Kirby Smart reflects on Georgia's respect for SEC road games before 13-12 slog vs. Kentucky: 'People don't respect that'

It’s been the story of Georgia’s road games the past two years, and it’s a message that Kirby Smart said he tried to hammer home with his team all week: It’s going to be a challenge to win. And on Saturday in Lexington, it was certainly a bigger challenge than perhaps even Smart expected.

Following a 13-12 win against Kentucky, an offensive crawl through the mud that turned with a decisive Georgia touchdown in the second half, Smart reflect on if his messaging got home. Speaking with ESPN’s Molly McGrath postgame, he wasn’t certain that it had — but after the game, his players likely understood what he was saying.

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“When you’re playing on the road in the SEC, people don’t respect that, and I’m not sure our guys listened to the message all week because this is a good football team,” Smart said. “You don’t judge SEC teams on one week. That’s a good football team. We did what we had to do, but we did not play real well at all.”

Smart shared that his main takeaway from the win was that this Georgia team has some backbone in a tough situation.

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“We’re resilient,” Smart said. “Two years ago we go to Missouri, and we almost lose that game at night, on the road. Played at Auburn last year, first game of the year, on the road, almost lost that game. So you’ve gotta find ways to win these and that’s what we did, we found a way to win. The best news is, we can wake these guys up and go get better. Because the No. 1 thing we’ve got to do, is get better.”

McGrath also spoke to quarterback Carson Beck, who joked that the Bulldogs were fortunate to have a bye week, especially with Alabama on the other side. And if Smart felt some of his players hadn’t absorbed the messaging all week, Beck certainly had soaked it in.

“Thank god we have a bye week, that’s all I’ve gotta say,” Beck said with a chuckle. “No — Kentucky’s a physical game and we knew that we were going to come into this and it was going to be physical, so utmost respect for them and we knew this game as was going to be like this. First road game, it’s always going to be a hard test. You go back and we talked about it earlier in the week, you go and look at our first road games the past two years, it’s kind of been like this. So we came in here expecting to be blow-by-blow and just trying to get out of here with a win, so I’m really proud of the guys.”