ATHENS — Despite some recent comments by Kentucky head coach Mark Stoops, Kirby Smart is still squarely focused on Georgia’s upcoming opponent Vanderbilt.
Georgia takes on the Commodores at 12 p.m. ET on Saturday, with CBS broadcasting the game.
Following Tuesday’s practice, head coach Kirby Smart provided an update on how the Bulldogs are doing ahead of Saturday’s game.
On how practice has been this week…
“Been good. We practiced good yesterday and I thought we had a good practice today. Highs and lows, some ups and downs. I always say, it’s like a broken record, if it’s cool outside we tend to practice better and if it’s hot outside we tend to struggle. It was cool today and they had good spirits. I thought we had good prep.”
On the gameday schedule with an 11 AM local kick…
“Exactly like we do everything. It’ll be 8:00 pregame meal Eastern time, 7:00 their time. Steak and eggs, get ready to go play. We’ve done it before, got to do it again. We’ll do some biorhythm prep the day before, try to get them up early consecutive days and get them used to it. They’re young, they can handle it.”
On Daylen Everette’s confidence and how hard that can be for a corner in the SEC…
“Well I think if you don’t have confidence, you’ll never be a corner in this league. You better have some confidence. Whether you play well or not, you better have it because they’re going to keep coming at you. They’re going to challenge you. There’s great wideouts and throwers. Throwers and catchers in this league are elite. You’re going to have some plays you don’t win. You’ve got to believe you’re going to win them all. I think he has a very quiet confidence about him. He’s a very intelligent young man. He works really hard. He’s in a tough competition too because Julian Humphrey has played well and done a good job. Every day out at practice, I thought Julian had a really good practice today. We want to continue to get those guys better.”
On the secondary and where he wants them to improve…
“I’d like to gain some more depth, disguise better, tackle better, punch out more balls.”
On Roderick Robinson…
“He is getting closer, dry-land running, weight-bearing running, but doubtful for this game. But he is closer. He’s running around, but not practicing with us.”
On Mark Stoops’ NIL comments…
“No reaction. It’s much to do about nothing, really. I think Mark is trying to garner interest and money from his fanbase for his collective and we’re all trying to do the same in terms of trying to get money for our collective. Mark and I talked about NIL pregame. We talked about it in our meeting. I’m not biting on that.”
On how getting running backs back affects Dillon Bell playing there...
“Yeah, it’s just a matter of where we are at back. We do have Kendall back — and he seems much more healthy — and Daijun back. Dillon gives us a lot of versatility to do other things. He’s gotten better in his protections, picking things up, IDing things, understanding jet protection, understanding slide protections. He’s getting better at those things. We want to continue to grow his arsenal of plays and continue to use him as a wideout. That’s probably not going to stop regardless of who’s there.”
On areas he wants to see Carson Beck improve...
“Mobility, getting in and out of the pocket, decisions of when to tuck it down and run versus stand in and throw. You know, some designed runs probably wouldn’t hurt him around the red area and things that he can do. He’s a good athlete. The one or two plays a game that he puts us at risk, removing that is the most critical thing — the decision-making.”
On disconcerting signals...
“It’s complicated.”
On clapping versus not clapping on disconcerting signals and if he thinks the officials got the call right...
“No, they probably got it right, but there’s been ones that we got right too and they weren’t called. So it’s a matter of doing it the way you’re supposed to do it, and that’s what our kids are coached to do — to do it the way you’re supposed to do it. Sometimes the kids overdo it, and that draws a penalty. I don’t know. I saw the LSU-Missouri plays that weren’t clapping, so I don’t know if that’s exactly right in terms of clapping. But clapping is the most often way it happens, but they don’t get that either ‘cause Auburn clapped five or six times and they didn’t get it. So it’s one of the hardest things things to officiate in all of sports, and that sometimes is very subjective. So it’s complicated.”
On Rara Thomas’ development...
“He’s gotten better every week. You know, he probably struggled a lot in the spring. He grew a lot during camp. He went through some hamstring issues. He learned how to work his way through our practices and how many reps and physical and the way we go about things. He’s learning how to play special teams. I mean, it’s like all this world of stuff coming at him, and that’s what he said he wanted when he came here. He wanted to learn to be a complete wideout, play special teams, and learn in a pro-style system. He’s doing that step by step, and to the kid’s credit he’s getting better every week.”
On Georgia’s depth in general...
“I’m really confused. We have more depth at some positions than others. We’re thin at some positions. We’re thin at some positions because of injuries. We’re thin at some positions because of not recruiting enough guys or enough guys are not playing winning football. That varies for different reasons. I wish we had more depth at every position but some are better than others.”
On the lack of forced fumbles...
“I don’t know. I don’t know if we have less snaps. I would love for that to be my excuse, that we get off the field on third down so we don’t get as many opportunities but we still have a lot of snaps to get an opportunity. We forced one, we didn’t get it. David Daniel punched it out and we didn’t recover it. We give rewards and points, kids compete each week for points. We give points for strip attempts. Ever since we’ve started going up on those point awards, they all compete to have the highest points, the strip attempts have gone up. But the fumbles haven’t. So we continue to chop wood and usually those things come in bunches. If you keep doing it and doing it right, it’s kind of like our offense. You keep working, you keep improving, keep doing it, they come when you need it.”
On getting young people interested in football...
“Um depends on the age. If we’re talking about a 6-year-old, I don’t know that we’re going to get there at that age. If we’re talking about a 14-year-old, he better be well into it. Like contact and the toughness that is required to play the sport. I think there are stages in development. I think there are a lot of places in Georgia that have unbelievable youth football programs. That’s usually a good sign for us because they develop talent. Kids choose to stay in football when they have good coaches. Kids choose to leave football when they have bad coaches. I think the biggest thing is who are the coaches developing your child.”
On the importance of getting young players reps late in games...
“They get confidence. I think they get a reward for what they work on in practice. So many young players, in my experience of being where I’ve been especially on the higher end, there’s a misconception that I’m going to walk in and take over the world because everybody has told me how good I am. I’ve signed or we’ve signed at Alabama, here, everywhere I’ve been, FSU, LSU. There’s been unbelievable players we’ve signed. Very few have instant success, so they have to go through that process of failure, and failure is good for these kids. It’s going to be hard in life, and it’s going to be hard in what they do. I’m proud of a lot of the freshmen getting opportunities in some of these games we’ve had leads in, but they have a long way to go to be ready to contribute like a starter. It starts in the meeting room, taking notes or not taking notes. They don’t walk through like the other guys. I showed 10 minutes of tape today saying, ‘Look at this guy walk through and this guy walk through.’ They’re doing the exact same play, but one’s a senior and one’s a freshman. Look at this guy’s who’s intentional and the way he shows his eyes, puts his hands on people in walk through, and then you’ve got the guy who’s a freshman who’s just casual like it doesn’t matter because he doesn’t think he’s going to play. Well, the difference in that is just stunning. Learning how to be a good player is part of the process.”
On Marvin Jones Jr...
“He’s doing great. Marvin was dealing with an ankle injury. He sprained his ankle on Tuesday or Wednesday, him and Brock collided, stepped on it and he rolled it. Couldn’t practice Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, felt like he could go on Saturday so we took him out to warm ups. Thought he could go, he was able to go a little bit. He played some but really pushed through the pain really well. He just didn’t get a lot of reps so probably wasn’t quite 100%. Played more in the previous games. He’s had a run of tough luck with two games almost missed due to different things. He does a great job in practice and has a really bright future. He’s a very talented player, very smart, one of the guys we can say, ‘He knows the defense inside and out that can go out there and execute at a high level.’”
On Vanderbilt Stadium and navigating the construction...
“Yeah, we’ve got some different things that they handled with our ops people in terms of where we arrive, where we go, where we change, where we go to at halftime, all that stuff has changed. We went and site visited, saw it over the summer. Other teams have done it already, and they’ve told us about it. We’re well aware of it, and we’ve made the players aware of it.”
On Jalon Walker playing more at EDGE...
“No, that’s not his position, that’s not how the game works. He’s 235-245 pounds. He could be an outside backer and play outside backer, but we’re developing him as an inside backer because we have other outside backers. There’s certain plays - and when the tackle is 6-foot-6, 340 pounds, you don’t ask a guy that’s 240 pounds to play on that guy. If they were going to pass it every play, that’d be a great idea. But they don’t do that in our league.”
