Georgia talent-rich at tight end, but Kirby Smart not taking it for granted

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Georgia is as rich as anyone in country in terms of the amount of talent at the tight-end position.

For Kirby Smart and the Bulldogs’ coaching staff, it’s gotten to the point where the Dawgs have launched an embargo from more tight ends coming onto the team this fall.

“There’s no one position where we have to go have a guy here because we have it at all positions. Although I’m not looking to sign a tight end if that is what you’re asking,” Smart said jokingly at SEC Media Days on Wednesday. 

All jokes aside, the Bulldogs have an excess of talent at the tight end position, and Smart wasn’t the only one talking about it.

All throughout Georgia’s portion of the SEC Media Days, Nolan Smith talked about the Bulldogs’ tight end room, and what they’ll bring to the team this year.

“Coach [Todd] Hartley does an amazing job with those guys,” Smith said. “And we always go against the tight ends as the outside linebacker group, and they always have good hands. They run clean routes. You rarely see Coach Hartley yelling at them for messing up. He goes and talks to them and tries to help them get their game to that next level.”

During Smart’s interview in the morning, the head coach was clear on what he feels he has at the position, while also expressing some concerns with the group.

When asked about the collection of talent that the Dawgs had “on paper”, Smart admitted there’s still work to be done.

“Yeah, and it’s on paper because, if you look at what Brock’s done and he’s put up a lot of production, especially being that Darnell was not present for some of those games,” Smart said. “Darnell missed out on some of that production because of injury. Arik, we all know his story. What he was able to do as a freshman at LSU was really good for an SEC freshman, but he has not done it in a game yet for us. He still has to sustain to get to that point. I think everybody falls in love with the spring game which is built around passing, but it’s also built around double stats. There are twice as many tackles because there are two defenses. There are twice as many catches because you’re counting two offenses. So he’s got to be able to do that consistently and be in shape enough to play and help us. I’m excited about what those guys can do. I’m excited about what we can do with them. But we’ve got some other good players around too, especially at wideout, some exceptional speed guys that can open up and stretch the field as well.”

Each guy in the room for Georgia brings a different skillset, as well, something Smith spent time discussing.

He was quick to note each presents different challenges to the defense.

“I’ll say it like this, you got three different types of guys. You got the big bruiser, Darnell coming through, Big O. He’s gonna move any man, I don’t care what you say. And then you got Brock Bowers, he’ll run past any man. And then you got Arik, that’s a combination of a little bit of both. I’ll say that, you know, lining up against those guys every day, I don’t think I’ll face better tight ends in the world, and I think I’m prepared for anything.”

So, with all of the confidence that the Georgia players and coaching staff have in the room, it might be easy to assume Coach Smart is comfortable with his depth at the position.

Well, not quite.

“I’m not comfortable at all with the depth at any position,” Smart explained. “Let’s be clear, you can never say you’re comfortable with the depth at any position. I’m not comfortable with the depth at the tight end spot. We had two or three tight ends that got every rep in the spring because Darnell was out, Brock was out and we had other guys get all the reps. And I’m still not comfortable with it because I think you can’t ever have enough in a sport that’s very physical, very tough. We have a lot of tissue injuries, which goes to your point at receiver. We had a lot of soft tissue injuries last year. Soft tissue is the number one reason NFL players miss games. That’s the leading cause for us. So, we’re constantly trying to monitor that.”