What Georgia coach Kirby Smart said after beating Florida

Georgia was as good as advertised Saturday as the No. 1-ranked Bulldogs dismantled Florida 43-20 in Jacksonville. After spotting the Gators a 7-0 lead, Georgia scored 36 straight points to take total control. Afterward, Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart addressed the media and here are some of his notable quotes.

Kirby Smart Opening Statement

“We came in with the idea of focusing on the mindset of mission, team, me. We wanted to put the mission first, the team first and me last. We had a lot of guys do that today. We knew if we did it together, we’d put ourselves out there, and we knew we’d play winning football.

I feel this team is improving; we’re getting better but we’re still not where we need to be. But I’m proud of the competitors that went out and fought today for our university. I was proud of our fans, they supported us even though we did not start the way we wanted to. But we responded and played well. We were able to control the line of scrimmage, which ultimately is the difference in this conference. If you can win the line of scrimmage, you’ve got a chance.”

Smart on the poise of Georgia QB Carson Beck…

“I don’t worry about Carson; apparently you guys do. But I don’t worry about Carson. He’s very confident, he’s very calm, he understands football, he’s never too high, never too low. He studies really hard. He texts questions all week. He studies and meets with Coach Bobo. He puts a plan together and he makes good decisions. He’s continued to improve by not putting us in bad situations. There are things that are not on the stat sheet that I don’t have time to explain, but he does an elite job with run checks, looks, puts in the best play, the decision to throw the RPO or hand the ball off. There’s not really a value you can put on that. I know as a defensive coordinator there’s  nothing worse than feeling you have the right call, then he moves the back, he moves the tight end and you got a bad call. That’s tough.”

Smart on how the Florida rivalry fit into his initial plans of building a program…

“You can’t win the East without going through Jacksonville most of the time. It may not play out that way, but in year’s past we showed them the stat where 8 of the last 10, seven of the last 10 it’s come through Jacksonville, any maybe more than that.You’ve got to beat the best teams to win your division and Florida has certainly been one of those historically.”

Kirby Smart on the early score and what the defense responded…

“Not really. We’re kind of used to that. We gave it up to Vanderbilt, I think South Carolina. I think both of those games. But there’s not a lot of panic in that group. They need to rectify starting the game better, but the comfortable part is that nobody panics, we had some mistakes, some anxiety, we hadn’t played in two weeks. Give them credit, they threw the ball to a really good playmaker. We talked all week about Wilson was a really good player, and they did a great utilizing his skill set and we didn’t do a great job stopping him. But it wasn’t like there was a panic mode. It was can we control the run game. If we can control the run game, we’ll eventually slow down the throwing.”

Smart on if he was surprised Florida went for it on fourth down (in the second quarter) and how they did it…

“Not surprised they went for it at all. I actually had had the staff meeting before the game. I told them, I said, ‘My gut intuition is this game’s going to come down some short-yardage situations.’ I said that typically when you play Billy, he’s very aggressive in terms of analytics and believes in it, and he has a lot of fourth downs he goes for it on. We’re going to win some, we’re going to lose some. But, you know, we’re going to go defend it. We’re going to work really hard on that. I told the offensive staff, ‘If it comes down to a third-and-1 or 2 or a fourth-and-1 or 2, we’re going for it. And, shoot, they’re going to go for it, so let’s make sure we walk through that and do that more in the next 12-14 hours.’ And I’ll be danged if that play — it was early in the game where you can still overcome that play, but it was certainly a big momentum play that we thought if we had our eyes in the right spot we could play it.”

Kirby Smart on the ability to get tackles for loss and sacks today…

“Well, they gave us an opportunity to. You know, drop-back pass, you get a chance to. We don’t get a lot of opportunities for that in earlier games. The more people drop back and pass, the more we’ll be able to get to them. I thought our defensive staff — Schumann, Muschamp, Tray, and Fran — did a great job. They put a couple new wrinkles in that really helped in terms of getting pressure. We didn’t just do the same thing we always do. I think there was one call that we got 2 tackles for loss and maybe a sack all from that call that we had not run all year.”

Kirby Smart on Georgia WR Ladd McConkey…

“I think it came at the right time, right? With Brock out, had Ladd step up and make plays. We’ve gotta keep him healthy because he’s such a weapon. He’s such a competitor. The yards after catch is what he gives us that a lot of other guys haven’t done. He catches it and runs with it, and he does a tremendous job. But hey, you’ve gotta give the O-line a lot of credit for the protection to get it to Ladd and the quarterback for making some plays. That third-down play he made was really special.”