TUSCALOOSA, Ala., — Kirby Smart didn’t hide from it. He knew his team’s performance wasn’t good enough to start on Saturday.
And despite a furious comeback to take a late lead against Alabama, Georgia ultimately fell 41-34. It was Georgia’s first regular season loss since the 2020 season, snapping a 42 game regular season win streak.
Smart spoke to reporters for just over 10 minutes after the loss. Below are his full remarks.
OPENING STATEMENT
“Well, obviously, one hell of a game. Great atmosphere. A lot of respect for Alabama’s team, their fans, the venue. It was one hell of a game. Tale of two halves. Obviously, we were not really prepared and that falls on me. In the first half we didn’t do a great job, especially defensively. But we also gave them short fields, and when you have a short field and a quarterback like Milroe, it creates a lot of tough times. I am extremely proud of our team. At halftime I thought our coaches made good adjustments, everybody was positive. And I talked to them. I told them, I said, ‘Look, guys, I’ve been in this stadium down to the Texas A&M probably just as bad.’ Came back to make it a game and had a chance to win the game and didn’t make more plays than Alabama, so a lot of credit to them. And for us humility is always a week away. We got to go get ready for another tough opponent coming to our place. So with that I’ll open it up.”
On defending Jalen Milroe differently in the second half...
“Well, we probably weren’t as aggressive. We were more aggressive in the first half and took some chances. Probably got hit on some things that — they did a good job of packaging run and pass with him. He’s hard to defend, but when he’s 28-of-31, or whatever he was. At halftime he was, I don’t know what it was. There were not very many completions. He’s really hard to defend. So you have to pick your poison. Do you want the guy to take off and beat you running? Do you want him to play loose coverage and try to keep eyes on him so he doesn’t take off? He ran the ball well on the perimeter, and we lost contain and then he also threw the ball well, which made it really tough. In the second half, we played some tighter coverage, we made some stops, and we possessed the ball in offense. When you make stops, you give yourself a chance.”
On Ryan Williams...
“Great player. I mean, I got asked by the GameDay crew before the thing about what are you gonna do special for Ryan Williams? And I said, ‘We can’t do anything special for Ryan Williams. They got a guy back there at quarterback that could be the best running back in the country, and he throws the ball. You can’t put two people on Ryan Williams. You can’t do it. You’ve got to make him make throws. We’ve known Ryan for a long time. He came to our place on several visits. He’s such a great kid. He’s extremely fast and elusive, and he’s got great ball skills.
Malaki had really good coverage on him on a double move. He got on top of Malaki. If I had to do it over again, we would challenge him more and get up on him. We were off a lot, but the play he made was actually in press coverage there late. And, you know, that’s OK to give that up. That’s hard, but we caught that ball on them. But you’ve got to tackle. You’ve got to get him on the ground, make him snap it again, and we had momentum to make him drive it through. But we didn’t get him on the ground, and that’s the biggest fatal flaw of that play.”
On what surprised him in the first half…
“I was surprised, we turned the ball over, I don’t know how many times, two or three in the short field, and they did a really good job in the red area. We were gonna make Milroe throw the ball in the red area to beat us. We didn’t have to, he ran around us. We had our best player on him on 4th and 1 and he outran him to the sideline and then turned up and scored. He ran outside of a blitz defense that we got more people than they can block in there, and he ran what we call a moon sweep outside. He’s a really good football player, he’s a really good football player. So if you could just stop him and not worry about him throwing it, I think you could do it. But when he’s throwing it well and they’re catching it well, it’s really hard to stop.”
On the message to the defense after first few drives and not getting stops…
You got to get stops. You got to get stops, you know what I mean? Play by play, you got to do a better job, you got to settle down, you got to communicate well. If you go back the first drive from 3rd and 7 – and we worked all week on it, they go fast on third down, they hard count, they look to see what you’re in, and we practiced that all week, and we talked about not jumping off sides. We jumped off sides, and they’re deadly in 3rd and 2. They’re hard to stop in 3rd and 2. So we have 3rd and 7, three and out, going to get the ball, let it happen, and they score. And then they score, and then we turn over, and they score. It was a tough sledding for sure, and I give them a lot of credit. They did some different things, very similar plays, but they had different looks to it, and did a good job with their backs out of the backfield too.”
On evaluating Carson Beck…
“I don’t know that there was a huge difference. We had four downs to do everything in the second half, so the four downs made a big difference. When you got four downs, you got a couple to waste in there. We got to the point where we had to be aggressive and go fast, which opened some things up. I was really proud of the way he played. Some of the, one of the interceptions was not his fault. He did what he was supposed to do. The fumble was probably the one that he’ll look back on and say, it’s 1st and 10, just throw it away. Just throw it away, we don’t have to make a play there because we got four downs. We got second, third and fourth. To fumble that one and give it back to them really makes it tough.”
On being 1-6 vs. Alabama…
“I don’t know, what’s everybody else’s record against them, you know? Has anybody got one better than one and six, that’s played them six times? I don’t think so. I think they’ve got really good players. They’ve got a great program. I got an immense amount of respect for them. They do a great job. I mean, Nick’s recruited good players, Kalen’s got good players in here. It’s a tough battle. Of those ones, I mean, two of them have been here, you know? And they’ve been tough, they’ve been really tough battles. So, a lot of credit to those guys, a lot of respect for them.”
On why it was important to talk to the team coming off the field…
“Well, there’s no greater response of a leader than to be with the guys who go to battle with you. And those kids went to battle tonight. Look, make no mistake about it. That group we got in there, man, they’re connected. They’re proud. They got pride. And I told them, I said, guys, I don’t know what this second half’s going to look like. But I do know this, when we watch it, we’re going to find out a lot about ourselves. We’re going to see what kind of character we got. And I’ll be honest with you, I thought we were a team that was in really good shape. I thought that we could play them into the fourth quarter. Once we had the situation we were in, we just had to get one moment at a time. And I didn’t want to walk off the field without telling each one of them how much I appreciated how they responded to it, to some pretty tough adversity.”
On what tonight’s loss showed him about the team…
“We can’t turn the ball over and win games. I mean, we know that. We’ve been one of the few teams that hasn’t done that. But we flirted with it, and we had several times tonight that we turned it over. And we were more explosive, but so were they. And they’re an extremely explosive team. I mean, they’re going be explosive all year. They have explosive playmakers. But I know the team I’ve got in that room. I didn’t learn anything tonight that I didn’t already know because they’re fighters.”
On the go-ahead TD to Dillon Bell..
“It was a great play design by Mike, and we thought that it was there all week. It had to be the right look, and I thought it was a great call. I didn’t even know at the time he called it, but it was one of those that we thought we could take advantage of their aggressiveness. They’ve got some really aggressive safeties, and he bit on it. And it was a great throw by Carson, great play.”
On Jared Wilson…He came back in, I think, yeah.
On third down struggles… Well, tonight, it’s hard to judge, because third down was second down. I can’t say tonight, I mean, we were behind so early. This was a hard game to evaluate from an offensive standpoint when it’s that quick. And I do think we’ve got to communicate better. We’ve got execute at a higher level. And that was one of the things we said coming out of Kentucky. But look, it’s hard to communicate in that environment. I’ve been in this league a long time. You go call a play and try to get 11 people on the same page and execute while not being vanilla. It’s a challenge. And they make it tough playing on the road, and we’ve got to do a better job of executing at a high clip. I mean, we get a max blitz, we check to a screen, it’s a great call, it’s the perfect thing to do, and a guy misses it. And he didn’t see the signal, and we throw a pick. So it’s like, you can’t do those things against good teams and win.
On Mykel Williams… Just the love for the university. I mean, he had 24, 25 people here tonight. His mom lives right down the road. His mom’s right here from Alabama, and it meant a lot to him. He was pulling guys on the sideline. He didn’t have to do what he did to try to get out there and play. And he cares about this team, and he then he’s a warrior. I mean, I love the guy, because he’s like, ‘coach, I’m going, I’m going.’ And at hafltime he was still, I’m going, he wants to win. So it’s just a great character reference for him.
On the turnovers… Pressure, I mean, Carson was just, he didn’t protect the ball, he had one hand on the the ball. You can point to anything in turnovers, they had them too. So it’s really important that you don’t turn the ball over, but we had to take risks too. So every time we had a fourth down, it was a potential turnover. They had a fourth down, that we stopped it.
That was a turnover. So there’s a lot of big plays in that game, a lot of big plays to be had.
Why was Georgia able to fight back… Yeah, because we’re not built like that, and we’re not going to do that. That’s not who we are. We fight too much each day out of practice to sit down and quit. I mean, they had a great response at the end of halftime. I thought that was great the way they handled it.
On what he says to Arian Smith… “Next play, man, next play, next moment. I mean, shoot, Arian makes plays in that game too, you know what I mean? So it’s one of those deals, it’s a boxing match. And he didn’t let it affect him, he just went and played the next play.That’s all you can do is play the next play, man. Just keep playing the next play.”
