Kirby Smart addresses expectation Georgia will dominate early

Georgia has had its way with most teams in recent years, including TCU in last year’s national championship game.

With the Bulldogs being dominant so often, some expect Georgia to roll every time it steps on the field. Kirby Smart spoke with the media following the season-opening 48-7 win over UT Martin and said expecting a team to dominate early every week is an unfair expectation.

“Everybody thinks you’re going to just walk out there and roll over these teams. And ‘Ah, it ought to be 40-0 by halftime.’ Then it’s not and you get tighter and guys get worried,” Kirby Smart said. “I’m over that. I’m past those days. I wanna grow and get better. It’s not about who we play. The defense executed like they should. We should play well and we’ve got to continue to do that.”

Georgia led UT Martin only 17-0 at the half as the Bulldogs got off to a slow start. UGA didn’t score its first points of the game until there were less than four minutes left in the first quarter.

The score remained 7-0 until late in the first half when Georgia finally pushed its lead to two scores.

The Bulldogs defense played well throughout, while the offense had an up-and-down outing. That’s exactly what Smart expected to happen.

“I’m happy, but that was the expectation,” Smart said of his defense dominating. “We have a lot of players back, and when we went into the game… I talked to the offensive staff and I talked to the defensive staff, and I was like, ‘Look, we’re going to lean on our defense, because we’ve got some guys who are nervous and have not played on offense.’”

Kirby Smart describes how Carson Beck handles adjustments

Speaking of players who might have been nervous on offense, Carson Beck made his first career start against UT Martin.

Beck has been lauded for excelling in the cerebral part of the game, and as Georgia heads into Week 2, head coach Kirby Smart was asked about Beck and his freedom at the line of scrimmage to guide the offense in the right direction.

“Yeah there’s parameters you give them, there’s runs that have checks,” Smart said. “They have runs that have checks from run to run, there are runs that have checks from run to pass, there’s certain looks you’re allowed to check to pass. Every week we package those, but not every play has those.”

“So there’s sometimes when you’re going to sit back, and as you guys can do and we can do as coaches, you can second guess and say, ‘Well, he should have thrown that ball because it had an option to throw.’ Then there’s a check to a throw which is completely different than a run pass option.”