ATHENS — Kirby Smart had a lot to say following Georgia’s 31-13 win over Auburn.
The Bulldogs got back into the win column on Saturday and improved to 4-1 on the season.
Below is a full transcript of everything Smart said had to say. The Bulldogs return to home next week when Georgia hosts Mississippi State.
Opening statement…
“We beat a good team today. A resilient, tough, hard fought SEC win. They are hard to come by, and I think that’s a really good football team we just played. I said that all week, when they don’t turn the ball over, they’re hard to beat. They did not turn the ball over, they got physical back. They do a really good job defensively. So a lot of respect to those guys. I thought it was really hot today.
Our guys and their guys struggled a little bit with the stamina part. But I was proud of Carson, stood in there and made some really key throws. Made some really good decisions with the ball. And I thought we used the backs well in terms of the mental play those guys got. So, thanks.”
On how the team has tackled this season…
“It was horrible on that play, but that’s a really good back. When you play really good backs, they’re gonna break tackles. I was more disappointed in the pursuit than I was the tackling. We did miss one tackle, but there were seven other people that never got a chance to get a tackle because they were tired, couldn’t get there, not hustling. I mean, in football, you gotta defeat a block and make a tackle. We defeated a block and missed a tackle.
So everybody makes a lot of big deal about the tackling. And I went home after practice, it was Wednesday or Thursday. And I was like, man, tackling, our tackling was bad. We didn’t tackle good at Thursday practice. And I got home and I watched the Falcons and somebody. And I was like, ‘man, the tackling is awful all over.’ I’m not saying Falcons are in the NFL. It’s just bad tackling, and we have bad tackling. So it’s indicative of the culture of football that people don’t tackle. People don’t hit. People don’t practice like they used to, including us. You guys got a chance.”
On Trevor Etienne...
“Yeah, it was more than the touchdowns. Obviously the touchdowns were great, but that’s not what it’s about. It’s about the hard yards. It’s about the third and ten catch that he gets and makes it fourth and one. It’s about the fourth and one play that he gets it and makes one. He’s earned really hard yards. He is a great leader. He is a great kid. He’s an explosive player. But I thought today he got winded, he got tired. I mean, he was tired in the game. He wasn’t as explosive as he can be, but neither was their defense. Neither was the pursuit. I mean, both teams at times were just sloppy.”
On the fourth down call…
“Well, I thought about what would you rather have on defense? Would you rather have somebody punt it or go for it there? And you feel like you can get a yard when you have to get a yard. And we had enough lead that we could afford to do that. You make that one score game, it’s a much tougher decision.”
On the Dominic Lovett touchdown…
“Yeah, I’m not sure.I actually had a bad view. I couldn’t tell. I thought it was going at Dillon. But Carson said he was going into Dom, and he was waiting on him to run the return route. And he was coming back on the return. It just took him a while to come out of it.”
On how Drew Bobo did today and how cool that was for Mike...
“Yeah, Drew has worked really hard. Drew is a tremendous athlete. People don’t give him enough credit for second on blocks, getting downfield, effort. I mean he is probably one of our highest effort players ‘cause every play he’s running down field to go hit somebody. And I was really proud of him and it was a great moment. He was a ring bearer at my wedding, and just got a lot of respect for Drew and the way he works, and to see him grow up and just be the great man and person that he is. I was happy for him to have success today.”
On starting fast against Auburn...
“Yeah, I don’t even know if we started fast. I mean, I guess we did. I guess you count that as starting fast, but I don’t count it when we have a third-and-13 and give it up on the screen. That’s not starting fast to me. We gotta get off the field, get the field position battle, flip the field, and take it over, especially at home. I didn’t think we did that, but it certainly was not last week.”
On the two-minute execution today...
“Well, that was great. That was the momentum swing of the game. The decision to punt that and not go for it or not kick the field goal, which was a tough decision for me. It was a 56-yarder, questionable range. They’re going to get the ball and go right here and have momentum. If we don’t make that field goal and they get momentum, you’re questioning that decision. I had a lot of confidence that he could make it, but not enough that I couldn’t say we’re gonna pin him inside the 5 or 10. If we kick it in the end zone there, we basically get 16 yards of field position, and those are hard decisions. So credit goes to Arian and Dom and Brett Thorson, and then credit goes to the defense for stopping them, and then Carson and those guys capitalized. We won situational football, which was the two minute before the half.”
On Nick Saban’s text and how Georgia responded after the Alabama loss...
“I mean, I love Nick. I reached out to him after our game. I initiated the contact and told him, I said, ‘The sun’s still gonna come up tomorrow’ because that was the saying he always had before the game to make you realize that it’s so big to us coaches, but it’s a game. It’s a game of football. Sun’s gonna come up, and I told him Sunday morning, I said, ‘Sun’s still coming up.’ And he said, ‘You’ve got a great team, they play really hard, and they should be proud of the way they played and keep getting them better.’ I appreciate those comments.
On Kirby’s reaction to Vanderbilt beating Alabama...
“I think Vandy’s got a great program and does a great job. I mean, it’s a lot of other people that don’t respect Vandy. I respect Clark Lea. I respect his team, his quarterback, what they’ve done. They beat Virginia Tech. I mean, somebody told me that six of eight games were decided by one score or less in our league. Nothing shocks me about our league. So Texas A&M-Missouri, welcome to the SEC. It’s hard every week, and I got a feeling that it’s not gonna stop. It’s a consistency in performance, and when you ride the wave of emotion, you get caught on the bottom of the wave sometimes. And we’re just trying to do this [moves hand in a flat motion], just trying to keep getting better and keep getting better.”
On getting London Humphreys back...
“Oh, it was awesome. I mean, that was crazy to be where, I mean, I didn’t know how long it was gonna be, and then I get a call that he can play. I’m like, what? Like, we thought it was gonna be a couple weeks, and then he didn’t even practice — I guess, I don’t know what day it was, Monday, Tuesday. I don’t know. I forget what day he even got cleared, but I mean, he just goes out there, gets back to working. He’s so solid, he’s so reliable, and jumped right back in and did a good job.”
On Smael Mondon’s status and how the linebackers played...
“Yep, Smael’s injured, and I thought the guys stepped up and did a great job. Jalon Walker had to play more of an inside linebacker role, which is what we anticipated going into the year. CJ’s banged up, Raylen’s pushing hard. We got to get other guys ready. Terrell, Chris Cole, Justin Williams, they all gotta step up and play.”
On what he’s seen from Chris Cole this year...
“He’s a freshman, and we played with two last year. And it’s tough if you have to play every down with a freshman, but he is a sponge. He has gotten so much better since he arrived, and he has a high upside. He’s extremely long, he’s extremely fast, but he’s a freshman, so you have to temper your expectations with a freshman because they haven’t done it before. But he has proven to be a good special teams player and he continues to get better.”
On critical 79-yard drive after Auburn’s field goal...
“Huge. Huge. I mean, we didn’t have a good drive coming out, which is frustrating. It’s like, ‘OK, let’s come out. We got the ball first. Let’s go.’ I think we were three and out or something like that. It was quick. And then they score, and here we go. We’re gonna be in a battle, but that’s what those games are, and I thought our offense responded. That was closer to the offense that we had last year where it was like, when we get punched on defense, they respond. They had more third-down conversions. They had throws and catches that were more efficient in the run game, and could have even been more efficient in the run game, but that was what we need.”
On the grade he would give his team after today...
“Yeah, I’m not a grader, I’m not gonna do it until I watch the tape. I’m sorry. I can’t fall into that trap. I wanna watch the tape and evaluate it before I give a grade.”
On Jared Wilson’s availability and Christen Miller’s injury...
“Yeah, I don’t know a Christian, I thought he was fine. I mean, he had ice on his knee, and he played a lot in the game. So I thought at the point that he was not in, we were already playing other people. So we’ll see. Jared was not able to go, been dealing with a foot injury since last week. But he felt like he could go in and play. If he had to be the backup and the emergency center, he felt like he could do that. So we were gonna use him as that if we needed to.”
On Nate Frazier’s performance...
“Yeah, it’s great, but I don’t wanna use him in the third and fourth quarter. I wanna use him as much as we can. But it’s hard when you’re trying to feed three guys there, and I got tremendous confidence in all three of those guys. And each one of them, sometimes you just gotta ride a hot hand with who’s going, and each one of them’s gonna continue to get better.”
On fourth-down stop by Jalon Walker...
“It wasn’t Jalen Milroe, you know what I mean? Like, I would love to, and I don’t mean that in any slight to Payton Thorne. And I don’t know that it’s the same play. I’m not saying that. It looked like they tried to run the same play, and Jalon was a little more under control. And he did what he was supposed to do last week, and he did what he was supposed to do today. But the guy last week outran the whole defense.”
On running the ball with OL missing...
“Well, I think we could run it better. And I don’t, I mean, I don’t like using excuses. There’s probably a lot of teams, I think Auburn’s missing one. I don’t know what the status in the SEC for guys missing offensive line starters. But most teams we’ve played have maybe one out and two out. We’re not like we used to be. Nobody is, that I know of, has nine, ten great offensive linemen. So we’re thin, and it’s gonna become a recurring theme, in my opinion, across college football. You’re thinner, and thinner, and thinner. And you gotta be smart, maybe in how you practice. But I’m proud of the guys we have, and they’re doing a great job. And we are running the ball decent, but we can run the ball better. I mean, we can run the ball better than we did today, I know it.”
On confidence from practice that Carson would have a bounce-back game...
“No, I mean, he has a routine, he does, he trusts that routine. And I don’t disagree, but I also think he did play really well against Alabama at times. And he got a lot of confidence in that game. So it was not, if you’re looking at the whole picture of the game, but there were a lot of good things he did. And he did a lot of good things today, and nobody really understands what Carson does in our offense. And you can’t appreciate it unless you know it. So I understand the scrutiny that he’s under, just like me. He’s a quarterback, and I’m the head coach. We’re gonna be under immense scrutiny. But Carson Beck is a tough winner, competitor, and leader, and I’ll go to war with the guy anytime.”
On response to last week’s loss...
“Yeah, it’s tough. I’m gonna be honest, because all people talked about all week was what? That. Right? That’s all people talked about all week. I mean, it was all over every Twitter feed, all over every social media, everything. And I told y’all before we played them, I said, when we win or lose this game, there is a tough physical game after it. And there is. Guess what there is next week? Another one, Humility is a week away in our league at all times. And that’s the consistency I wanna have. We’re not gonna win all of our games all the time. That’s not gonna happen. I want our fan base to appreciate what we have and give their all and be unbelievable with crowd noise and make energy at home games. We need it to be tough on other teams to play here. But it’s not. It’s not the same as it’s been in the past. It’s gotta be energetic. It’s gotta be. It was hot today. It was hot. But it was hot on our players too. They pushed through it. It was a tough week, and we answered the bell.”
On the offense and playing with more consistency…
“I mean, just play with more consistency. We still have plays that are like a play where Arian’s running, we’re gonna take a touchdown shot. He thinks Carson’s scrambling, so he breaks off the route and we throw a long incompletion. Well that’s second and 10. I mean, you cannot waste plays. You might throw incompletions, but you can’t waste plays. You might not block a guy, but the back’s going to make you miss. You can’t waste plays. And I don’t know, I can’t say how many plays we’ve wasted today. We were much more efficient. But we’ve got a quarterback, an offensive staff, and offensive players that can be efficient. And there’s teams that, they screw it up. I mean, jump offsides, go the wrong way. We usually don’t do those things. We’re very efficient. We have to maintain that.”
On blocking out the noise from last week’s loss…
“I just keep telling them about Auburn and say that this is a war. It’s a rivalry game. It’s hard. They’re a 5-0 team. If they don’t turn it over, they’re 5-0. How would you feel and prepare for Auburn if they were 5-0? Because that’s what they are in my mind. I can’t promise you turnovers. Those are random. So our focus was on them all week. I think our guys wanted to get that taste out of their mouth and go play. That helped. We talked about earning the right to cut itloose. We really had not cut it loose in a game. And I don’t know that we did today, but we’re closer to it.”
On Dan Jackson…
“Yeah, he’s an awesome kid, man. What a great story. This is one of the greatest stories in college football that nobody talks about. I mean, the guy, he didn’t like walk-on because we called him. He got in school here and said, hey, coach, I’d like to play football at Georgia. Like, we didn’t recruit him. We recruited Ladd McConkey. We recruited these walk-ons. This guy showed up at our doorstep and is a starter, competitor, blocking field goals, didn’t have to come back this year. I mean, he’s like, I don’t know, coach, I don’t know. He came back because he loves this place. He loves Georgia. He don’t do it for him. He don’t do it for money. He’s never asked for anything. I mean, he loves the place. I mean, there’s somebody out there that’s a fan and they say, well, you can do NIL. Somebody ought to say, Dan Jackson, I’m going to take care of you the rest of your life because I promise you he’ll be the best employee, the best worker, the best, I mean, that’s after his football career. Because I really believe the guy’s got a chance to play in the National Football League because he’s fast, he’s tough, and he’s smart.”
On if outside run issues are caused by pursuit…
“No, I would probably attribute it to the fact we were in a three down front. They blocked odd mug, and they brought a guy around the edge, and we didn’t do a good job handling that. We didn’t strike blockers and get off. You gotta do sometimes what you call open a can of whoop ass. We didn’t do that.”
