Christopher Smith interception embodiment of Georgia's next play mentality
Facing a 3rd and 5 early in the second quarter, Christopher Smith and the Georgia defense gave up a first down. Oregon quarterback Bo Nix found his running back Mar’keise Irving on a screen out of the backfield to pick up first down yardage. Tack on another 15 after Smith was called for a horse collar tackle taking Irving down on the Georgia sideline.
On the TV copy of the game, you can see Smith start to signal to his teammates. He’s hitting his right hand against his left in an axe-like way. That means, ‘Keep choppin’.’
And Smith did just that, coming up with Georgia’s second interception of the game on the very next play, jumping the route on Nix’s pass intended for tight end Patrick Herbert to pick it off and return it 22 yards to the UGA 44.
“He embodies that. He is next-play mentality,” Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said in his postgame press conference after the Bulldogs’ big 49-3 victory on Saturday. “That’s what we talk about is next play. We had a guy jump offsides; next play. We had a guy hold; next play. That’s the way you’ve got to play the game. If you have too many next-play mistakes, you won’t win football games, but you have to play the next play as if nothing happened. I thought we had several guys make some mistakes today that overcame those.”
Smith has made a name for himself by making big plays in big games. Last year it was a pick-six in the season-opener against Clemson, the only touchdown scored in that game. Later he had an interception against Alabama in the National Championship game. He picked up right where he left off with the interception on Saturday.
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“Yeah, it’s kind of the same, the way I jumped down, but it was a different kind of play formation and stuff like that,” Smith said in drawing comparisons between his interception against Clemson and his on Saturday versus Oregon. “I just recognized the formation, and they was kind of running screens off it to begin with, and just studying the coordinator and things like that. I knew that it was a screen to go; it was possible to come off of it, and I just read the play, broke on the ball, and made a good play for sure.”
“Just being a DB, period, and just the way I am, I have that next-play mentality,” he continued. “I definitely got the penalty, but one of our four pillars is resiliency. When I got back to the sideline, a lot of guys said, ‘You showed resiliency on that.’ I just have that next-play mentality. You can’t dwell on that; that’s how you make mistakes. I was going like this after the play, which means, just keep chopping, man, and that’s all I was willing to do.”
Smith and the Georgia defense kept Oregon out of the end zone all day after the talk coming into the game was about how much of a drop off there might be on that side of the ball with eight players picked in the 2022 NFL Draft. Based on performance, that doesn’t seem to be a concern for these Dawgs. Like Smith on his interception and the penalty the play before, they aren’t concerned about looking back in the past. Instead, it’s all eyes ahead and worried about what’s next.
