Kirby Smart, Stetson Bennett share on Georgia's preparation for Oregon

Preparation for Week One of the College Football season can be tough. Every season, there’s turnover throughout the sport. From coaches to players, teams across the country look different this fall than they did the last. That’s just one of many interesting aspects as Georgia prepares to take on Oregon this coming Saturday.

“Some unknowns. You’re just trying to gather information, trying to figure out where the pieces will be, where is this guy going to play, and who is going to play,” Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said on Monday in his opening press conference of Oregon week. “That’s for us to worry about as coaches. For the players, we got to worry about what we got to do. If I execute my assignment, what does it matter who is across from me? I’m not getting into the details of where he was at last year. I don’t care where he was last year. I’m worried about what I got to do to execute.”

“We as coaches certainly like to know about personnel and the matchups, and the game within the game is to try and get a good matchup somewhere out there,” he continued. “Matchups are easier to find when you know the team inside and out like an SEC team we play every year. It’s pretty easy to try to figure out where your matchups are. It’s probably a little tougher in this situation of not knowing your opponent, and even the tape you have of the opponent may not be exactly what they’re doing. So that creates an interesting dynamic, but it’s not for our players to concern themselves with.”

Smart noted that as they prepare for the Ducks, oftentimes they are watching their own film from last season. That’s because former Georgia defensive coordinator Dan Lanning is now the head coach for the Pac-12 contender. According to quarterback Stetson Bennett, who will have to go up against a coach that has seen the Georgia offense every day for the last four years, preparation for Week One is always a little bit different.

“It’s weird watching, like, four different teams playing football to prepare for one,” Bennett said. “You know, the beginning of the year’s always different and with a new guy, so, watching a lot of different stuff.”

“I guess he’s probably more familiar with the way we go about day-to-day things than any other DC that we’ll face this year. I could be wrong, not really thinking about it,” he continued. “You can’t let that affect yourself too much because either way we could overreact because we think that he thinks this, or we could think that we think we know what he’s doing and overreact. You know, you can play all kinds of brain [games]. At the end of the day, you’ve got to be able to block counter, and you’ve got to be able to fill counter, right? So, that’s what we’re doing.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the football, Georgia’s defense has some familiarity with the quarterback it’ll be facing too. Auburn transfer Bo Nix is expected to start for Oregon on Saturday, although Lanning has said he will not name a starter before the game. While that has all the potential in the world to add another element of difficult into the preparation, Kirby Smart has a hunch on who it’ll be lining up under center.

“That really doesn’t impact anything for us. I mean, I know who the quarterback is going to be,” Smart said in a little bit of a joking manner. “I’m not worried about that. Worried a lot more about how our guys play and what our guys do and how our guys execute. You guys use that to write about and talk about, but regardless of which quarterback is in there, they’re going to do what they do. Maybe he does one thing better than the other guy. At the end of the day, they may play both of them. It’s never about the preparation for one specific quarterback as much as the preparation of your team to go play well.”

Georgia and Oregon kickoff on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. ET on ABC for the top-15 matchup. The Bulldogs come into Mercedes-Benz Stadium ranked No. 3 in both the AP and Coaches polls while the Ducks are No. 11 and No. 12 respectively.