ATHENS -- Malaki Starks knows the routine, but the second-year Georgia football safety feels no sense of complacency.
“The difference between last spring and this spring is I’ve been through a year and I kind of know how the system works,” said Starks, who earned FWAA Freshman All-American honors and helped lead the Bulldogs to a 15-0 season
“I’m still learning each and every day, but I think I’m a little bit more hungry than I was last spring.”
It’s a good thing, because opposing teams could have more time to work on Starks and his fellow defensive backs with Georgia losing projected first-round picks Nolan Smith and Jalen Carter from its pass rush arsenal.
LSU and Ohio State carved up the Georgia defense in two of the last three games last season even with Carter creating issues in the middle of the line.
The Tigers passed for 502 yards and scored 30 points on the Bulldogs in the SEC title game, and the Buckeyes threw for 348 of the 467 yards they gained in a 42-41 CFP Peach Bowl Semifinal loss.
Starks knows he’s part of the solution for the Georgia secondary to be sharper, even with All-American safety Christopher Smith and All-SEC cornerback Kelee Ringo headed to the NFL.
“I had a pretty good year, but it wasn’t the best of me,” Starks said on the Respect the Hedges podcast. “So I want to keep working and keep getting better.”
Starks admits it was a big adjustment going from high school football to the college ranks last spring as a mid-term enrolee.
The speed of the game increased, and so did the volume and intensity of the coaching.
“It’s a completely different game, everyone is faster and stronger and it’s more intense, especially from the coaching standpoint,” Starks said. “The biggest thing for me when I came in was I had to hear the message and not the tone when I was being coached.
“Sometimes it’s hard, because you get to college and you feel like your grown and whatever, and you have people yell at you all the time, every day, for every little thing that you do. So it’s hard to take coaching sometimes.”
The fact that Coach Kirby Smart oversees safeties for part of practices makes it all the more intense.
But as Starks realizes, that’s also a bonus.
“You really have to sit back and think they’ve been where I want to go, and they know what they’re doing and I’m around some of the best minds in football every day,” Starks said. “So I would be a fool not to soak in all that knowledge.
“So this spring I’m really trying to become the best 2-4 I can when I’m on the field for my teammates, myself and my family and anybody who’s watching.”
Starks doesn’t take anything for granted, especially when he considers where he was in the days leading up to 2022 national championship season.
“Last spring I came in and the safety spot was open, people had left and I just wanted to play,” Starks said. “It got to a point in fall camp where I was like, I don’t even care if I’m playing safety, I don’t care if I’ve got to hold kicks for PAT, I just want to get on the field, I literally just want to be on the field, that’s all.”
Less than one year later, Starks and Georgia football fans are expecting big things from the safety position as the Bulldogs look to make football history by becoming the first program in the modern era to three-peat.
