ATHENS — Georgia is back in the College Football Playoff following its 22-19 win over Texas.
And while the Bulldogs don’t yet know who they will be facing in the quarterfinal game, Georgia coach Kirby Smart still had plenty to say on what comes next for the Bulldogs between now and their Jan. 1 game.
Below are Smart’s full comments from his press conference on Sunday.
What Kirby Smart said about Georgia making the College Football Playoff, transfer portal opening
Opening statement...
“Yeah, I’m just finding out the news today of the CFP and the 12-team playoff, and obviously we’ll be headed to New Orleans to play in the Sugar Bowl. We are super excited. We’ve got great connections down there, a lot of friends, and guys we’ve met over the years of playing there in the Sugar Bowl. We’re excited. Obviously we don’t know our opponent yet, but we’ve got a lot of time to work on ourselves and try to get better. That’s the biggest thing right now is what’s important now, and what’s important now is for us to keep trying to challenge ourselves and find ways to get better.”
On the opportunity of having about a month to get Gunner Stockton ready if Carson is out...
“Yeah, I certainly think there’s no good script, right, for losing a quarterback or having to go to your backup. There’s not a great script for it. It certainly wasn’t a great script last night to have to do it against the number one team in the country on defense, and to have to do that at halftime was tough.
But this situation does give you time if that’s what has to happen. I mean, there is time there. But, I mean, experience is so valuable, and you can’t really get experience in this amount of time. I wish he’d gotten more game experience up to this point in time. There’s not a lot we can do about that right now, so we’re just waiting to find out more information.”
On getting to play in the Sugar Bowl and Georgia’s history in the game...
“Yeah, a tremendous amount of history. I know as an early child, it’s one of the first games that I remember actually seeing and watching back in the early ‘80s as a 5-, 6-year-old kid and, you know, Hershel Walker and the moments that happened in the Sugar Bowl. All the way through a lot of games I’ve been a part of, whether it’s Florida State-Georgia when I was a GA at Florida State. A lot of years at Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.
I think my kids think their second home is the Sugar Bowl because they spend a lot of time there, and they’re very spoiled when it comes to playing in an electric atmosphere, big match-ups, big games. The SEC’s been paired with the Sugar Bowl for a long time, and it’s got a long-standing history and Georgia does too.”
On Brett Thorson ...
“Don’t have much. The MRI was done this morning along with Carson’s, and we’re awaiting results on both of those.”
On if Kirby expects to have an answer on Carson later tonight...
“Yeah, again, I don’t know because I’m not following it. I’ve got a lot of other things going on. They’ll reach out to me once they do know something and get back to us.”
On Carson’s mood...
“Yeah, he was at a team meeting. I think he had just gotten back from the MRI, so I think he was pretty somber. A tough deal for him in terms of not being able to go out there and finish in the second half. But he’s also excited for his teammates and happy that it ended the way it did, and ironically he got to be on the field for that.
On how much time is spent on the transfer portal in the coming weeks...
“Yeah, that’s all part of what we do. I mean, we’re recruiting 26s right now, we’re evaluating tape, we’ve got guys to watch our future opponents, the teams we’ve got to watch. We’re always talking and dealing with our players. That’ll move to the forefront like right now in terms of what we do. But then we’ll start back practice and we’ll continue to get better with the guys that want to be here. And there’s not going to be a team in the country that doesn’t have somebody leave, probably somebody they don’t expect. But I almost feel like that’s become the norm. And it is what it is. We’re going to coach the ones that want to be here.
On thoughts on Notre Dame and Indiana...
“I would be remiss if I even commented. I mean, other than knowing Curt Cignetti and Coach Freeman having immense respect for both of them and the way they lead their programs. I was on staff with Curt and have competed against Marcus Freeman in his years there at Cincinnati. So I can’t say a lot about them. You know, I really haven’t had a chance.”
On how looking at future opponents is balanced with working on themselves...
“Yeah, there won’t be a big difference in the balance. You know, we commit 75, 80% to ourselves and growth and development and trying to get our team ready and backups ready. We’re always going to be working at us and then we’re going to spend time on our opponents. It’s very similar to an off week for us where we work on two or three future opponents. We’ll continue to work on two future opponents in this case, not knowing the outcome of the game.”
On Georgia’s backup punters given injury concern for Brett Thorson...
“Yeah, I hope his career continues. He’s got more time with us, you know, and I still don’t know the outcome of it. But when you reference (Charlie) Ham, you’re talking about the backup kicker.”
On who came in for the fake punt...
“Drew (Miller). So that’s the kid we signed last year. So he would be our punter, and we think he’s really talented, and he does a great job, and he’s worked really hard to get the opportunity, and he punts every day in practice and does a tremendous job. He’s a very highly recruited kid who we’ve got a lot of confidence in.”
On what exactly Carson hurt...
“The elbow area is what we understand it to be. At the time, I didn’t know walking off the field. I wasn’t sure. It looked like it could be shoulder, like it could be wrist. It actually looked like the blow or the contact was to the wrist-slash-forearm area, but the strain or pain was around the elbow.”
On the practice schedule...
“It’s up to the coach. I mean, we have parameters that we use.I’ve got a model that I’ve used for years in terms of number of practices you want to get before you break for Christmas, number of practices you want to get afterwards, but there’s not school right now, so we’re not in a 20-hour week. We have flexibility there. They have to get a day off each week, which most coaches in their right mind give them more than one day off a week at this point in time. You tend to do every other day or you do some workouts. I’ve got a plan of what we’re going to do, but as far as parameters, there’s not a lot of parameters you can do about what you want to do as long as you’re smart.”
On the offense changing when Gunner went into the game...
“Well, I think his strengths are somewhat different than Carson’s, obviously, but we’ve known that. There’s not a game we don’t go into that we don’t have a plan for Gunner if he were to have to play. I mean, when he’s your backup quarterback, he’s got to be ready to play, but he functions and operates really well within our current offense. We don’t think we have to change much in terms of that. He does give us the capability of doing some different things with his athleticism, and I thought Mike and those guys did a good job using that. The team has a lot of confidence in Gunner. He’s very smart, very intelligent. So I don’t know that it’s a lot of change. It’s probably more picking the volume correctly in terms of not having everything that we have with Carson, but having things that fit Gunner.”
On Indiana and Curt Cignetti...
“Yeah, it’s been really neat, really cool. I thought it was awesome to see some of their games on a national stage this year and their team transform really the whole campus and energy around their program. Curt has brought a lot of notoriety to Indiana. And it’s interesting because I’ve enjoyed watching it because I know Coach Cignetti, you know, my years at Alabama, I was a really young coach and enjoyed being around him and his personality is different. And I really like Coach Cignetti. And I followed him wherever he’s gone, he’s done really well.”
On Ryan Puglisi and Jaden Rashada...
“They’re both getting better, man. They’ve grown a lot since the start of the year to now. I think about all the reps they’ve taken. They’ve taken a lot of reps and they get better and better and better. You know, I wish there were more game opportunities for them and there just haven’t been a lot of game opportunities. So when they don’t get those game opportunities, we come in on Monday and we go scrimmage, we call it opportunity period and we let Jaden (Rashada), Ryan (Puglisi), Colter (Ginn), all those guys get reps and they go out and throw and compete and do third downs and do move the field and get reps against the defense. And that’s their growth because we’re not getting it in quality game time.”
On the Hail Mary decision before the half…
“The play before he got injured was the play that we wanted to set up a field goal. Most teams, including NFL teams, when you have a certain amount of time that you feel like you can burn a timeout, catch the ball, get down. If you remember that play, I think it was maybe a hard-count play, and they jumped. We know when they jump that we’ve got a free play. And the goal was to get in field goal range, which we felt like was somewhere between 35 and 40. Probably closer to the 35 would have been realistic to make a field goal attempt. That’s the play that I think we threw the interception on, Carson threw the interception on. But there was a penalty, so we got five yards, and we lost time. I think at the time that we decided to throw the Hail Mary, there was only three seconds maybe or something left. t that point, we couldn’t throw an out, a quick game. We didn’t have enough time, so the opportunity there was to take a shot at the end zone. And that’s what we did. We actually did it the week before and needed to work on it. We worked on it this last week to try to get better at it. It’s just unfortunate. They rushed four instead of three, and he’s got to locate the defender and know where the guys are coming from and try to avoid them. And at the end of the day, we’re good with a sack there. Like, if we don’t get the ball off, it’s okay. Just take a sack because the last thing you want is a sack-fumble, which almost happened.”
On if he felt they were out of Woodring’s range…
“Absolutely out of his range. Yeah, I mean, to win a game, we can do it to attempt it. But we mark off every week and every venue we play in what you would try to win a game at versus what you would do at the end of a half. And if you remember, we had that situation against Georgia Tech and probably had too much wind on that one. We didn’t get a chance to get it to the end zone.”
On if Gunner Stockton went in concussion protocol and if he could have come back in the game…
“Yeah, he was fine to come back in. Gunner, I don’t know exactly if he checked with the trainer, but when he came off the field, we were all talking to him about that he could go back out as long as he was cleared. He could return to play. He was conscious, fine, moving around, communicating. Most of the time, they go into concussion protocol, it usually is a more severe targeting or there is an indicator for Ron and his staff. I don’t even know because I didn’t talk to him. I was talking to Carson at the time, and it never came to fruition.”
On areas he might try to identify to shore up the roster in the transfer portal…
“Yeah, all of them. All of them. It’s not a position that we don’t have enough depth at. I mean, like I repeatedly say, we have less depth than we’ve ever had before. So we evaluate the transfer portal on who fits our culture more than we do who fits our talent level. There’s tons of talented guys out there. We just want to find people that want to fit our culture and really our ethic because it’s not a place to go to if you’re just looking for sheer numbers. I mean, you’ve got to want to win, and you’ve got to want to make sacrifices for the team here.”
On Will Muschamp’s impact and presence…
“He didn’t, I mean, he was there. Yeah, he did a great job for us. He was on the headphones. I think he felt like he needed to because he had not been in a lot of games, you know, so he stayed kind of apart from things, but he still helps get information and helps us out during the game in terms of adjustments and things like that.”
