Georgia Football has new phrase, focus for fall camp
Kirby Smart is a man full of phrases. “WIN: What’s important now” “You’re either elite or you’re not.” “Keep choppin'” “Keep the main thing the main thing.” And as Georgia Football opened up fall camp this past week, it would seem the Bulldogs have a new phrase. “Lock in and lock out.” That’s their approach to fall camp.
“Our guys are ready to grind. It used to be a time when you were — didn’t do anything over the summer or had a long break over the summer or you might have a week off. But that’s not really the way it is now. It’s continuous,” Smart said. “I talked to our guys last night about separating summer or what you would call a minicamp or what you would call summer practices and training camp. You’ve got to kind of step out of your mindset/routine and refocus. I talked about some of the guys I talked to in the NFL currently and what they do in trying to transition our brain from one stage to the next stage.”
“We talked about locking in and locking out,” he continued. “You know, lock into what you got to do and lock out everything outside of it and the noise. It’s one unique time for a college athlete where you really don’t have classes. Our guys are actually finishing summer school classes. But in the next coming days, they don’t have any classes. They get to focus solely on football. They get to spend 11/12 nights in a hotel where they have no responsibilities other than football. And it’s kind of when the mental and physical toughness starts to take place for your roster and your team. So there’s no way to really build for it, other than to do it. And that’s the stage we’re in.”
Smart is absolutely right in saying that Georgia Football has a lot of good players to replace. In fact, he might be underestimating the challenge some. The Bulldogs broke the modern NFL Draft record this past spring with 15 players picked. And while there are talented players to help replace them, Smart said it best. They’ve got to find the right ones and get them ready to go.
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That’s why Oregon is so far from on Smart’s mind right now. He was asked about the season-opening matchup against the Ducks that’s now less than a month away. There’s plenty of storylines that will follow that game with the familiarity between Smart and his former defensive coordinator Dan Lanning, now in his first year as the Oregon head coach. But for Smart and his team, the focus is on themselves right now, not Oregon.
“The last thing I’m worried about is Dan Lanning. I mean, we got a million battles to face before that,” Smart said. “I’m not even thinking about Oregon. Our concern is our roster. How do we build depth? I mean, we’re not even thinking about that. We’re so far away from that right now. We’re focused on us, our team, our connection and getting the right players in the right spots. If we do that, that’s going to control the outcome of the game, much more than what he knows about us and what I know about him.”
Georgia Football began fall camp last Thursday and is able to run 25 practices over the course of the 29 days leading up to the season-opener. The Bulldogs and Ducks kickoff from Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Ga. on September 3rd at 3:30 p.m. ET on ABC.
