ATHENS — Georgia put forth perhaps its best performance of the season on Saturday night, demolishing Kentucky 51-13 to improve to 6-0 this season.
But Kirby Smart saw some things he knows this team needs to improve on. The Georgia coach knows its not always as good, or as bad, as it seems.
The Bulldogs have another SEC game next Saturday when they visit Vanderbilt. The game is scheduled for a 12 p.m. ET start.
Opening statement
“I thought the crowd was electric. It was great to have that kind of atmosphere which we’ve had throughout the year. The fans have been really consistent and done a really good job for us. That helps our players, and I thought our players started fast. The offensive staff had a great plan and executed the plan, but at the end of the day, the ability to run the ball opens things up and gives you the ability to do a lot of things offensively which we were able to do. We probably didn’t get Kentucky’s best shot. I know they’ve got a better team than the one we played tonight, but in the SEC, humility is a week away. I’ve always said it, it’s a mantra I’ve had my whole life, and humility is always one week away in terms of your preparation, just like for us next week.”
On how important the strong start was...
“I mean we haven’t done it, and we still won. So, it certainly helps the start fast, to do things well, the play well, to have a good plan and execute the plan, but it doesn’t mean that the times we didn’t the plan wasn’t good. We just didn’t always execute it. We played well offensively especially tonight, and executed well. That definitely helps momentum wise.”
On taking a different approach to practice...
“We didn’t do anything different in practice. I don’t know what he [Carson Beck] is referring to. Maybe offense changed something up to start faster. I don’t know. We did the same practices we’ve been doing. I attribute the success starting to execution. Carson was really in a rhythm early, and when you run the ball, you have play action and your offense line protects, you have good throwers and catchers, you’re going to do well. They did well on us. When you have good pass protectors, good throwers and you’ve got the ability to run the ball, it makes it hard to defend as a defensive team. You stand back there, have all day and are protected, you can’t cover that long.”
On stopping the run against Ray Davis...
“I don’t know that we did anything different. We have good players, good coaches, and when you have good players and good coaches and execute at a high level, Tray Scott and our defensive staff, they believe in striking blockers and playing the run. We probably haven’t played the run this year as good was we could, but it wasn’t for lack of trying or lack of tackling. The first thing we did on Monday after the Auburn game was we showed them 10 clips of unbelievable run defense against Auburn. We had some unbelievable strikes and blow delivery and getting off blocks. That’s what playing run defense is. We were really positive with them and showed them doing it right, and they responded to that.”
On if this was a complete performance...
“I thought it was a really, really good performance by the offense. I thought defensively there were times that we were off balance. The offense, our offense made them play a little left handed. You can’t sit there and be methodical if you’re down that quickly.
We knew they would struggle to play from behind. That’s not their style of play. the quick start played big time to our advantage. Now it wasn’t a complete performance on defense. Statistically it will say that in terms of the numbers but not for what I would like to have.”
On Tuesday’s practice...
“It was really physical. They bought into the physicality. We told them all week it was going to be the most physical game. They believed it and they practiced really physical Tuesday and Wednesday, and I thought that was indicative of how they would play the game.”
On Rara Thomas...
“Yeah he’s the biggest guy that can change our offense. We have some guys that can do things, obviously Brock is special. Carson has played well. There are are a lot of guys who can do things. It loosens your whole defense up when you’ve got a guy at X that can win some one on ones. If he comes to life and keeps growing like he’s done, he makes us harder to defend. Because there are a lot of answers you have, it’s hard to answer if the guy can go up and catch the ball one-on-one.”
On SVP going out at center and Jared Wilson going in...
“I wasn’t thinking much. Jared goes with our 1s every day in practice. He gets maybe 30 percent of the 1s reps and he does a great job. Jared is a great athlete. He runs the highest speed of anyone on our defensive linemen and offensive linemen. I trust Jared a lot. It was great at a position that we had depth at.”
On what Kirby Smart says to critics...
“I don’t say anything to them. I’m worried about our performance. I didn’t say anything when we didn’t look well, I’m not going to say anything now. I’m really concerned with what we can do from this game to the next one. We want to be elite at getting better.
On if he felt Georgia was the No. 1 team tonight...
“I don’t care. I don’t care. I want to be the No. 1 team at the end of the year. The goal to get there is to get better. I could care less where anyone ranks us.”
On if Georgia had a more complete performance...
“I don’t know. I told y’all our offense has been really good in camp and really explosive. They were really special with Branson because it gave you a bigger dynamic running the ball. We have a good quarterback and some good weapons. We’ve got to continue to get better. I’m very pleased with where they are, I’m was very pleased with what they are after every game.”
On Kendall Milton’s performance…
”I thought Kendall did a great job tonight. Kendall hit it, and Mike talked about it during the week. He said, we’ve got to get somebody that can get us three, four, five yards. We can’t be behind the sticks like we were at Auburn. I thought Kendall brought a little hefty punch, stuck it up in there. He got a lot of yards after contact. It’s the first time that I thought he looked healthy all year.”On the identity of the team…”We can take a punch and we can give a punch.”
On Jamon Dumas-Johnson and what he’s seen leading to a great performance like this…
”Great leadership. He was dinged up in the Auburn game and pushed through. He’s been hurt all week, really, playing hurt. We had a plan to be able to pressure some, and he got the benefit of that. It’s very rare that we get to play a team that drops back and plays what I call real drop-back football. Kentucky does that. It gave us a chance to rush a little bit and do some things that other teams aren’t giving us a chance to do.”
On third-down defense and the keys to success there…
”Be good on first and second down. If you’re good on first and second down, you know what it does to third down? It makes it really long. When they’re in third and long, you’re really good. I would venture to say that our third and longs that we’ve defended have been longer than everybody else’s in the country, which statistically you win third down by getting in third and long. If they’re in third and 1 and 2, I bet you we’re not very good. They converted on fourth down on us tonight, it’s fourth and 2. It’s one of those deals that you get them in third and long, you don’t let people run the ball, and you play good defense behind it. We have been proud of that group. Our guys took some blows and took some jabs after the Auburn game. We self-reflected and said, look guys, we’ve been better at third-down defense than we’ve ever been here. We’ve got unbelievable defenses in our history. We don’t measure ourselves against the country. We measure ourself against ourself.”
On the offense right before halftime and getting another field goal…
”It was created by the defense getting a stop, which we had not been great at this year. We always like to win the halftime deal. We had not really done that well this year. I’ve called a timeout, let teams score. I didn’t call a timeout this time, he helped me out throwing the ball. So we got to save our timeouts. We wanted to be aggressive if they didn’t hit a great punt. Mike called good plays and Carson was patient enough to hit the back. If he just checks down to the back, we’re going to get a field goal. He did that.”
On what was one thing he was proud of against Kentucky and an area of improvement...
“The thing I was most proud of was the physicality. We talked about that people can’t match our connection, and nobody really believes that matters — or, at least, I don’t know how much people believe it matters. We do, and we think that what we do all offseason in terms of connection with each other combined with our physicality is what makes us dangerous. We used the wrecking ball analogy, and we showed wrecking balls all week and just said, ‘It’s going to get more and bigger and bigger and bigger, and the bigger the wrecking ball is, you know, force = mass x acceleration. We talked all week about a lot of mass and a lot of acceleration, and I thought that our offensive line, when you say what was I proud of, their ability to run the ball against Kentucky was the difference in the game.”
On how Brock Bowers continues to get so open...
“[Laughs] Well, when you have the ability to run the ball. Like, everybody just thinks, ‘Oh, there’s Brock Bowers. Key him.’ Well, you can’t just key him because when you play zone defense, you don’t know who has him. When you play man defense, you can’t cover him. So there’s illusions, you know? There’s a rocket motion, and one guy has the receiver. The receiver goes across the field, and now that defensive back that had the receiver, he has Brock. But he didn’t know he had Brock before the motion occurred. So there’s bumping going on. There’s all kinds of action going across the field, and it’s a nightmare because if you put your eyes in the backfield and you think you’ve got to stop the run, 19′s behind you. And I’m sure teams wanted to stop 19 that could, but we’ve got other answers.”
On Darris Smith and David Daniel-Sisavanh being unavailable...
“Yeah, both of them weren’t able to make it. One of them was dealing with sickness, and one of them couldn’t be with us.”
On what Smart thinks Georgia is elite at halfway through the regular season...
“Taking a punch and giving a punch.”
On Kentucky having self-inflicted issues in the first half...
“Yeah, I thought the momentum was the big Rara play because I didn’t think it was a touchdown. You know, I couldn’t see from where I was, and then they were yelling in the box that it was a touchdown. That was the biggest momentum [boost] because it went from, was that third down when that happened? I don’t know. Second down maybe, I don’t know. But when we scored a touchdown there, it was like, woah. You know, we got huge momentum here. They did have some penalties.
And I’ll say this: our team had great discipline tonight to not get cheap penalties. And we told them. We said, ‘Hey, look, Kentucky’s going to have some penalties. They’ll have guys push you, shove you, or do something to you. Just don’t respond to it.’ I thought our guys were really good. You know, it really cost them on a drive. They stopped us, and then they had a kid hit Sed. And that converts a third down that we didn’t convert, and we go down and score that drive.
People don’t ever talk about the discipline our team has. I so respect our guys for not retaliating or taking shots when people do things, you know, to take shots at you.”
On how valuable in the long run it was to get guys like Brock Vandagriff in the game...
“It’s great. It’s great. If he has to go in and play, he’s going to be more and more ready. He gains confidence each time he goes out there.”
On getting Pearce Spurlin and Lawson Luckie in the game...
“It’s awesome. They’ve got to get better though. They go out there and they play against the same guys the other guys do. They’ve got to be able to block people and play physical, and that’s something that they — they got a lot better last week in practice ‘cause we made them go block and go be physical. They’ve got to continue to do that if they’re going to play.”
On the disconcerting signals penalty...
“It’s complicated. It’s real complicated.”
A reporter adds to it saying it’s a tough call...
“It’s complicated, Chip. It may be above some of y’all’s football IQ. No offense.”
On getting everybody’s best game...
“I don’t know that we get everybody’s best game. They’re not giving us their best game because of our ranking or a winning streak or any of that. They want to play their best game because that’s what they need to do. So we want to play our best game because we want to play it. But I am enjoying wins. I cherish the hell out of the win last week. I told y’all I knew it was going to be 10 times harder to play on the road at Auburn than any game we’ve had. I knew this week, this was really their first road test and it was going to be an advantage for us in terms of that. It’s a factor guys, when you play on the road in the SEC, it’s hard. I knew we would have the juice, ready to come out. When our guys get challenged, they’re going to play well. I embrace winning and enjoying the moment. I’m not going to sit back and think that you’re — it’s not going to go on forever. When we do lose, when that happens, we’re going to move to the next one too. Life is going to go on. The sun’s going to come up tomorrow, and we’re going to have to get better.”
On the wrecking ball and Miley Cyrus...
“I don’t know who Miley Cyrus is. What does she have to do with a wrecking ball? I know Eric Church. .... Force equals mass times acceleration. We have a lot of mass. What’s mass? More hats. What’s acceleration? Our speed. We want that going into them, and we want them to do it connected. You want them to be connected with our physicality, and we showed them videos of wrecking balls, just a big ball hitting a wall and knocking it down. Each week, each day in the meeting, it got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and we wanted to be the wrecking ball.”
On Smart being animated with Mekhi Mews...
“Well, it’s hidden yards, right? We’ve gotta field the ball to not let the punt bounce and roll and get downed. You don’t want to start on your own 2. It takes a lot of confidence to run up there and catch the ball. Sometimes the greatest return you ever have is the one you fair caught. He’s done a tremendous job for us. That kid takes so much pride in doing it right. I love him to death. If we wouldn’t have clipped, he would’ve had an outstanding return, and we didn’t need to clip.”
On what it says about this team winning a game like this...
“It means we can take a punch, and we can give a punch.”
