ATHENS — After starting conference play with a win over South Carolina, the Bulldogs will next host UAB.
The Bulldogs are 3-0 on the season, but Saturday’s 24-14 win showed Georgia has plenty to improve on.
Georgia head coach Kirby Smart shared his thoughts on UAB and where things stand with his team.
Opening Statement...
“I would start with kind of a congratulations for all of the University of Georgia. For the eighth straight year, UGA was ranked in the top 20 of all public universities. I think it was the US News and World Report, which is pretty remarkable to do that for eight straight years. I think when you look and say how many schools have been able to do that eight straight years to be in the top 20 of public institutions, it’s pretty incredible. That starts with great leadership. I think President Morehead has done an awesome job with that. We sell that in recruiting. It makes me proud because I am an alumnus and I have my degree from here, so it makes it very worthy to be a University of Georgia grad and proud of what we’ve been able to do from an academic standpoint. I think it’s great.
Moving on into our team, Ron [Courson] informed me that we have the longest injury list we’ve ever had since being here, so it continues to grow. And I think that’s a trend across college football. You very rarely hear me talk about our guys being injured or, you know, woe is me. I don’t think it’s something that you can control. We practice how we practice, and for a couple of years we’ve been really fortunate to not have very many injuries. And I always hear about other teams. This year it seems to be the theme across. I know Shane had a lot at South Carolina. I know there’s a lot of them in SEC opponents, but we certainly have more than we’ve ever had. So that becomes a hurdle we’ve got to do a good job of overcoming that, and we’ve got to be very resourceful as coaches in how we use the players we do have. With that, I’ll open it up.
Obviously with UAB, we’re moving on to UAB and I’m excited to play these guys. I’ve known Coach Dilfer for a while. I don’t have a personal relationship with him, but I do think a lot of him as a coach. Their staff, I know a lot of guys on their staff. Eddie [Gordon], who was here with us for a long time and does an incredible job. And looking forward to playing those guys this week.”
On what he’s seen on film from UAB...
“Well, they’ve got some good football players. They’ve got really good athletes. I don’t think the record, you know, indicates that. But they play and you want them, and I’m like, man. Defensively, they do some four-down and some three-down [linemen]. They’ve got really good backs, got good skill players, athletic quarterback who extend plays. They play really hard. They had a weird situation the other night with ULL where they had a rain delay and different things in there, but they’ve got a very talented football team, especially in their conference.”
On what you have to consider when weather could impact a game...
“You consider which way to kick the ball, whether to take the ball, which way you’re going to go, is it going to rain more later than earlier because it impacts the game. It’s not really an advantage for anybody because both teams have got to play in it, but you would rather have possessions not in the rain versus in the rain. [I came out] just to see the turf and see how much of an effect the rain that had fallen had affected the field, but that’s it.”
On what more he wants to see out of Carson Beck...
“It’s different every game. I think we challenge him with different things. What I’ve been most proud of is his composure, number one, which I never doubted. He has a great demeanor about him that he handles positive and negative almost the same. As a matter of fact, there was a touchdown Saturday that I saw him celebrate for the first time, and that’s really good. Like, when you see that emotion, there was one of those touchdowns in the second half that he got a little emotional and excited. I think our guys kind of rally around him when he does that. You know, stepping up in the pocket. There were a couple of times that he started losing a little confidence and he started stepping back. He’s got to be willing to step up like they talk about racecar drivers when the smoke’s there, you’ve got to go right through it. There’s a lot of smoke in there sometimes, especially when people pressure you. You’ve got to be willing to step up and go through it and not always out and around it because you can’t always outrun it that way.
But I’m really pleased with the way he’s playing, but there’s certainly things that he can continue to work on.”
On any common traits on the red-zone issues...
“Really it’s both ways. It’s red-zone defense where we’ve been remarkable and elite. I think we were one in the country last year, and we had two red-zone opportunities that we did not capitalize on defensively, which was really the difference in the first half. I mean at the end of the day, the difference in the first half was red area play both ways. Things we can improve on? You have to be able to run the ball in the red area, and you have to be able to stop the run. We did not. We let somebody run the ball in on us on defense, which is a no no at Georgia. We didn’t have positive first-and-10 plays in the red area on offense, which that gets you in trouble too because you usually have four downs down there to go for it, but you can’t do that if you’re fourth-and-10. If you’re fourth-and-1 or 2 or 3, you can. We’ve got to have positive plays both ways to get better. We certainly have to improve in that area.”
On Amarius Mims and Austin Blaske’s injury statuses...
“Yeah, I think we’re going to get Blaske back today. I don’t know if he’s 100%, but he’s going to be able to practice. Mims’ ankle sprain was bad. He’s going to have to have tightrope surgery, so he’ll have surgery on that similar to what Cash had done, similar to what Lawson Luckie had done. So we don’t know how long that will be, but he’ll be back. It’s just a matter of how long.”
On injuries on grass versus injuries on turf...
“No. Most of the indicators we have outside of our practices suggest a little more on turf. I think that’s what the NFL would probably argue that more on turf and less on natural grass. We’re on natural grass a lot more here than we are on turf. We keep independent studies of where ours happen. Ron and his staff report that, submit it so that you can follow it. We don’t have any indication that ours is more or less on turf than grass. It’s actually almost exactly the same. Ironically, most of ours this year have been in games, so that’s where you’d rather your injuries happen in games if they’re going to happen at all. We don’t want injuries to happen, but when they happened in games this year they’ve obviously been on grass.”
On what he learned about Carson handling adversity…
“He didn’t rally the offense to come back. We had 13 and 11 play drives in the first half that came out to be three points. That’s hard to do. You can’t have that and get three points usually. Usually you have to have turnovers, and we didn’t have that in those situations. It wasn’t a matter of, that can happen and you’re going to get stopped at times, you’re going to struggle at times but we struggled less in the first half than we did against other opponents. I thought he did a good job keeping his composure though and showing resiliency.”
On oversight of the offense and leaning more on the defense…
“No. I would say the first game when I made that comment it was more about Carson’s first start and trying to protect him some. The offense we’ve played this year is the exact same offense that we’ve played the last three years. Look at the plays. Anybody that knows football would tell you the plays are the same. Our execution in the red area hasn’t been great, we haven’t scored as many points, haven’t been as explosive and dynamic. Some of that has to do with players being out. Some of that has to do with executing. But I’m very comfortable with where we are offensively.”
On pressuring on South Carolina’s 3rd and 16 touchdown…
“Pressure’s a good thing. We think pressuring quarterbacks affects them by 1) not giving them all day to throw the ball and 2) success against the offense you’re playing and how they handle that. What is their success rate when you pressure? You look at each game. You don’t do anything 100% of the time. You do the same thing when you pitch. You better have fastball, curveball, changeup. You better have three pitches. That came in the process of pitching. And last time I checked, the pressure didn’t cause the touchdown. The three missed tackles and poor angels probably resulted in the touchdown. Usually when somebody does something well you probably didn’t do something well. They did. They executed well, had a good play, but they didn’t score because of pressure. They scored because we missed two tackles.”
On what conversations have been like to get the ball rolling faster…
“I thought our first half issues really revolved around our defense’s first possession. That would be the biggest thing. You’ve got to start fast, and historically, defensively - somebody can do the study, but we usually start pretty fast on defense. Georgia Tech game, I know that was the first first possession of a game we gave up a touchdown last year. That happened third game this year on a team that did a good job, came in, got on rhythm. There’s still things we did. Are we still talking about this if we tackle him on third and 15? I don’t know. I’m really thinking about UAB. I’m trying to keep you guys happy and appease you. I’m very pleased with where things are. I’m not panicking in any kind of way. Because South Carolina has a good team. We’re figuring out who we are with our identity. I think our coaching staff, our players, our complete organization is doing a great job. You guys just aren’t happy with the results. I’m very happy with the way our guys fought back, came back and overcame.”
On sticking with Xavier Truss at right tackle and Dylan Fairchild at left guard...
“Don’t know that. It’s going to depend on the health of some of the other o-linemen, Blaske’s health. Where do we get the best five from. A lot of that will play itself out over the next three-four days. But I do think Truss gives us that flexibility. He did a nice job on the run the other to go do that.
On Carson Beck and deep shots...
I don’t really understand what you’re asking. You want more shots downfield? There are shots on a lot of plays that the look is not there. If it’s middle-field closed, you don’t just take a shot to take a shot. The quarterback has a read. If they’re in quarters and the safety is deep, you don’t just take a shot. What he’s really good at is, one of the best I’ve been around is seeing the coverage, knowing what it is and knowing where to go with the ball. We did have a little more pressure the other day then we’re used to and he did a nice job adjusting to that. They got hurt pressuring on the play to Rara later in the game. He was pressured and hit the right guy on the right look. I don’t know if that answers your question or not. I don’t know your perception or your reality. Or anybody’s reality. I don’t judge other people’s perceptions. I only look at what happens in a game and what happens in practice. I feel very good that Carson is doing a good job.
On traveling and Tennessee, Ole Miss...
I haven’t even thought about Tennessee and Ole Miss and I haven’t even thought about traveling. I hasn’t even crossed my mind. I’ll respect the question best I can that I’m worried about UAB and figuring out how we can be more resourceful with the players we have healthy.
On what he learned about his team this week...
Well I learned more than I did the other two games, I can assure you of that. The quality of the opponent went up. We responded to some adverse situations. You learn more about the truth too. The truth is what you’ve done is who you are. And who we are is a 3-0 team that has played three imperfect games. And I’m still looking for the first perfect.
On how he handles a struggling kicker…
“Yeah, you definitely talk to him. You try to find out the whys and how they’re feeling, what’s going on emotionally, especially when it’s a freshman. You try to talk to them. We’ve got guys on our team that he’s close to. We’ve got guys that work with the kickers in our organization that do a good job. You just try to get information and you try to help them every way you can. The first thing that’ll help him is scoring touchdowns because extra points are easier than field goals.”
On his initial thoughts on Trent Dilfer’s style of offense…
“Really impressed. His offensive coordinator Alex Mortensen was at Alabama forever, Chris Mortensen’s son. He was at Alabama behind all the offenses, worked with Bill O’Brien, worked with Sark, was there when I was there. I have a lot of respect for Alex. He waited his turn and he got an opportunity to go be the coordinator there. I see a lot of flavor in his offense of a lot of the offenses that had been there at Alabama. I’m sure Trent imparts his knowledge on that as well.”
On running back injuries…
“Yeah, Roderick had a high ankle sprain. We’ll find out how he is today. Kendall had an MCL that he’s had before. He had one last year. I don’t know how significant it is. We’ll find out where he is today as well.”
On if he’s ever crossed paths with or has a relationship with Trent Dilfer…
“No, I’ve only had conversations with Trent about quarterbacks that he trained during the recruiting process. You might call and say, what do you think of this kid, what do you think of this kid? How was he out there at this camp, that kind of thing. I’ve never, I’ve talked to him on the phone but I’ve never had a personal relationship with him.”
On injuries to Javon Bullard, Ladd McConkey, and Pearce Spurlin…
“Javon is day to day, like I said after the game. Thought he might be close, may be closer this week. I think with the recovery he would be closer to being able to go, but I don’t know. McConkey is more than likely out this week. We’re resting him, trying to get him back. We don’t have a timeline on him because it’s a very unique injury. Like everything else, you say, what was the last high ankle sprain? What was the last MCL? What was the last shoulder? It’s different. We don’t have something to measure that by. And then the other one you asked about was Pearce, don’t know when we’ll get Pearce back.”
On if transfers equal more parity in college football…
“No clue. That’s good speculation, I could see that. I try not to theorize those things. I don’t know. I really just try to look at our team and say, where are we relative to where we need to be? I can’t keep up with all the other games out there and how much parity there may be or may not be. It’s still not what the NFL is. The NFL is built to have parity. Maybe that’s good for the college game that there is more parity if in fact there is. I don’t have an explanation for why it is, I really don’t.”
On Rara Thomas integrating himself into the offense as a transfer...
“Yeah, he had his best practice last week. I thought he did a good job in the practices leading up to the game. He’s getting more and more confidence. Again, he was like a true freshman in terms of vocabulary of the offense. That has gotten better with every week. He’s getting some much more confident with every week. Thank goodness he is because we need him. We need him to keep coming. We need him to keep coming along.”
On how the QB transition has been smoother for Georgia than others...
“Well, I think retention is important. And I want to clarify, Carson has done a good job. I don’t know what you guys write, read, or hear because you listen to a lot more of it than I do. Like, I don’t know. I go by his week of practice, his preparation, and his execution. I’m very pleased with that. He makes good decisions with the ball. Well, that happened the last two years when nobody was asking about him. Nobody was asking about Carson Beck. Nobody was asking about Carson Beck for two years. But he was out there doing the same thing he is now. He was getting better. That allowed for a smooth transition. The fact he was hearing the exact same plays, the exact same calls — you know, everybody thinks it’s some kind of different offense. It’s the exact same. It’s not different. The results have not been the same. That’s statistical proof. He’s transitioning well because of the fact he’s in the offense that he’s been in. And his strengths are different than Stetson’s. The one thing he’s really good at, he was a great baseball player. This guy catches the ball and gets it out of his hand and is very accurate. That’s baseball. That’s boom, boom, boom. He can do that. He does that very well. We’ve been very pleased with what’s he’s done. We’ve got to get better results. That’s for sure. But I’m certainly pleased with what both of them have done.”
On Pearce Spurlin and Lawson Luckie both out and ability to go 12 personnel...
“We did it all last week. We went 12 in the game. We’ll always carry 12 personnel.”
On Dominic Lovett coming in as a transfer and “run-game” receptions...
“Most of his receptions so far have been run-game receptions. Then some really critical third downs he’s made some plays in the slot, so I’ve seen his confidence grow. He was probably further along than Rara in terms of learning the offense, understanding the offense, and came from an offense that was somewhat similar. He’s had an easier transition as far as picking things up. But he’s been a great kid in practice. He’s full of energy. He competes. We’ve tried to implement and tell him, hey, look man, you’ve gotta go strike people and block people to be an elite player. He’s trying his best to get better at that. But he’s done well at the supplementary run plays, the perimeter run plays.”