ATHENS — Georgia has completed its first two practices of the week as it continues to prepare for No. 20 Kentucky this Saturday.
It will be the first time this season Georgia plays a ranked team. Head coach Kirby Smart provided an update on where things stand with the Bulldogs as they continue to prepare for the Wildcats.
Below is a full transcript of what Smart had to say following Tuesday’s practice.
On how practice has been this week…”Been great, thanks for asking.”
On how Javon Bullard came out of the Auburn game…”Unscathed. Sore, it was a long game. Had not had that much running, physicality, use in two weeks, whatever it was, 14 days. You get sore when you don’t do anything for that long and you go do that much. It’s just typically what your body does. But he’s been good. He recovered Sunday Monday, was great, had a lighter day Monday and then got after it today. He seemed good today.”
On preparing for Kentucky being multiple in the run game…”Well, go against our offense who runs some of the same runs they do. It’s very pro-style based in terms of what they do run game-wise. They do a tremendous job of putting window dressing on all their runs. They have really good people blocking it, they have very experienced tight ends on the edges. They’ve got kids that have been there for two and three years blocking on the perimeter and they’ve got a great back. They’ve got a great running system that has all the ingredients to be excellent. You have physical offensive linemen, a head coach and offensive coordinator committed to running it, a great back, several great backs, and they have weapons outside. They are a very talented group. Got a lot of guys who have played a lot of football in the SEC in that group.”
On pressure periods for Peyton Woodring and simulating road environments like Auburn in practice…”I won’t get into the details of them. I think that’s more private for our team. I do think it’s great for the team morale and great for him. You can’t simulate what he had at Auburn, you just try to. We try to put him in a thought process where he has to come off the sideline and he’s got one shot. It’s different than kicking five field goals in a row. It’s three for five, four for five, you feel like you’ve got another shot. It doesn’t feel that way in a game. We do it that way more in practice.”
On what he’s seen from Jalon Walker this season…”He’s growing at two positions. That’s exactly what we talked to him about when we recruited him and some of these other inside backers. A lot of kids don’t play high school inside backer. Their coaches put them on the edge so they can defend the grass or they put them at the edge so they can run and set edges. They don’t get to play inside backer because there’s probably another kid on their team that can play that. His skillset has grown because he’s very natural on the edge as a rusher, his getoff. He has some of the best pass rush moves in our group. He needs to be able to play all downs, so he’s continuing to work at inside backer. The beauty of Jalon is he goes down and takes reps against our offense and reads keys and gets better at that position while at the same time being a dominant special teams player and a great third down player for us.”
On if Kentucky is built similarly to Georgia...
“Well, I only know by the way it looks ‘cause I’ve never talked to him about it. You know, I don’t know philosophically if they have a certain number of, like, this position and that position. I don’t know enough about how he builds his team to answer that fairly. I would think they’re close, but I don’t know that. I know that they play really physical, and our kids always feel like it’s one of the most physical games of the year — just the size they have, the way they play the game. The game really shrinks when you play them. The clock’s running. I mean, we had a drive in ‘21 here that was the longest drive I’ve ever seen. So I would think that we both build ‘em in a similar way, but I can’t say how he builds his.”
On only scoring 17 points in the 1Q this year and if it needs to be addressed...
“I would start with absolutely we need to improve, but we look at everything. You know, I think we went three-and-out one time on offense. Every other time we moved the ball, which that’s what you want to do. Obviously you want to score, but you want to move the ball so you can create field position. On defense, we’ve gone three-and-out maybe once or twice. We did last week. So it’s not the first possession, but it is the first quarter, you know? And some of that has been circumstance like missing a field goal. Some of that has been the circumstances of we defer. If we win the toss, we never get that extra possession in the first quarter because they get it. But those are all just excuses. I mean, we’ve got to play better. There’s a lot of reasons why it happens.
I’ve been years where you score every first possession and you stop them every time, and then for a while we were like, we couldn’t get it started in the third quarter. We could never get any momentum going in the third quarter, and we were off on the third quarter one of the years we won a national championship. It’s something you try to address and think about the way you start the game, but don’t overthink it because we’re trying to plan for the whole game.”
On studying Florida’s defense against Kentucky and what he can learn from that…
“Yeah, there’s some similarity there in situations. It’s not complete overlap like some defenses like I’ve seen before where we are married up exactly the same. I don’t think it’s exactly the same. At the end of the day, Kentucky played physical, they had explosive plays. They got some turnovers, they started really fast. Once a back gets hot and gets rolling, he got really hot and started rolling and was hard to tackle. So it doesn’t matter what defense you play. It’s not about schemes. It’s about striking blockers. Getting off blocks. Tackling. We’re not out there practicing schemes right now. We’re trying to strike a block and get off a block right now.”
On playing a ranked opponent and on SEC teams being on the rise...
“I don’t know who you’re referencing (Missouri, Tennessee and Ole Miss). I personally think every SEC team should be ranked. I guarantee you there are some teams that don’t want to play them when they’re ranked. I literally don’t know what you’re referencing because every team we play in the SEC is good enough to beat us. Whether they’re ranked or not, I could care less. I’m trying to be more physical than them and outscore them. The only thing I’m concerned with is not there ranking.”
On the lack of separation in college football...
“Yeah I haven’t watched everybody, so it’s hard to say. I feel like there’s a lot more parity out there and I don’t know why that is. I don’t think, I don’t think anybody is as good as they were three, four years ago. I watch games of three four years ago, I don’t think high school football is as good as it was three, four years ago. I think less kids are playing football, the quality of football that’s played is a little less. At the grassroots level, the teaching of it. Less people played football that are coaching it. When you struggle to find officials because people didn’t play and they don’t want to officiate and they have to rotate high school games because they don’t officials and you can’t find coaches to coach youth organizations and they didn’t play, the quality of the sport goes down a little bit. It deteriorates. I’ve been able to see that. There are just less people playing too. That’s more saying that it’s a sloppier game than it is a finesse game or a power game. That doesn’t explain why there is more parity.”
On what he’s seen from Kendall and Ladd...
“Yeah, they’ve done great. We didn’t do a whole lot Monday. We scaled back what our typical Mondays were and got after it today. They were great.”
On why Georgia scaled back on Monday...
“It’s gonna be physical, but we do it after our fifth week. The sixth week we do it to recover a little better. We try to give 48 hours of recovery if we can. So we had Sunday and some of Monday to try and get their legs back.”
On Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins...
“Still the same deal. He’s non-weight bearing, and we’re waiting on some pictures to come back. He had a four-week shut down, and then after five weeks we’ll take more pictures and decide where he’s at, see whether or not we can ramp him up.”
On Brett Thorson...
“He’s just more confident. More than anything he’s more confident and it’s easier to be social. He came from a long way away. Coming to a new place like Athens, the day he got here we were leaving to go to the National Championship. He’s like, ‘Hey, this is my new family, and everybody’s leaving. They’re gone.’ He’s enjoyed Athens a lot. He’s a very interesting character. You guys will enjoy him a lot. He’s got a great personality, and he’s just so different from our guys. With where he’s from, he thinks so different. I enjoy him, and I’d enjoy just to have his way.”
On QB run looks in practice, whether Devin Leary can run well...
“Yeah, he’s got that capability for sure. They’ve done some quarterback run looks with him, and they did some last year against us as well. But Brock and Gunner, we don’t run them in practice. It does us no good because we can’t hit them. We’re not going to hit those guys, so we have other guys do it.”
On what kind of value there is in playing football...
“There’s one thing that football and life have in common: they’re hard. I don’t know how many of you guys have put on 30 pounds of equipment, pants and a shirt and gone out there in 110 degree heat and practiced for two and a half hours. Not that that makes you successful, but that makes you willing to go out and work for something in life. If you’re willing to do that and put a helmet on, you’re probably not going to be afraid to go 9-5 and pay the bills. One thing I’ve learned in life is that life is hard, and football teaches a bunch of those lessons. So I think the sport is one of the great teachers of lessons of life.”
On whether Andrew is somebody that could carry on the Smart tradition in football...
“He’s got a lot of his mom in him. He’s a really good athlete. All three of them are really good athletes, he just likes football more than Julia and Weston. But they all enjoy their social time and all enjoy their sports.”
