? So we call somebody at school X, and we say, ‘Hey, what’s the deal?’ and most of the time they give you the forthright truth. ‘Hey, didn’t go to class,’ or he was this, or he was that. ‘He was a great kid, he just didn’t fit here.’ People call us about our guys, and I’m very honest about that.
So I actually feel more comfortable over a portal kid, because I’m getting real time information. He’s lived outside of his home and been on his own for maybe a year, maybe two years, maybe three years, maybe four years.
But I feel like you get better information on those guys than you do, sometimes, on a high school kid.”
On being big favorites this week, if he uses examples from around College Football to motivate his team…
“No, we don’t rely on the motivation of others. And no, I just don’t think that’s a great way to go about things. We’re really focusing on pride and performance this week. And I’ve got a great analogy. Somebody sent me and said, ‘if they’re doing a Netflix documentary on you this week,
who would you want to watch it? And would they approve? Would you send it to your parents? Would you send it to an NFL team if they did a Netflix documentary on your performance and your pride, and how you practiced this week?’ And I was shocked, they must all thought the Netflix documentary was on them today, because they practiced as good as they have ever done. So just give them a little attention, and they eat it up.”
On Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins….
“Health, and besides health, his work ethic. He’s always been a pretty good football player. He’s a great kid. He’s been in the dumps because of his foot. And so you’d see him every day, and he had no smile on his face. He’s got a beautiful great mom, and she’s been in great communication with us. He considered the portal at one time, and he talked about his frustrations, but it was really more out of injury than it was anything else. And I remind him every day that he’s out there working,because sometimes he needs a little motivation to work. And he’s like, well, you could be over there riding that bike. You could be over there lifting and not practicing. And he gets a little more juice and practices a little harder. He’s sometimes as woe is me, but he’s a great kid, and I enjoy coaching him. He’s played really good football this year, I think, because he had a great camp. And he had really good camp practices, and it’s helped him to play better.”
On Lawson Luckie…
“He has a little nastiness to him. He’s a little bit of one of those guys that he doesn’t have the anxiety, maybe, of others. He’s almost played here. He grew up playing football his whole life. He doesn’t get all pouty if the coach gets on him.He’s not afraid to stand up for what he believes in. He’s a little bit of an alpha. I mean, he’s not afraid to compete and do things. I still think he can improve on a lot of things, especially in-line blocking and some stuff. But he’s a competitor, man. And you throw the ball in the air, and he’s gonna try to go get it. So I have a lot of respect for his toughness.
On the possibility of wearing black jerseys to bring desired fan energy…
“I don’t think that has one thing to do with the fan base. I just think that’s hokey pokey. I mean, it’s great for recruiting, and we may do it sometime. I mean, I’m not anti doing it, but that shouldn’t do anything for your atmosphere. Some of the best places I’ve played, great atmosphere. They never change their uniform, they’re traditionalist. If it takes changing the uniform to get people fired up, then I’m at the wrong place.
On if he’s met with Josh Brooks in regard to fan response…
“I haven’t had a meeting with him. I talked to him about it, and I voiced my concerns to him as much as I did to anybody. But that’s his job. I mean, he’s in charge of all those people and those optics. And that’s part of the comment I said earlier last time about, we had coaches play here last year, said it was the greatest atmosphere they had ever been in. And so for somebody to say that from outside, it’s not like it’s all wrong. It’s really relative to what time the game is and who the game is. But we can’t afford to do that. You know what I mean? We can’t do that.
So I don’t have an expectation and nobody else should either. We should all be held to the standard of playing excellent, playing hard. No matter who your opponent is, it’s a nameless and faceless deal. We don’t look at the scoreboard. But I haven’t had a meeting with Josh or talked to Josh about it other than after the game Saturday.”
