Kirby Smart reveals Georgia tackle Amarius Mims to miss time with ankle sprain, surgery

The Georgia Bulldogs offense was dealt a huge blow over the weekend, as starting right tackle Amarius Mims suffered a sprained ankle.

According to Kirby Smart, Mims will have tightrope surgery, and he’ll be out for a number of games moving forward. Seth Emerson of The Athletic reported the Georgia offensive lineman’s timetable seems to be 4-6 weeks.

“We don’t know how long that’ll be,” Smart said on Monday, via Emerson. “He’ll be back, we just don’t know how long.”

Mims went down in the first half of the contest against South Carolina with an apparent leg injury as he went to make a block in the second quarter, but ended up walking to the locker room. He did not return to the playing field.

Mims was a preseason All-SEC team selection this year after serving as a reserve offensive lineman last season en route to a second consecutive national championship. He also got plenty of experience in the College Football Playoff as he appeared on 35% of Georgia’s snaps on offense in the CFP, and was effectively a starter last season.

Time will tell when Amarius Mims can return to the field, but the Georgia Bulldogs will certainly miss him until he does.

Kirby Smart: Georgia’s ‘one moment at a time’ mentality’ helped the Bulldogs come through vs. South Carolina

One of Kirby Smart’s biggest mantras to his players is to stay in the moment and not get ahead of themselves. After the first half, that was part of his message to his team in the locker room.

Led by Beck, who finished the day with 269 yards on 27-of-35 passing, Smart was more than pleased with how the Bulldogs handled themselves.

“Just that. One moment at a time,” Smart said. “We talk about it all the time. Moments are precious, and there’s a lot of them in the game. If you can just win one at a time, you got a shot. If you let the last one bother you, you’re gonna be in trouble. And this guy didn’t do that. He stood in there, played well, lost the tackle and kept banging the ball in there.”

Saturday’s game also marked another milestone for Beck. It was his first career start against an SEC opponent. It wasn’t easy, especially considering South Carolina’s defense kept things at bay through the first two quarters, but he turned in another solid performance.

The weather also wasn’t favorable, which made it even tougher. But Beck stayed poised and helped lead his team to the big victory.

Obviously, we didn’t start as well as we thought,” Beck said. “The conditions were a little bit weird. We didn’t really get off to a hot start. But we kept our mentality, we stayed composed, we came out in the second half and I thought we really turned it up.”

Beck previously said he felt kind of nervous before his first career start against UT-Martin. It’s safe to say he got rid of those butterflies ahead of his first SEC start.

“I felt good,” Beck said. “I felt comfortable, I felt poised. Just trying to go out there and just be myself. That’s all I gotta do.”

On3’s Nick Schultz contributed to this article.