Kirby Smart, Georgia players preview matchup with Florida

Although this will be their first time coaching against each other as head coaches, Georgia’s main man Kirby Smart and first year Florida coach Billy Napier go way back to 2011, when Napier joined the Alabama coaching staff in an analyst capacity. Just two years later, Napier was named the Crimson Tide’s wide receivers coach before leaving the Tide in 2017. Ahead of Saturday’s matchup as head coaches, Smart revealed his initial impressions of Napier when the two first began working together.

“Like I said, he’s very thorough. He’s an extremely hard worker. Great husband and father,” Smart said. “He’s a good leader of men. And I knew from the first time he got to Alabama, I don’t know what year it was, but whatever year he got there, he was going to be really good because he paid attention to detail. He took a lot of notes. He was just really smart. You knew he was there to learn. And I think he capitalized on his time he spent there to look at football from a different perspective, maybe from what he looked at previously. And he was really successful at ULL which is a great school, great location, and a lot of good football players. But they won a lot of football games with him there.”

Anthony Richardson

This Saturday will be the Bulldogs’ second time facing the Gators’ dynamic quarterback Anthony Richardson. In 2021, Georgia got the better of Richardson, who was appearing in his first career start. Completing 12 of his 20 pass attempts for 82 passing yards and two interceptions, Richardson certainly struggled against the Bulldogs’ defense before being benched for Emory Jones. However, according to Smart, Bulldog fans should not expect to see the same quarterback trot out onto the field this Saturday.

“He’s grown a lot and he’s gotten considerably better to me during this season,” Smart said. “Like, from the start of the season, game one, you watch every game in sequence and you say, man, this guy is growing and getting better. And they don’t just limit things for him. Like, they put a lot of shift motion, they put a lot of things on top of him to handle and he manages those well.”

“The toughest thing dealing with Anthony Richardson is how you affect him because you got to be careful,” Smart continued. “Some of the runs he’s had have been better than backs have across the country. And he’s had 60 and 70-yard runs. And he can take off at any point in time and you don’t know who’s going to have him or who can get him down. He’s got elite arm talent in terms of strength. They clean things up for him on a lot of reads. And he does a really nice job. So I give them a lot of credit — Billy a lot of credit for the development, what he’s done from the start of the season to now in being successful both with his legs and his arm.”

Smart also said that it’s not necessarily the designed runs that make Richardson most dangerous. He’s the biggest threat when the play breaks down and he takes off with his legs.

“He’s good at that and he’s physical. They get an extra hat on you whenever he runs the ball. They don’t design run him a lot, I think they do it when they have to, when they need to win a game they’ll certainly do it. But I think they value him and they know that you can’t take that kind of pounding over and over again in our league. So, they don’t kill people with those, it’s the scrambles. It’s the draws, the converted runs, where he takes off that he’s really elite at,” Smart said. “I mean, they’ve got some 60 and 70-yard runs that you might say is a designed run, but it’s not. It makes it really hard to defend because most coaches try to defend the pass by covering people and the worst thing you can do sometimes is cover everybody and this guy takes off because it puts your defense all spread out around the field.”

Georgia players are well aware of the threat that Richardson poses as a runner too. Georgia defensive lineman Zion Logue and linebacker Jamon Dumas-Johnson didn’t play the biggest of roles last season, but both know the kind of damage Richardson is capable of doing.

“He is a physical runner,” Logue said on Tuesday. “At 6-3, 235, he loves to stiff-arm. He loves to make guys look silly on film. We have to rally to him and put a hat on.”

“We’ve played a lot of mobile quarterbacks this year,” Dumas-Johnson added. “It’s nothing different from what we have had to do before. We have to lock in, and do our jobs at the end of the day. If everybody just does their job, we’ll be good.”

Florida Front Seven

Richardson isn’t the only thing the Gators have going for them. On the opposite side of the ball Florida’s defensive line is disruptive. They may not be statistically among the SEC’s best, but guys like Gervon Dexter, Brenton Cox and Ventrell Miller can play with the best of them.

“Extremely disruptive,” Smart said about Florida’s defensive line. “You know, the size and girth in the middle is what you want in the SEC, to control run games and control the A and B gaps. And then they still got the edge guys with Brenton, being probably the most disruptive guy that we’ve played in terms of just violence, striking, knock-back, setting edges, affecting the quarterback. He’s a game-breaker at that.”

Overall, Smart says that the biggest standout from Florida so far this season has been their buy in. In the first season of a new head coach, the Gators are on board. That’s why Georgia’s seventh-year head coach knows that Saturday will be a fight, despite being 22.5-point favorites.

“They are extremely physical. To me, they are extremely disciplined. They don’t beat themselves. They do a really good job at both lines of scrimmage,” Smart said. “You can see what Billy (Napier) is building in terms of recruiting. Number two, the way the players play. They play to a standard. They play really physical and hard. I am not saying that old Florida teams didn’t, but I don’t know if people acknowledge that when you see 6.3 yards per carry and they lead the country in terms of rushing yards.”

Kickoff time on Saturday is set for 3:30 p.m. ET on CBS from TIAA Bank Field in Jacksonville. This will be the 101st meeting between the two teams according to Georgia with the Bulldogs holding a 54-44-2 all-time advantage. Florida’s record books don’t acknowledge a Georgia win over a predecessor school however making this the 100th meeting between the Bulldogs and Gators according to them.