What was said: Kirby Smart after 48-7 win over South Carolina

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Georgia moved its record to 3-0 on the season with a 48-7 shellacking of South Carolina on Saturday. Kirby Smart spoke to the media after the game and below, DawgsHQ provides an uncut look at everything the seventh-year head coach had to say.

Opening statement: “I thought we challenged our guys to come on the road and play really physical. Attack from the get go. We talked about not treading water when you come in. You come in here to be the attacker and to hunt and not be hunted. I thought our kids bought into that. They wanted to get on it from the jump. They wanted to be physical from the jump. I thought we had some opportunistic stops on defense again and I thought our offense was explosive and executed well.  We worked on the perimeter and up inside. It makes it tough to defend when the quarterback when you run and do things like Stetson.

“I was proud of the composure the kids showed in the opening drive of the second half. It meant a lot to me. We had a penalty and started backed up. All I wanted to see was come out in the second half and close the door. I thought they did that well. I thought our guys responded in the heat and played well in the heat. I appreciate how hard they worked to put us in the situation.”

Stetson Bennett and his on-field episode: “He actually was dry-heaving way back in the drive, back earlier when he threw a pass in the flat and didn’t quite get it there. It was not a great pass and I could tell something wasn’t right then. He fought all the way right through it and he made a couple of throws when he threw up before them and he hung in there and made the throw. He was overhydrated in terms of drinking a lot of water. He kept saying he felt like he had to throw up and he did. He’s a competitor. He wouldn’t come out.”

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On Brock Bowers’ performance: “I don’t even know his numbers. I knew he looked fast running down the field. The thing about Brock that is so hard that you don’t get to measure is the amount of attention he draws. You know, 121, whatever that is, yards. But, you know, three or four of those plays that Brock made, there were people blocking down the field — elite blocking down the field.

“So, Darnell Washington, on one of the little crack screens we run, pins a guy. And the hole, guys, holes are created through displacement, not just blocking. Darnell displaces people. So, I think Brock would be the first one to tell you that his success comes from a lot of perimeter and things like that touches that other guys make great blocks for. Marcus Rosemy had two or three. The selflessness of this group — now, the play he made in front of the end zone, nobody was blocking for him on that one ’cause that was a unique catch. And the run after catch on the play-action. But, again, the play-action play he made in the second half was set up by the run. You know, if you run the ball two or three times, those safeties are coming down, and he’s running by you. But he’s a special player. I don’t know that I’ve been around somebody that works as hard as he and Darnell do in practice.”

On whether he had conversations about pulling Stetson Bennett out when he was feeling sick: “Oh, no, no. I’m talking about that drive. There was a thought, ‘Hey, we need to get him out’ the play before, I think the hold on the extra point. You know, we were trying to get him out to where we could get somebody else in to hold for the extra point, and he wouldn’t come out. He wanted to stay in and play.”

Was Kirby Smart convinced that Bennett was okay after the touchdown to Bowers? “Oh, yeah. He was fine. He said he was fine. He was like, ‘Yeah, I’m back now. I’m good.’ He said he started coughing, then he dry-heaved and then he threw up some. But, he’s a competitor. He wasn’t coming out ’til we were up far enough that we wanted to take him out.”

Evaluation of the defense after previously saying they have much to prove: “Well, they practice really hard. When you practice hard, you get better. So, I mean, our coaching staff — we’ve got coaches on our staff now that came from other places, and I had one of them reach out to me and say, ‘The amount of detail and the amount of detail you put on your scout cards, the reps y’all do against the scout team are the hardest thing possible against every call.’ So when you get to the game, it usually makes it easier. You know, if we can play offensive coordinator and script up the hardest plays — and I think coach Schumann and that defensive staff, man, they were long, hard hours to make sure our guys see, you know, some of the toughest plays. And even then, you don’t get it all right, you know? But, it certainly helps having ways to affect the quarterback, good pass rushers, and it helps to play from ahead, which, you know, are defense has been able to do when we scored on offense.”

Describing the game Todd Monken called vs. South Carolina: “Great. I mean, he was aggressive. He did a good job calling it. He puts together a good plan. He’ll tell you himself: he’s got a great offensive staff. I mean, he’s got guys that are in the room that have coached in the SEC, that understand the SEC. You know, the addition of Searels, B-Mac, Bobo, I mean, those guys come up with game plan things. They know these teams. They know the personnel of these teams. So, it really helps when you have a good game plan and you actually have people that can execute it because they have experience. It’s hard to defend a quarterback that can check things, make throws, has weapons and then can run on top of it. So, we’ve got to keep getting better and we’ve got to execute at a high level, but the biggest thing for them and for our offense is about getting points.”

Kirby Smart on drop off from last year’s defense: “Guys, I’ve said all year we have good football players. We just have to play well and they have to buy in to be selfless and helping each other. This team’s way different than last year. We don’t have 16 guys who are going to be drafted next year. We don’t, but we’ve got a lot of guys who are tough, they’re physical and they like practice. They buy in to being around each other, they’re connected, they like to compete each other. The only days you can get better during the season is Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. 

“It’s hard to go out there in a game and just take 30 snaps. We get 60, 70 snaps in practice each day. As long as they keep getting better and you guys don’t fill their heads up with so much stuff, we’ll be alright.”

Kirby Smart on Jamon Dumas-Johnson: “He was doing it last year, you just didn’t see him. We saw it every day in practice; he’s a good player. We saw it every day. He didn’t play high school football his senior year. He came in puffy, a little heavy, but this guy will strike you and hit you. He’s gotten better. He’s still not where he needs to be; he still makes mistakes. We still make mistakes. But if we continue to work hard and have a little composure … we made some plays today and didn’t back down. We gave up the bomb on Kamari, boom, get a pick two plays later. We give up a play fake punt, nobody panicked; they were happy they could go out and play some more … let’s get our snaps in. Let’s go stop them. That’s the way you have to approach it.”

Kirby Smart on Malaki Starks: “He did a good job. The quarterback threw it right to him, he should catch it, right? He played the wheel route, had his eyes in the right spot, made a play and had a pretty good return. He’s a good athlete.”

Kirby Smart on defending Spencer Rattler: “The shots they took, the plays they made, we’ve got to get better. But if you disrupt the quarterback’s rhythm and don’t allow them to run the ball, which so far, we’ve been hard to run the ball on, it makes people one-dimensional. We have to continue to do that. We weren’t completely healthy. We didn’t have three or four guys beat up, banged up and a couple of guys didn’t practice during the week. We’ve got to get  them back to be at our best.”

Kirby Smart on Georgia’s defensive line: ” I thought they played hard. I thought they affected the passer. Look, we’re not where we need to be. We have young players that can help us. They can’t help us until they go against our 1 offensive line about 1,000 more reps. And I can’t get 1,000 more reps in two weeks. We have to get them ready faster. We don’t have the depth there that we had. They played really hard today. We had to get Bill Norton in there for snaps, Bear, Christen Miller.  We have to continue to grow those guys.”

Kirby Smart on Jalen Carter’s injury situation: “He is dealing with a lower extremity injury.”

Kirby Smart on how the UGA standard has evolved: “I don’t know that it has evolved. Nick Chubb and Sony talked about it all the time. Lorenzo Carter, Davin Bellamy, they all bought into it. The first year I wouldn’t say they bought into it because it was really, really hard and I don’t know that they reaped the rewards from it. But from then on, they’ve kind of bought into ‘this is who we are, this is how we’re going to do things.’ It’s just kind of the way we do them. They sell that to each other. They sell it to the younger players so that we don’t have to. If you do that you can get better but please don’t mistake that for thinking that we have the best practices in the world. We have not always had the best practices in the world, our kids believe in practice paying off for the game though.”

On keeping composure on the road: “I told them before the game right before we came out, there is a muscle we haven’t used. And the muscle we have not flexed is our composure muscle. I had Branson Robinson stand up in front of the room and say this is what our composure muscle looks like. If your composure muscle looks like Branson Robinson, there’s a good chance you need to flex it. I don’t know if you’ve seen Branson’s arms. And we flexed it. We had some things go wrong, not bad wrong but we gave up some plays and we responded to it.”

On the wideouts without AD Mitchell available: “I thought Ladd did a nice job. I thought Monk did a nice job of utilizing the skillset of the players we had. We had to use Dom(inick Blaylock) and Kearis (Jackson) a little more for their experience on the road. I think De’Nylon and  Dillon Bell are talented players that have to grow up. They can’t grow up fast enough. We needed them to play really well today. I thought both of them had some freshman jitters and we have to get that out of them because they’re talented players. I thought Jackson and Ladd continue to be dependable.”

On not turning the ball over through three games: “That’s hard to do. You just jinxed us. We have to keep that going. It’s good, it allows us to be elite and get turnovers. But you flirt with danger there. The decision by Stetson there to reach the ball out. Not the smartest. The screen throwaway that he floated. There are decisions there that can be fatal or they can force you to use your composure muscle if you’re not careful. We got to be smarter there.”

On South Carolina’s successful fake punt: “They schemed it they had a nice job. We went into our safe check. You know, we went into the thing that we we go safe and say hey we’re playing for the fake here because they were in a non traditional formation but we just didn’t cover it well. They rolled one way and to be honest with our punt returner is supposed to make that play and he he saw something that he thought was a screen and didn’t play the ball. We want to bat the ball down there and just take possession, it was fourth down.

“Does a championship even though it’s over months down the line still help the program in terms of everybody seems to know what to do and how know how? I don’t know the championship helps itself. I think the standard that was created last year and the legacy was left, that was a really special group. And that still lingers around our building, not the championship, but the fact of the way they practiced and the way they carried themselves. And there’s a lot of kids that try to emulate those guys that are gone. And they’re good kids to emulate.”

On Arik Gilbert’s absence: “All I can say is he didn’t make the trip for personal reasons. Hoping he gets back with us.”

On what he said to Shane Beamer afterward: “Good luck rest of the way and hope you get those guys, you know he had some guys out and some injured guys and hope he gets those guys back healthy.”