ATHENS — After an epic eight-overtime game, Georgia coach Kirby Smart had plenty to say about his team in a 44-42 win over rival Georgia Tech.
From the difficulties of playing in a game like that, to his thoughts on Georgia Tech, Smart answered a number of questions following the game.
Below are Smart’s full remarks following the game. Georgia next takes on the winner of Texas and Texas A&M in the SEC Championship game.
What Kirby Smart said about ‘epic’ overtime game
Opening statement...
“Yeah, I’ll open with just a lot of respect for Brent, his staff, his team. I thought they played really physical. We thought they would, and they did. I thought they won the line of scrimmage, especially in the first half. And their quarterback did a great job. So a lot of respect to our fans, our crowd had a huge difference in the game, probably got us a few false starts there, which were really big for us. This was a really short week and a really tough game plan week because we knew their quarterback’s capabilities. And, you know, he’s been kind of sitting waiting in the weeds there for a couple weeks. And we knew that he was getting healthy. Obviously, he did a great job against NC State, but didn’t play the whole game. And tonight, he did play the whole game. He played really well and really physical.
This rivalry is good for our state, and that’s what Brent and I both shared before the game and after the game. And no matter what anybody says, you know, publicly, there’s a mutual respect from me for the way, the physicality with which they play the game with and the toughness. I thought our guys played really hard and physical. They had a good plan. They shrunk the game on us. We didn’t get great possessions in the first half. I don’t know how many we had, but I feel like the first one was a waste with a drop. The last one was really short where we had a long field goal because it was two minute, and there were maybe three drives in between that in which we did things well. We turned the ball over, and we didn’t get a fourth and one. And that’s the biggest difference in the game. They cashed in on their drives, and we didn’t. In the second half, we got a little rhythm going and did some good things. Obviously, the overtime was epic. I guess eight overtimes, and I don’t know, ight have to tell me how many conversions were made by either team.
It seemed like maybe two or three. I think the defense made a lot of stops, but what a great game. I was a part of that in the Auburn, I think 96, where it was five or six overtimes, and it just seems like one play is going to make or break it. But our seniors, our team, our leadership, they don’t flinch, and they find a way. Fourteen points down with five minutes left, and Carson never blinked, and defense made a stop and got a turnover.”
On the message to the team at halftime...
“We had to get stops. We opened with the first possession of the game, I mean, first possession of the half. It felt like that was going to be really big for us, and we needed to get momentum. We had to get stops on defense, and we knew we wouldn’t get many possessions because they were going to eat the clock and run the ball. That was the biggest difference is can we make every possession count and just do your job? Because they really had not completely stopped our offense. So it’s hard to play that team from behind because they don’t give you the ball much.”
On Dan Jackson...
“Man, to think that guy came to Georgia on his own, without us even recruiting him, and to make the plays he’s made. That hit fumble will be one for the ages because he wasn’t just hitting a normal dude. That guy’s a competitor. A lot of respect for Dan. He didn’t even have to come back this year. He debated whether he was going to play football again this year. I think about where we’d be without him, just a lot of respect for him and his leadership. Really, all these kids that want to go and transfer and change and do all this, look at a guy like Dan Jackson. He is what college football is all about, guys. He’s not asking for more money. He’s not trying to go somewhere else. The guy just loves Georgia.”
On if UGA had prepped for 8OTs...
“No. We simulate about once every three weeks before we get into the two-point contest. We typically stop around two or three just because you carry two-point plays. We carry a lot of them. But I’ve never practiced that game. A couple weeks ago, before we went to play Texas, we did an overtime simulation similar to that, just so the kids know the rules. We went two-point back and forth. I think we added about 8,000 yards, just changing the field.I saw some of y’all huffing and puffing. I figured out why y’all were sprinting back and forth.
On the Dan Jackson fumble...
“I had no idea. I thought they were going to review it and flip it until they showed it on the big deal. It would have been great if we had a scoop and scored it and ran it in, but they didn’t know it came out. I thought we just stopped.”
On the emotions of overtime...
“It was weird. It seemed like every time somebody failed, they had to go again. I don’t know why. It seemed like we failed, we got to go again. So you had to get over that. Then they would fail, and they had to go again. It was the back-to-back. It was almost like it was a battle of adversity. The hardest thing to do is right after you fail on defense or offense, you’ve got to go right back out there and change ends. I just don’t remember a game like that out there.”
On the two-point conversion attempt in the third quarter...
“Yeah, interesting question. I’m not going to dig real deep in it. It’s analytics, and we follow them almost to a T. We’re in charge of that. It ended up looking really interesting because you kick an extra point to win the game.”
On Carson Beck...
“I thought he played good the whole game. He had a couple of pressures. They did a nice job disguising the pressure. We took a sack. They got a really nice pressure package. They did a good job with that. He had some drops again. He doesn’t let that frustrate him or stop him.
He just continues to make plays. The two-minute drop was really good. He fired a couple of seam routes in, got the ball out to the tight end, made some plays with his legs. I have to watch the tape to really know how he played, but I know how he leads. I know how he competes.”
On Carson Beck showing emotion...
“Carson’s fine. Carson’s not a real emotional guy. I’m sure he got frustrated. We all get frustrated, but Carson composes himself. He goes and plays the next play. That’s all he can do. He’s seen it all and been around it. It’s not something that stresses me out.”
On the drops...
“I don’t know that we can do anything else on that. I think show confidence in our guys and keep going back to them, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
On Nate Frazier...
“Yeah, he’s developed the most is his pass pro. I thought he had a great pass pro pickup tonight. He understood that they had a good blitz scheme. He knew who he had to block. He’s gained so much confidence because he’s had to take so many reps. We were without two or three linemen during the week. We lost Monroe (Freeling). He was not able to practice for a couple days, and Dylan (Fairchild) was out, and then they both came back barely for the game. Jared was hobbled, Truss was hobbled. We’re like the walking wounded out there, still trying to get our Earnest (Greene) back. But Trevor’s down. There’s a lot of moving parts out there for those guys. And Nate has been the glue. He stepped up and played really big and run really hard. Makes you wonder if you gave him the ball earlier, we would have been out there as long. Y’all would have already been home. He was going to score that ball if he got it now. He hit the hole really hard.”
On the SEC Championship game...
“Rest. All we can do right now is rest. Our guys need a mental break. They need this day. I mean, tomorrow is one day. But it’s a day that we don’t know who we’re going to play. They need recovery. This was a really short week, and it was a tough week. Remember, Tech played on Thursday night in this deal and caught us on two days. You don’t usually get that in our league, but you get that when you cross leagues and you move your game up. And a lot of respect for the way they play, the toughness they play with. And we’ve got to turn around and play a stellar opponent, no matter who it is, next week. And it’s going to be physical. And I told the guys in the locker room, you can rub your bruises and pout and do everything to say, I could have done better, but you better get ready to strap it on and play again.”
On the lack of Aaron Philo...
“No, we didn’t throw anything off at all. We expected to see Haynes King. We thought they might save his redshirt and not play. What threw it off a little bit was Haynes King’s ability to throw the ball, because everything we had been told is his injury prevented him from throwing it. And you look at the previous two games, and he really didn’t. And, you know, there was points in time at NC State that it was a tight ballgame. If they were going to throw it, he would throw it with the guy, right? Well, they trusted it with Philo. So, you know, our expectation was if they were going to throw it with Philo, then we were going to do the other things. But Haynes came in and he threw the ball well and really had some advantageous looks to throw it off, because we had everybody committed to the box. I mean, like, we played stuff that we hadn’t played since we played the old Georgia Tech. Like, you had to play them different. And it was so different for our guys. We played defense that we never played. And that made it hard. You can’t three and out, I mean, three yards, three yards, three yards, those guys. And they do a great job. I mean, watching them play Miami, it was like, you know, Miami’s got some really pretty players out there, and they ran the ball. They did it on us.”
On if they’ve done enough to be in the college football playoff with the regular season over...
“I don’t get into that. I’m not biting on that. I’m worried about the SEC Championship. That’s for somebody else to decide. I just am proud of our guys for the fight and the grit and the toughness. And that’s really my focus. I mean, just keep getting better and don’t ride the wave of emotion. Because if things went the other way on one of those plays tonight, we’d be playing next week for our lives to go in the playoff, right? So, our opportunity is in front of us. We’ve got to go out and play well and play a good team.”
On what he learned about the team this week...
“That no matter if you’ve got the hardest schedule in the country, hardest schedule probably in the history of Georgia, you keep fighting. You keep fighting. And everybody, you know, holds a shot at you. Those guys played really hard tonight. They had a good game plan. They played well enough to win. I’m talking about Georgia Tech. But our guys found a way to win. And at the end of the day, that’s what this is all about.”
On Kirby’s postgame interaction with Brent Key...
“I’ll just keep it between he and I. We’re both competitors. We have respect for each other. We played here in the same area, we played against each other, we recruited against each other. We don’t get to share thoughts and ideas and have break bread and have tea very often. So when we get a chance to talk and show respect to each other, I think being competitors — it’s a hard game, and nobody knows what it’s like to sit on that sideline and go through that pain and the highs, the lows, we’re going to win, we’re going to lose, we’re going to win, we’re going to lose. I mean, he was emotionally spent, and so was I.
And we probably know what each other goes through for our fan bases better than anybody. Nobody else has been in those shoes and had to deal with that and do that. He’s done a tremendous job turning that program around.”
On Chauncey Bowens’ injury...
“Chauncey got hurt in the last game. He’s got a foot injury that he’s trying to come back from. He got hurt in the UMass game.”
On if Georgia saw anything to go with the Nate Frazier run in the eighth OT...
“Well, it had an option to throw it on there. Carson made a good decision. Most plays that we were running at the end — everybody does — it’s kind of a ... You don’t want to run a two-point play where there’s only one option. You’re trying to run things that give you multiple options, and they did and we did.
It was interesting because Buster was calling their two points, and he was here so long. We were talking to our offense back and forth about what do you think this is, what do you think he’s going to run next. I mean, we have a lot of the same plays in two-point situations. It was unique. After the time we ran Carson, which was a little different call. We thought we’d catch him off balance with all the passes and get it, and we didn’t.
I thought it was a great call by Mike to go back to what he went to because as a defensive guy I would’ve been thinking there’s no way you’d run it there. But people were getting worn down. People were getting tired. We weren’t getting open. That kid’s got an electric ability to hit the hole hard, and I guess we blocked it right because it looked like it hit up in there.”
On the two-point shootout being the way to decide the game...”Well, if they played it out like it used to be, we might still be out there. That’s why they changed it.And that was a long – when I look at it, we played 84 plays. We played 84 plays on our defense, and then our offense had 69, which that’s partly our own fault. But when you go to overtime, man, it could be really – I was part of that game. And the reason they changed that was because of that. I mean, we’ve got to play another game next week, so somebody’s sitting out there like, keep playing. Keep more snaps you play. We’re a beat-up football team, guys. We are a beat up. We need to get well, and it’s not going to happen this week. So we’ve got to keep getting better.”
On what it says about the defense that it made the plays it had to have in the fourth quarter...
“It says they gave up 260 yards rushing. That’s what it says. That’s nothing to ever be proud of, okay? But they made some huge stops when they had to. And I don’t know that we played poorly on defense tonight as much as Georgia Tech and their quarterback really played well, okay? They are hard to stop. That’s tough to stop. That quarterback is tough and does a great job. And when you add the throwing, we’re giving them great looks to throw it. I mean, great looks. They’re one-on-one all the time. And people don’t play us that way because we don’t have that style of quarterback. So give them a lot of credit and give our kids a lot of credit.
And I can’t say enough, guys, about this senior class. You can write anything you want about this game, but those seniors walking off that field undefeated at home and against Tech. That’s hard to do.”
