Kirby Smart ready to find out how Carson Beck, Bulldogs handle first road game

ATHENS, Ga. — Consider Kirby Smart aware of the challenge awaiting his team at Auburn. Aside from Athens and Tuscaloosa, there’s no place Smart has more consistently coached than Jordan-Hare Stadium. He had to prepare to take on the Tigers every year as a defensive coordinator at Alabama. Then, when he took the Georgia job, Auburn was still on the schedule on an annual basis. In fact, many consider the Iron Bowl and the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry to be two of the biggest in the SEC. So, with Smart’s Bulldogs preparing to go on the road to Auburn led by a quarterback who has just four starts under his belt, the head coach is aware that he’ll learn a lot about Carson Beck this coming Saturday.

“That’s something that we’re going to find out. I don’t think you know,” Smart said on Beck’s ability to handle his first SEC road start. “I think he’s been through some ups and downs. He’s certainly been against good defenses like Auburn has. He goes against our guys. It’s different when it’s live. So you gotta find out how he responds to that.”

“I’m very confident in Carson’s ability to communicate, to understand things. He’s been in our system,” Smart added. “You know, you only get good at these situational football things by playing football for a long time, and he’s been with us for a while doing it. This is his first chance to do it on the road.”

Smart said Saturday after Georgia’s 49-21 win over UAB that the team’s fourth game being its first road game isn’t how he’d draw it up. In fact, it wasn’t how he drew it up in the first place with Georgia originally scheduled to travel to Norman, Okla. to take on the Sooners in Week Two. That game was called off by the SEC before the season with Oklahoma joining the conference before the return date in the home-and-home agreement, forcing Georgia to find Ball State as a replacement opponent on the schedule.

“Road SEC tests are always difficult. There is no way around it,” Smart said. “I think any conference when you go on the road in it, it’s always a test, a test of focus, patience, endurance, composure, all the qualities you need to be a good team.”

“I think they’re more similar than unique. I would have a hard time pinpointing differences other than they’re all loud as hell in our conference,” he added. “They (Auburn) do a great job. I mean we went to Missouri last year, and I thought it was as loud as anything at night. The environment was really loud, and it’s not even an enclosed stadium, and this stadium is enclosed, and it’s similar to ours. People have always said there’s a similarity between the look of theirs and ours. But it’s extremely loud. I mean, I don’t know how to differentiate one school to another because they’re just loud. All their fans are passionate. It’s a very similar environment.”

How can a coach – having full knowledge of what’s to come – help his players out? Well, Smart and his staff have forced the noise upon the team in preparation, not just this week but almost every week. As Smart reminded reporters, one side of the ball is always dealing with the noise. At home, it’s the defense. On the road, it’s the offense.

Smart, along with offensive coordinator Mike Bobo, will also try to put together an offensive game plan that doesn’t ask too much of Carson Beck, finding ways to simplify things that can be too difficult without the ease of communication.

“You just turn on crowd noise and try to simulate it,” Smart said on a separate occasion. “You prepare about doing a little less and taking a few plays out that are hard communication plays. Checks, motions, adjustments, you just got to be smart. I call them a relief play. You got to line up and go play and see if you can block them without doing too much. I don’t think some coaches acknowledge that it’s a six-penalty advantage to play at home in the SEC possibly. It’s come out that way for us because teams have come out here and gotten five or six more penalties and average, and you got to try to find a way to avoid that when you go out on the road.”

Kickoff time for the 128th all-time meeting between Georgia and Auburn is set for 3:30 p.m. ET this Saturday, airing on CBS as the SEC Game of the Week. The Bulldogs enter with a six-game win streak in the series that started in the 2017 SEC Championship Game, an all-time advantage of 63-56-8 and as two-score favorites over the Tigers.