ATHENS — Georgia held its second practice of the week on Tuesday as it continues to prepare for Saturday’s game against No. 14 Missouri.
Georgia coach Kirby Smart was so focused on the task at hand that he seemed too busy to acknowledge the fact that Tuesday night was Halloween, feigning surprise that the holiday was on Tuesday.
Smart spoke on a number of different issues with Georgia as it continues to prepare for Saturday. Below is a full transcript of Smart’s remarks.
On practice this week...
“Good. They had a good day yesterday, got introduced to Missouri. Had good spirits today. It was nice and cool out. Had a good practice.”
On if he’s dressing up for Halloween...
“When’s Halloween? It’s tonight? I’ll be up here working, grinding. My kids are past the age really. Andrew might be doing something, but we’ll be rolling tonight.”
On confidence in secondary...
“We’ll find out Saturday. I always have confidence in our team and players, but it won’t be on just them. It’ll be on safeties, the rush, the linebackers, the down and distance, the field position. A lot of things go into stopping a good passing attack, and they’ve got a great running attack. It’s not like it’s just one sided. It won’t be just on the DBs. It’ll be on the collective group, not one individual unit.”
On Roderick Robinson...
“He looks much better.”
On preparing for a team coming off of a bye...
“No difference. What can you do? What would your different prep be?There’s not one. You get ready for the team you play regardless of the time off. There’s a lot of things you don’t control. You don’t control that. You control the time you have which is what you try to maximize every week.”
On Missouri’s running backs...
“Well, everybody we play has two running backs. They’re physical. They’re tough. I mean, we play teams with three running backs, four running backs. I mean, you can’t have one running back in the SEC. You will have none if you have one. But they’re really physical, they run their tracks, they have great vision, and they catch the ball out of the backfield and protect. They’re complete backs. It seems like everybody we play, you know, in the SEC has good, physical backs. They certainly do, and they’ve had a lot of success in the run game because it works together, pass and run.”
On anything you do in practice to improve on red-zone defense...
“Yeah, we’re doing the same thing we’ve done every year. So the result’s been different, but the process has been the same. We’ve tried to make a bigger emphasis on it. When you say try to do anything different, just trying to do more of doing it right. Like, eye control, doing your job, stopping the run, those things.”
On Jalon Walker’s development as a pass rusher...
“Work ethic. I mean, he’s committed to it. He works his trade, his craft every day. You know, I thought Schumann did a great job pointing out he took every rep on a Friday walk-through to really work his pass-rush move in a walk-through — like, physically, mentally taking his steps, dropping, rushing, stripping the quarterback, and then I’ll be danged if he didn’t do the exact thing in the game. We could put that clip — those three clips he had of doing that back to back — and show the players that being intentional in walk-through and being locked in in a walk-through can have incredible value.”
On Marvin Jones Jr...
“Marvin’s growing up. He’s playing good. He’s doing some good things. He had a few good plays, he had a few bad plays. He had a couple he wished he had back, but he did have some discipline and play a screen well. He had the fumble recovery. He’s becoming more and more confident in his game play.”
On Oscar handling the last few weeks...
“Yeah, I don’t see any difference. I mean, y’all find that hard to believe, but he played when Brock was here, he plays when Brock’s not. He took a load of reps before Brock was injured; he takes a load of reps with Brock injured. He fights his tail off every day at practice, he works hard. If anything, he’s just gotten more opportunities and he’s made the most of them.”
On winning at home... “I think it’s a collective effort. Like hey, we all chip in on this. Beat the hell out of each at out there at practice and we want to put a good product out on the field. We want to defend our turf. We feel like championship teams at Georgia have not lost at home. So you better not lose at home if you want to be a championship program. We have a wall that kind of says that. Like you better not lose at home if you want to do something special. The atmosphere has helped with that but sometimes teams come in and play well. You have to rise to the occasion to play against them.
On a QB getting the ball out... I probably wouldn’t have a good answer on that. That was only on my head because he’s so quick he gets it out. There’s averages in there. There’s play action, rolls. He’s not 2.2 all the time but the ball comes out quick. We’ve been thinking about dropping all 11 and seeing if that works.
On what Missouri did in 2022... I’m sure every coach, if the staff remains the same, and even if it doesn’t remain the same, they evaluate the last game. We have a history with Missouri now with Eli there. You look at both sides of the ball, you look at matchups, they did a tremendous job. Kept us off-balance offensively and kind of dominated the line of scrimmage defensively. So what are you going to do to answer that? You got to be able to impose your will, you gotta be able run the ball, play action, you gotta be efficient. You can’t waste down and distances. You can’t get negative, lost yardage plays. You have to stay ahead of the chains. The same thing they’re saying they gotta do on us, we gotta do on them.
On special team success...
“Well, I don’t know that we’ve been as successful as we’d like to be, but what allows you to be successful on special teams is good players. And what allows you to have good players is good recruiting. You’ve got to have a staff that’s dedicated and committed to special teams and involved with it. i don’t coach the special teams, but I’m going to be there for every minute of it because I think it’s important. When you demand excellence and they see the head coach’s nose in special teams stuff, it makes them realize it’s important. We try to put a really large value on the special teams game.”
On where he’s seen Malaki Starks grow the most this year…”Confidence, knowledge of the system, leadership. He’s a great kid. He works every day. He listens, he’s extremely coachable. His parents did a wonderful job raising him. He’s just a joy to coach.”
On defending slants…”Well if it was the hardest play in football, I think everybody would run it. Why do some people not throw it? I think you’d have to ask an offensive coach that. We certainly did not play it very well the other day, you’re correct in saying that. A lot of it has to do with the coverage you’re in, the matchup you’ve got. It’s a very often batted ball, a lot of times. A lot of it has to do with spacing, time of the game, down and distance. There’s a lot of things that go into slants. They did a good job executing it last week.”
On Christen Miller…”Gotten better, gotten better with each week. He still hasn’t tapped or reached his potential, but he’s getting better. He works hard. He’s one of the kids that enjoys taking reps against the scout team and against the offense because he gets to go against Sed. He’s like Coach, I only get better if I go against the really good offensive line. I love his work ethic.”On the added confidence from winning a game on the road…”I think it gives you the belief that you’re in every game. You can win any game, any circumstance, anything going on. This team has kind of had those qualities probably since last year against Missouri, but it’s not a situation you want to put yourself in often.”
On Missouri’s offense under new OC Kirby Moore…”I don’t know how to separate what’s his and what’s Eli’s. There’s a lot of Eli flavor. That’s probably why he got hired is because they have a lot of the same philosophy. There’s new wrinkles. They’re doing some really good things. They have talented players to do it with. He’s done an unbelievable job of coordinating it and calling it. He was successful where he was. I mean shoot, the guy won a lot of championships and has played really good offense. Got a great name, too.”
