WATCH: Kirby Smart, Georgia players break down a dominant win

Opening statement…

“I was proud of how fast the guys started. I was really proud of our fan base. I thought the turnout was incredible, as it normally is when we come up here.  I thought our kids came out fast and that was the goal all week. We played videos of Mike Tyson and talked about playing to our standard I thought they did that. They came out and got a 3-and-out,  Offense went down and scored, we got turnover after turnover.  We started fast which is important to our group. Tough atmosphere early on to play in throughout.  We talked about it early, not letting there be excuses. If you’re going to be elite as a team, it has to be all the time. It can’t be some of the time. That’s not how elite teams play and our team embraced that. I was proud of them and we’ll celebrate this victory on the way back home and get ready for next week.”

On the Offensive line and running game:

“Kendall is nursing a little bit of a shoulder injury from the South Carolina. He probably could’ve gone but we were gonna wait and see if we needed him to go. He practiced during the week with a black jersey and came out of that late in the week. We were able to hold him and very fortunate to do that. Looking for him to come back.”

“As far as the run game, thought we did some good things early on. Made some good IDs. They loaded the box on us and when teams load the box on you, you got to be willing to throw it, spread it around. they give you a really hard box. Sometimes we got 4, 5 yards out of it sometimes, some of the times we tried to throw with the guys in there. “

Concerns about the run game…

“It always concerns you. If you don’t successfully it can create problems for you. Balance is what the defense dictates you sometimes. They were dictating to us that they were not going to let us run the ball, they were going to make it difficult and try to make us throw the ball. And we did. We hit some explosive plays because of the way they were playing the run. We’re not as big and massive. We don’t have a Ben Cleveland, a Solomon Kindley, some of those guys that are massive. We are athletic. We have guys who make good IDs and put us in the right plays. But we have not been as explosive in the run game or as consistent in the run game as I would like to be. We have some hit some explosive because of the boxes they are giving us.”

On the end arounds for Brock Bowers and Ladd McConkey
“End arounds are mis-direction plays, they’re compliments off our run game. If you over play direct runs, then shots and perimeter runs are there. If you over play shots and perimeter runs, the direct runs are there. It’s simple, right? If they take this away, this should be there. They’re (Bowers and McConkey) executing on offense at a high level and blocking. Some of the perimeter plays early, we missed a couple blocks. But after that, I thought we hit some explosive blocks. Look, we had Jermaine Burton have a very very key block on Brock Bowers’ end around, we had several guys block on Ladd’s, Justin Robinson blocked a guy down in the end zone on his (Ladd) end around, and a lot of guys protected well on some of those passes. So it’s not one guy doing it. It’s the quarterback making a good throw, another guy making a good catch, and everybody blocking around them.”

On this being a dominant win in the SEC, is that a testament to where Georgia’s program is…

“I talked to Clark (Lea) before the game. He’s a really good friend of mine, defensive coordinator and at his alma mater. We discussed how much pride each of us have in that. He knows it’s a work in progress. It’s not built overnight. I think he understands that, and it’s tough. It’s tough when you go out in a matchup like that, and you know you’re over matched. Kids have got to fight hard, fight through it, and that’s part of football. I give our guys credit because they came out ready to play and ready to play hard, but Vanderbilt helped us too. The turnovers certainly got it going our way a lot faster than it would have been.”

On substituting Stetson Bennett into the game at the beginning of the second quarter…

“I wouldn’t say that (it being pre-planned). It was a situation where we felt like we could get Stetson some reps, and things kept rolling. We’ll see how it is with all three of those guys. All three of those guys have done a really good job and I have a lot of confidence in all three of them.”

On the dynamic of practicing hard all week but not getting to play a ton in the game…

“That rarely happens in our conference. There’s more parity in terms of games and the games you play. It rarely happens, so you take it for what it is, you grow the other players, you get a chance to develop them. And hey, I talked to an NFL GM, the best thing to tell the players is to go play good so that the other guys can play. I didn’t have the guts to say it, but they did. They went and played well, and the other guys got to play because they played well. Our team got to grow as a unit because of our ability to play a lot of players.”

On playing to a standard, if there was anything in the first quarter that wasn’t up to the standard…

“Kickoffs, to be honest, we didn’t kick it off like my expectation is. Maybe if we kick it out of the end zone, we don’t get a turnover, so maybe (Jake) Camarda’s a lot smarter than me because we got a fumble off of the kickoff that wasn’t a touchback. I guess I need to commend him for that because he was thinking way ahead. I was a little upset it wasn’t out of the end zone, but he knew more than I knew and that ended up turning into seven points.”

On playing to the standard regardless of opponent…

“If you play well, you won’t really worry about that, right? I think the biggest emphasis for us has been this trajectory we want to be on. We’ve talked a long time about every week, we get to reset it. We gave the analogy of the 1 and 60. For every one degree you’re off your target with your plane, every 60 miles you travel, you land one mile off course. We said ‘If we’re headed to LA and every 60 miles we travel, we could land 27, 37 miles off target. We have a chance to correct that one degree, just one degree. We have a chance to correct that every Sunday and Monday. If we correct that one degree off and get back on track, we can hit our target. If at any point in time we don’t correct that one or two degrees we’re off, then we could get in trouble and miss the target. Our guys have kind of bought into that analogy of steering the plane in the right direction.”

On Kelee’s first start…

“Kelee has improved each week. He’s gained more confidence in our system. He’s cut down on his mental errors, and we think he’s going to be a good player. We’ve always thought that, and we’ve been trying to develop him and gain the confidence he needs. We need him to grow up and play well. We need Speed. We need DK, Kamari, all those corners. They’ve got to grow up and play, as it’s one of the thinnest positions on our team. We were happy for him, and I’ll evaluate how he played when I look at the tape.”

On Javon Bullard…

“I don’t go off the heralded recruit thing, because I just watch the tape. It’s very interesting to me to see who’s heralded and who isn’t when you go off the tape. We thought he was one of the best long jumpers in the state. Good 200 meter times. Super physical for an undersized guy. He’s rotating. He’s not going in the game because we’re up. The plan was to play him in the third series because he was playing and practicing well. The guy tackles. He thuds. He’s tough. We think he’s going to be a good football player. I’m excited about him.”

On practices this week…

“I thought we had really good practices this week. For this week, for there to be a letdown or a lack of focus, I thought our guys were awesome. We shortened practice, and we changed some things and did some two point competitions and twos on twos, ones on ones. We did a lot of different things with our time. I thought practices were good. I can’t pick one person who just really stood out. I thought Mims and Truss practiced better this week than they had in previous weeks, so we tried to get them in there as quick as we could.”

Brock Bowers, Ladd McConkey and their contributions thus far…

“They’re just real tough, hard workers, that believe in the process of working really hard. Ladd McConkey wasn’t real heralded either. He was a guy we watched and I said, what, this guy’s fast. He’s smart. He’s athletic. He competes. He’s tough. To me, that’s a little bit of what’s missing in football. Don’t tell me how good you are, show me and he’s done a really good job doing that.”

Closing statement…

“Since none of you guys gave a question to give me an opportunity to say this, I want to thank our fans for packing out the stadium. But I want to issue a challenge and I want it to be heard right now. We’ve got a huge game next week, at 12 o’clock, in Athens, Georgia. Everybody wants our team to be elite and I want our team to be elite and we’ve thrown that word around. So when we talk about our fan base, talk about our fan base being elite, we want to be there early and show up better than we ever have. We want to be loud, louder than we ever have. We want to be super intense, because the players are going to be intense. We need the fans to be intense. The toughness we’re going to show, we need our fans to show and the last thing is to be elite. So if our fans will be elite, we’ll have an opportunity to put on a heck of a show at 12 o’clock in Sanford Stadium next week. Thanks and Go Dawgs.”

NOLAN SMITH

LADD MCCONKEY