WATCH: Kirby Smart, Georgia players give update on UGA post-practice

Another day is in the books as Georgia prepares to take on Tennessee this weekend. Afterwards, Georgia head coach Kirby Smart and players – Ameer Speed and Dan Jackson – addressed the media. DawgsHQ provides you with an update.

Kirby Smart

The challenge of playing Tennessee’s tempo from a conditioning standpoint…
“I like to think our guys are in great shape. We work really hard, for the past three to four weeks. We’ve taken periods and worked really hard, anticipate this coming, kind of like you do when you have a triple option. So we work periods to practice that, to work on our substitution patterns so we can sub our players. That’s something that we constantly do. We did in the off week. We did a couple periods each and every week to make sure that we’re prepared for it. But like I said on Monday there’s nothing you can really do to make sure you’re prepared for that kind of pace of play. It’s almost impossible to simulate in terms of your practice. So a lot of it is knowledge, understanding it, and we want our guys to be able to do that. We want our guys to be able to play fast and execute.”

Bloody Tuesdays, and Jamaree Salyer update…
“Yeah Jamaree is weight-bearing now. He’s able to do that and able to do weight-bearing stuff. He’s not getting a lot of reps at practice, but he’s played a lot of football, and he had a week, I forget what week it was, that he didn’t practice during the week, then kicked back in on Thursday or Friday and played pretty well. Whatever that was, after the Auburn week I think it was where he ended up missing a couple practices and was able to jump in and go. We’re still hopeful that he’ll be able to. But we probably won’t know that until Thursday or Friday.

“But yeah our Tuesday practices are always get-after-it Tuesdays, and the kids always embrace that.”

The weather, it’ll be cold, how do you create freezing cold temps in Athens…
“Those are outside factors. We don’t control outside factors. The best football teams hunt, and when you go hunting you’re not worried about the weather. If you’re worried about the weather you’re doing the wrong kind of hunting. So for us, we’re looking at it as we want to play a game, and the outside factors are nothing but distractions. They’re for people that want to find excuses and find reasons that they can’t play well and won’t play well, they can look to the weather. But I’ve never seen a guy that’s hungry to eat that’s worried about the weather.”

How stubborn do you have to be with team’s load the box?
“I think you always find ways to run the ball regardless how many they’ve got in the box. We’re going to take shots and the run game helps set up the shots. The run game is part of our identity so we have to be able to do that, it’s just not always as productive as you’d want it to be. Some of that is what we did, some of it is due to what they did. But we don’t control what they did, we’ve got to do a better job. We’ve got to compliment the run game we had with other run games, so we can take advantage of their aggressiveness. As well as the pass game obviously.”

On whether or not UGA uses counter in it’s run scheme…
“Do we run counters? Yeah, we run counters. I don’t know what you mean do we run counters, or are we a power team? That confuses me. Gap scheme is what I look at and counter and power are both gap schemes. We run counters, almost every team in the SEC run counters. Some are more outside zone, some are more inside zone. We ran counters last week, we ran counters against Florida, we run counters each week.”

Similarities this season with guys who could have turned pro like Jamaree, Davis, Wyatt and similar message to Nick and Sony after first year?
“Yeah, there’s always some similarities. It’s a great Cinderella story, a feel good story, but I’ll be honest with you most guys base that decision on where they’re going to be drafted, right? It’s a business decision more than it is a Cinderella decision. Once they decide the business is right to come back and play better then it becomes all about run it back, let’s do this again, let’s play better. If the business decision is to go which is what Stokes had right, it’s what Tyson had then that’s the decision they have to make as football players. Azeez was the same way. I think it’s more about where they’re graded. Really in the same case for all the guys you talked about that came back that year whatever year it was 2026 to 2017, most of them needed to come back. They made a good business decision to be able to come back. I think a lot of times you guys or there’s a perception that guys overshoot themselves in terms of what their draft status actually is. You guys maybe go off I don’t know PFF or maybe somebody that tells you something. I don’t know. We go by what the general managers tell us. What the general managers tell us most of the time, they’re pretty accurate. There’s nobody that we’ve missed on outside of one round plus or minus. Like if we told Stokes he was a 2, he went 1. Never had one that was two rounds off. Even Mecole, he was a little bit of a surprise to go 2. Most people had him late 2 or 3. The information is accurate is my point. They base their decision on accurate information. They go from there. The two are similar in that we had a good group coming back. Like really good kids that wanted to win and a lot of them have Georgia ties and those guy came back and this group has come back.”

Success on blocking punts, field goals, extra points. Are you being more aggressive and what are some of the keys to that?
“Strain. It’s just strain. We don’t believe in leaving any stone unturned. I think you and I talked about it before on here. Field goal block is an extension of red zone defense and Coach Lanning and Coach Scott do a great job of selling that to our defense. It’s red zone defense. It’s another play on defense so why take it off? We change up our looks to be sound on the fake and we do different things each week and try to give the toughest picture we can give. And punt is the same way. We want to be aggressive. We’ve faced a lot more punt formations than we ever have. We’ve seen a lot of more rugby. For whatever reason we’re not a great punt return right now because we don’t get many opportunities. We don’t get chances. Everybody does something different. It’s made it difficult and if you can’t return them, you can try to block them.”

On what George Pickens has been able to do so far, how ready he will be once he is cleared…
“Just like those other guys – Darnell (Washington), Tykee (Smith), JT (Daniels) coming off his injury, Dom (Dominick Blaylock) coming off his injury – there’s a process that has to happen. You don’t come back from an injury and jump right back in where you were. It’s hard because you have to get all the reps, the volume of reps, the work. There’s only so many reps to give on actual execution. Dom’s been down on the scout team this week giving a great picture. George has done a little more work than he has done in the past. We’ve had George at practice, catching passes against routes on air, but that’s really been it, the things that y’all have seen. He’s done more competitive periods in terms of scouts and looks and getting confidence, being able to go up against some DBs and things. but he’s not taking reps with the one or two offense because, we don’t know when he’s going to be ready, and those reps are too valuable. We can’t give them to him and not have another player that’s going to play in the game. But when he’s cleared to play in the game, he’ll start getting some of those reps. I don’t know a timeline. I wish I did.”

On Stetson Bennett’s growth as a person and player through his entire journey at UGA…
“Yeah he’s come a long way from the first time we met him and had him on an OV. He comes from a competitive family, he’s got two great parents and great group of brothers and sisters that are all athletes. He grew up a competitor down in South Georgia, and he’s kind of been overcoming the odds I feel like for his whole career. He’s played with a chip on his shoulder. When he was here early on, he was a good player. You’ve got to realize he was in a room with Jake Fromm and Justin Fields. He went in there and competed, took notes. I remember sitting in there on all the meetings and said, this guy’s done a really good job. His journey has been different. Not many other people leave a school and go to junior college and play in Mississippi and then come back to play at the same school. You just don’t see that very often at the quarterback position. But I still remember the day that we tried to get him back and sign him. It was a decision for us on whether to offer him or not. I’m certainly glad we did, and I’m glad he accepted it.”

On the pace of the Tennessee offense, similar to Gus Malzahn?
“Yeah I wouldn’t say it’s Gus Malzahn. It’s very different. It’s most like Missouri when Heupel was there. If you remember we played Missouri when Heupel was there, we played some games against him when he was there. We’ve gone back and looked through those tapes and studied those tapes and looked through those tapes. He’s evolved and different in some ways. He’s added some more wrinkles as wrinkles have come to his offense. He does a really good job of being aggressive and keeping the pressure on.

“In terms of how we get the scout team to run it, we’re very fortunate that we have an abundance of scouts. This week we got a tremendous look between being a little healthier at wide out. You know Jackson (Meeks) has gone over there, Dom has gone over there, George has taken some reps. All of sudden that lineup at wide out has looked a little bit from a standpoint of competitive reps. Whereas before we didn’t have many guys that could give us a look at receiver because we were so down. We’ve had the scout team prepare them for this for weeks.  We’ve done a lot of work to get them ready for this. Very similar to when you face a triple option, you better have a plan because it’s so different and outside the norm.”

On Dan Jackson’s punt block and what goes into that…
“Well I don’t need to share all that information because we have opponents that get that. I know y’all don’t ever think they ever look at this but sometimes they do. We have to make decisions during game-planning. What we’re willing to do and what we’re willing to check versus looks. That is one where we sat around on Monday morning and there was a look they had done several years ago and we said if we get want to make the check. You don’t get to rep everything they do. They got too much to rep. It just so happened we went through it on Saturday morning and reviewed it. Dan made the instant check that we had coached him to make. Like we said, the special teams staff did a tremendous job putting that game plan together and then Dan executed it. It was something we had told Dan to do on that look.”

Where Dominick Blaylock is mentally in his return…
“He’s probably not going to play this week. I’m not saying that, guys. He’s not working with the… He’s working against us (the defense). That’s a different deal but he is much closer. He has looked good taking some reps against us as he kind of works his way back. His mental disposition has been great. I can’t say that it hasn’t been hard on him from a standpoint of confidence without the brace, from frustration from the hamstring reinjury, but the kid is a warrior. He goes out, competes, listens in meetings. He’s a leader and he’s done a great job.”

What has allowed Tennessee to hit so many big plays with receivers running free…
“They’re fast and you don’t always get lined up properly. It’s very unique, guys. It’s like, you ask the question, how come you can’t stop the triple option? Well, it’s different. You don’t face it every day. They’ve got guys wide open because people have eye violations. They look at the wrong thing. Sometimes they don’t even see the wide receiver and I know that’s hard to believe but they’re splits are clear out on the side line. Half of college football is playing condensed formations now and everybody is up where everybody is next to the ball and all of a sudden these guys have two guys outside the numbers. I’ve seen guys on tape not lined up, trying to get a call. It happens to everybody, so it’s not like it’s not on tape. It worries you that it could happen to you. You want to make them earn what they get and there’s a lot of plays that they’ve gotten on people off busts and you’re trying to avoid that. They’ve done a tremendous job through tempo of being explosive.”

Tennessee spreading things out and helping the run game…
“Make no mistake about it, they’re a tremendous run-game team. They run the ball a crazy number of average runs per game. They wear you down, they wear you down, they wear you down. They’ve got good backs, a physical o-line, they’re heavy. It’s not an air raid team, guys. It’s a shot team and a pound you team. They spread you out. They make you declare defenders and they want you to declare — is he in or is he out? And at the end of the day, they make it hard to defend but it’s tough. You’ve just got to have a good plan and you’ve got to execute the plan.”

Ameer Speed

Dan Jackson