WATCH: Kirby Smart explains how Georgia can help Carson Beck better

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Georgia escaped with a win over Florida on Saturday, defeating the Gators 34-20 despite a performance by Carson Beck that once again left folks wondering what he was doing. Afterwards, head coach Kirby Smart spoke on the performance. DawgsHQ was on hand, and here’s what he had to say…

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Kirby Smart Opening Statement…

“That was a tough one guys. We didn’t play our best game. I thought maybe the difference in the game obviously was in the second half. The difference in the game was our fans gave us some momentum, gave us some energy there, had some big defensive stops. Obviously you cannot turn the ball over and beat good teams. And make no mistake about it, Florida’s a much improved team. I told Billy before the game that they’re playing really well, playing really good football and have been for four or five weeks now. They’ve avoided turnovers and they’ve run the ball well. The recipe for winning football is don’t turn the ball over, run the ball, and play good defense. And for the most part we’ve done that most of the year. We didn’t do that for a little bit of the half. 

We dominated most of the field position, most of the stats in terms of yards, but we all know turnovers. And some of those are on Carson, some of them aren’t, and we’ve got to do a good job helping him because when he’s needed to play well and we needed him to step up once again tonight, backed up, third down and — I don’t know what it was, third-and-5 maybe — he made plays. He did a great job. 

Smart on helping Carson play with more consistency…

“Well, I mean, he did some really good things. There’s things that go unnoticed. What he can’t do is throw the ball late over the middle, and we’ve got to do a better job protecting him. He got hit one time and the ball went up in the air. But the two plays that he would want back were late, scramble, throw-it-up plays. And to be honest with you, he hasn’t done that much, you know? He’s always been smart. He’ll take off and run or he’ll just throw it away and live for another day.  I thought he pressed on those two plays, but he also made some really good plays, and we’ve got to do a good job helping him around with the run game.

When we lost Etienne, it made it a lot tougher because we didn’t have as many backs. He relies on Etienne to take some of that pressure off of the run game.”

Smart on what he told Carson on the sideline after those interceptions… 

“Keep his head up. I mean, we’re not going to not throw it. Like, he throws the ball well. We think that we’ve got a really good pass game, we got a great pass pro, we got good wideouts, and we got a really good quarterback. Some of the throws he makes, guys, are big-time elite throws. He just has a couple times where he threw the ball in the middle late. You can’t do that. You can’t turn the ball over and be a good football team. He knows that, and I don’t think it’s a matter of decision making. I just think sometimes he presses there. This a big game to him. He’s from here, and we don’t win that game without Carson Beck, so.”

Smart on Dillon Bell providing a spark for the offense…

“Yeah, absolutely he did. Dillon Bell’s a spark. He’s a spark of energy. He’s a good guy that we have to get touches to, and we try. And the touches he got were difference-makers. That bobbled catch that he came down with was huge. Cash Jones continues to be a playmaker for us, and we’ve thought that all along. I mean, he’s kind of a self-made man. I mean, he just works his butt off since he’s been here, and Cash and Dillon came up with some big plays.”

Kirby Smart on Trevor Etienne’s injury and Etienne beating Florida…

“I don’t know. He has a lot of friends over there on that sideline. He likes and respects those guys. Whether y’all believe it or not, and all the social media stuff, everything out there, the kid is a great kid. He’s got a lot of friends on that team. I think the game meant a lot to him. I think it really hurt him that he couldn’t continue. He was dealing with a rib injury a little bit, and he’s fine. He just had some pain in there.”

Smart on Georgia’s run defense…

“You know, I don’t know the numbers. I wasn’t at one time. We didn’t stop the run well. I didn’t think that we tackled on the edge. They had really good backs. They’re really patient backs. They bounced a lot of runs, and we didn’t crack replace. We didn’t get perimeter run support some, and they got out on us. Give them credit, but if you don’t stop the run, you’re going to have a long day. And I thought the touchdown run, there was a missed call there that really hurt us, and that’s tough. I mean, it’s one of those things that they don’t get them all, but they missed a critical one there that probably hurt us.”

Smart on Florida’s offense changing when DJ Lagway went out…

“It’s hard to tell. I didn’t think he was in there very long. I don’t know, I mean, how many plays did he play, two series, three series? I don’t know. But it obviously changed because, I mean, he’s the starter, and they weren’t playing with a starter anymore. I thought Lagway did a good job when he was in there, but I thought the kid that came in did a great job, too.”

Smart on Carson coming back from three interceptions, settling into rhythm…

“Yeah, we talked about him for a while there when you weren’t in here, but I’ll be glad to talk about it again. He continues to grow and mature. He’s not perfect. I think that he puts a lot of pressure on himself, and we got to to continue to help him. And the players around him have got to help him, because he’d probably have 12 or 13 completions in a row if the guys would get their signals and know what they’re supposed to do in the perimeter. 

We don’t ask a lot of those wide outs, but we do ask them to execute it at a high level, and they’ve got to help him. But he can’t throw the ball late over the middle, he can’t throw the ball down the sideline on the scramble, just throw it up for grabs. Those are things he can’t do.”

Kirby Smart on message at the half about the Florida quarterback change…

“I didn’t have anything to say about that.”

Smart on response to the Texas win, whether it’s harder now to follow up one good game with another…

“No, I don’t think one game affects the other. I think Florida’s got a really good football team, personally. I mean, I think they’re really physical. They’ve got SEC offensive line, defensive line. I mean, that’s a good football team. And when you don’t play well or spot them three turnovers,  we had three, they had one, I mean, it certainly changed the field position and the momentum in the game, that was huge. But when you turn the ball over three times, I mean, I would think we got out explosive played them, and that’s usually an indicator, and when you do that, you got to get touchdowns in the red area, which we didn’t, and you can’t turn the ball over.”

Smart on Nate Frazier stepping in for Trevor Etienne, what he told him after touchdown…

“Just told him don’t be stupid, man. We’re not selfish people at Georgia. We don’t, I mean, I’m not interested in all the shenanigans. We’re meat and potatoes. We roll our sleeves up, we go to work every day. I’m not interested in you gator chomping and throat slashing. It’s not respectful. I mean, I want to be respectful of the game and the people we play. And I think the best way to attack somebody is beat them.”

Smart on whether Frazier’s penalty surprised him… 

“I mean, he’s immature, he’s young. Nate’s a great kid. He’s a super talent, and he wants to do well. He didn’t do it with the intent of getting a penalty. He was, you know, like you’ve been there, and he ain’t there enough.”

Kirby Smart on CJ Allen’s interception…

“It was a big play. I thought the guy was wide open, and they had a nice play called, a little bootleg action. It was a copycat play from one we had seen earlier this year and given up a touchdown, and the guy was open. CJ Allen made a freaky, unbelievable play to jump up and snag it, and that was probably the biggest change in the game.”

Smart on the crowd, juice Georgia players got from fans on hand…

“Well, I felt that was both ways. I mean, I don’t know. I felt like every time they had momentum, they were loud against our offense. And that’s the way it’s supposed to be in this game. In recent years in the past, sometimes it hadn’t been that way. I love playing in Jacksonville, but the momentum swings sometimes don’t feel like it gets as loud as the road or the home games, because the 50% rule.”

Smart on not being concerned with back to back 3 INT games from Beck…

“No, I’m not concerned with it because, I mean, you throw the ball, that’s going to happen sometimes. I mean, we’ve got to try to do a good job of preventing it, but we also won the game because we can throw the ball, right? We weren’t able to run the ball down their throat in the fourth quarter, we threw the ball. And he makes checks, decisions. I mean, there’s three plays in that last two drives that nobody knows what he did. He’s got elite knowledge of what’s going on, and puts us in the right play, and the play’s work when he puts us in it.”

Smart on the touchdown pass to Cash Jones…

“It was a great throw. I think it was an underneath, angle route by Cash. He ran a great option route, and that’s not an easy throw. You’d say, well, that’s just a little five-yard throw. Well, he’s got to put touch to get it over the defensive line. He’s got to put it in a position that Cash has somebody covering him, and that’s why Cash did a great job breaking the tackle. The guy tried to drag Cash down, and Cash beat him, and did a great job. Cash is good at those routes, and so is Etienne.”

Kirby Smart on Dwight Phillips’ touchdown…

“That was a great job by the offensive staff. They reached out to me on Tuesday or Wednesday and said, is Dwight gonna travel, because he hasn’t traveled every game. And I said, yeah, he’s going, he’s up now. With the injuries at running back, he’ll be an emergency running back, and they put a package in for him and he did a great job. I mean, you talk about everybody on that team loves that kid, little Peanut. His parents are great people, both ran track at  Kentucky. His dad’s an Olympic gold medalist, and just what a great story. I’ve never met a kid that everybody on the team likes as much as him, and he just works really hard. So I was really happy for him to get that play.” 

Smart on what Anthony Evans is dealing with and the return game…

“Anthony’s dealing with a little bit of a hamstring. So we’re hopeful to get him back. It happened late last week. So it’s why we train multiple guys to be able to return the ball. Malakii became the next guy, and kickoff it became Cash.”

Smart on how the defense held up early…

“I think we lost somebody there for a few snaps, JaCorey. And so then we were really, it’s why you practice the twos and threes. It’s why you develop players. Kyron had to come in and play. I can’t say how they played. I didn’t think, I thought we had some jitters there. I thought it was really good for KJ Bolden to get to start and play, to get some confidence and play more. He’s rotated a lot. I mean, we could have played better. I’ll say that, but we survived them.”

Smart on what he saw during the go-ahead touchdown drive

“I mean, I saw a third and five that we were going to have to punt the ball back to them if we didn’t get it. That’s what I saw, and I was like, here we are. Similar to Texas, we had a bigger lead, but he steps up, he sees a blitz. He puts everybody on the right protection. He takes a shot clock down to one second and puts us in the right route, throws a great ball, stands in the pocket now. There ain’t many people, with that many people pressuring, going to stand in that pocket that long and trust his protection and fire that ball. And I know a lot of guys on Sunday that don’t do as much checking as he does and puts us in the right play. And that was a difference in the game to get it to Arian. And then we still had to finish the drive, and he did a great job against max blitz to score the touchdown with Dom.”

Kirby Smart on Nate Frazier’s growth…

“Yeah, I mean, he’s got to grow up. I mean, we’ve been trying to grow him up the whole time. It’s probably me more than anything. Josh does a good job trying to get him in there. We’ve got to show confidence in him and play because a back can’t make it through this league trying to do it by himself. And I thought he did some good things tonight. 

He had a couple mistakes. I’m not talking about the penalty. He had a couple mistakes that can cost us. He has really gotten better at his protection. I’m fired up about him in protection. He is not shy of contact. But he’s got to get vertical and not try to outrun everything to the sideline.”

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