WATCH: Carson Beck, Georgia players share on loss to Alabama

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Georgia dropped a game in the regular season for the first time since 2020 on Saturday, and afterwards, the emotions of doing so certainly seemed like a weight on the shoulders of UGA’s players. Bulldogs made available to the media postgame included quarterback Carson Beck, linebacker Jalon Walker and wide receiver Dillon Bell. DawgsHQ was able to capture a couple of minutes with each of those three and shares that with you below…

QB Carson Beck

On his emotions… What do you think my emotions are? I mean, I’m really proud of our guys and how we fought. Obviously, I’m upset. I’m not big on moral victories. I believe in winning and losing, and we lost. But we fought hard, and that’s something to be proud of. 

On the mood on the sidelines… Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s how we’re built. I think that’s what the G stands for. I think we’ve always shown that no matter what the circumstances are, we’re always going to fight, and we’re definitely not going to quit, ever. It’s who we are, and I mean, I’m proud of that, but I wish some things would have went different. You know, that first half, we probably played terrible. I don’t think we need to watch a film to go see that we didn’t play our best. That starts with me. I’ve got to be better, but I’m happy about how we fought. We brought it all the way back and took a lead, so we just weren’t able to close it out. 

On the slow start in the first half… I don’t think it was a challenging thing. I think we just made mistakes. That was all it was. We had some busts and certain concepts, and we didn’t run the right things. And, you know, just it is what it is. It’s part of the game, and then they stopped us whenever we needed to convert, and that’s football.” 

On Kirby’s message coming off the field… Yeah, just keep going. I mean, it’s the same old thing. I mean, when you’re down, I don’t even know how many points we were down. I mean, we don’t look at the scoreboard. We don’t play to the scoreboard. We never do, whether we’re up by 30, down by 30. It doesn’t matter. We’re just going to go out there and play, you know, play by play, and that’s what we do. 

On the touchdown pass to Dillon Bell… Oh, yeah, no, we had that schemed up. We had saw it all day trying to find that play, and we finally, you know, caught him in the coverage we wanted him. He jumped it. No, I mean, obviously big play in the game. 

On seeing anything different from Alabama… No, I mean, it was what we saw on film. It was what, you know, we expected. They had a few different wrinkles, a few different things that they did. I mean, obviously they’re a very talented team, good defense. So, I mean, I’m not discrediting them at all. But, you know, we made a lot of mistakes, and we gave them, you know, some good field position. And, you know, the offense didn’t really help out the defense in the beginning. So, you know, we got to watch the film, you know, just get better as the weeks go on. 

On this offense’s slow starts… Not concerned at all. I thought, you know, there’s a few plays that go our way, and it’s a totally, you know, different start. There’s a few flags, a few big plays where it’s like, dang, like, you know, but you can’t sit there and hang your head. When that does happen, we got to learn how to respond and execute, and that is what it is. 

On momentum piling up against them tonight… Yeah, I think momentum is a huge factor, especially in college football. I mean, we’re on the road and they’re at home. So, you know, they start to get going, and their fans are riled up, and it is what it is, and, like, that’s not easy. You know, it’s not particularly easy to, you know, continue to go and try to dig yourself out of that hole, but, you know, we were able to do that, and I’m proud of us for that. There was just too many mistakes, and, I mean, that starts with me.

On how frustrating it is to be able to point to the issue… Yeah, it’s super easy to do that. I mean, you can sit there and say shoulda, woulda, coulda, and, I mean, it is what it is. You know, I can sit here and say if this would have happened we would have won or this would have happened, we would have won, but it really doesn’t matter. I mean, what happened happened, and we got to move on and, you know, continue the season.

LB Jalon Walker

On the feeling on the sidelines after being punched early on… We don’t flinch, we don’t flinch. I knew this game was gonna be a dogfight from the beginning. I knew for myself, I wasn’t gonna pout and bow down. I mean, that’s just not us, that’s not Georgia. And I knew that once we seen that, we were gonna rise to the occasion, being resilient and being connected as a team. Once we did, we see the end of the fourth quarter. Just one moment, one moment short, that’s all we had to do.

On Jalen Milroe… I mean, like I said, he’s a gifted quarterback. I spoke to Jalen at the end of the game, and we appreciate each other’s game. That’s two good teams playing against each other, and crazy, insane, great athletes on the field at the same time. You’re gonna have those type of games, like I just said. Very, just very high in success, so I just appreciate the game and how we compete for it.

On the emotions of that game… You know, just going out there and to compete. That’s all we did, we wanted to compete as much as we can. In the fourth quarter, we bounced back through the adversity in the first half. We know we didn’t play our best first half of football. In the second half we rose to the occasion.

On Alabama’s early success… We just started slow. We just had to bounce back from it, that’s what we had to do.

On where Georgia goes from here… It’s a 14-game season. We gotta keep going. We don’t have time to hang our head and pout, it’s just one game. We got to keep going and get ready for Auburn.

WR Dillon Bell

On what Alabama’s defense did to slow Georgia down… I thought they would come out more man. There was a high 7% Cover 1 team that came out playing kind of like Cover 2, Tempo 2, all those type of covers, Cover 3. But hey, it is what it is. You just got to adjust to it. You’re going to have time to adjust to it and then run back to Cover 1. But hey, that’s why we communicate with our coaches what we see on the field to change the game plan. They listen to us and we end up fighting back hard, but we just came up short.

On what was clicking in the second half… Nobody was trying to lose. You feel me? Like the game had over. You know, we all turned into Minnesota Vikings, you know what I mean? They came back 37-7. You know, we turned each other. We all just come back in history. Let’s do it. You know, why not us? You know, we went to that, you know. We just fell short. But it happens. We all still warriors. At the end of the day, we kept fighting. I’m proud of everybody for fighting, man. But hey, we got to keep going. Put this behind us and get ready for Auburn.

On Kirby Smart’s message… Nobody quit, man. Everybody kept their composure. We’re a very resilient team, you know. Like, he was very proud of us for fighting, you know. Anybody can write us off. We don’t really care about that. We know the type of team that we have. We’re a team that’s full of fighters, man. We’re warriors over here, you know. And we just got to get ready for Auburn.

On Georgia’s slow starts… I really can’t answer that. I feel like we started off slow, you know. We got to just adjust to whatever we see. And make the changes. We got to make plays, you know. Nobody’s perfect, you know. And we just had a rough start. But hey, we came back in the second half. That’s why we need a halftime in this type of sport. And this time, you know, the great adjustment is going to have time to look at it on the film and whatnot.