WATCH: Kirby Smart gets Texas week underway with praise for Longhorns

ATHENS, Ga. — It’s a big one this week as Georgia takes on Texas, and Monday’s media day felt that way. Kirby Smart spoke after a special presentation by former UGA head coach Mark Richt, sharing about his fundraising bowling event that’s upcoming during the bye week. As for Smart, he talked about the challenge that’s ahead at Texas, what he wants to see out of the Bulldogs and much more.

DawgsHQ was on hand for the press conference and has both a full transcript and video of everything Smart to say for you below…

Kirby Smart Opening Statement…

“Alright guys, moving on to Texas for us. Obviously a huge matchup. It’s going to be a top-10 two teams in the country. A lot of respect for Sark. You know, I’ve gotten to know Sark really well over the last couple years. We take a trip every year together and really enjoy getting to know him and have a lot of respect for the job he does. I mean, the most complete team that we’ve seen or faced this year — probably in multiple years. When you look at what they’re doing defensively, offensively, and special teams, they are clearly one of the best teams in the country with what they do. Got a great quarterback, great defense, great scheme. Should be a great matchup, and this is really what you come to Georgia to play in these moments. Once again on the road going to a place that I’ve never been. I assume none of our players have ever been there either for a game, so it should be exciting, great TV, and looking for an opportunity for us to get better because that’s the most important thing is can we show some kind of consistent improvement and play more consistent as a team. That’s our goal, so that I’ll open it up.” 

Smart on how hard it is to prepare for an offense run by Steve Sarkisian and Kyle Flood…

“Well they’re balanced, and they do a great job of putting you in conflict in terms of run-pass, play action, turn your back to the ball. I mean, they can take shots. They’ve got really good wideouts to take shots with. You know I think they lost a couple backs maybe at preseason camp, and I thought, like, OK, well they’re not going to have [options there]. Well, these two backs they’ve got are really good and I’m like, man. I’m watching them against Mississippi State, who I’d seen them against, you know, last week while we’re watching Mississippi State, I was really impressed. And then against Oklahoma they even got better. So it’s not like there’s these weaknesses.

They’re big, physical up front on defense and offense. They’re built around the offensive and defensive lines. When you look at his record and you say look at his record while he’s been there how every year it’s improved, well the trenches improved every year and they’re for real in the trenches. They’ve got really good players and they’re built like an SEC team, and it’s hard to prepare for him because he knows what he’s doing offensively. He’s really different in terms of what he makes you adjust to.”

Smart on assessing Georgia’s pass rush in recent weeks… 

“I don’t know if you’re referencing to something. I don’t know because I don’t know stats. I don’t look at it. I look at it game to game, and I think when we rush four guys we do a really good job of getting home. We mix it coverage and pressure. Go back to Auburn. We ran some five- and six-man pressures. One of those announcers before the game last week said that we were the highest five- or six-man pressure rate we’ve ever had since I’ve been here. I don’t know the true calculations of that. Sometimes people chalking those up don’t know a guy rushing from a guy standing at the line that has the back, so I don’t know if that’s accurate, but we didn’t do that necessarily last week because of the style of play they have. We dictate off the offense what they do, and I’m pleased with our rushers. Our best rushers have been rushing well when they’re out there, and I hope that we can affect the quarterback in some kind of way to impact the game regardless of which week that is.”

Smart on an update on Branson Robinson…

“Yeah so Branson has an MCL. I don’t know how many weeks it’ll be. He will not be available this week. Forecasting it out is impossible because the MCL is one of the ones that has to heal itself. We’ve had MCLs in the past anything from, you know, two weeks to three weeks. I don’t know what it’s going to be, but he is he’s going to be OK. It’s just a matter of getting back, and it was not the same leg injury that he previously had, you know? It was different.”

Kirby Smart on if he went back and looked at the sideline incident with Michael Van Buren on Saturday…

“Yeah, absolutely I have, and I’m glad you brought that up because after you guys said that in the press conference I went back and watched it and didn’t even realize that I had run into him. But I reached out to Lebby that night and talked to him, and he said the kid was great. And then yesterday I talked to Mike and told him I had no intentions or ill will towards him at all. If you’ve ever been on the sideline in a game, it’s pandemonium. It’s really pandemonium when you’re trying to change personnel and you’ve only got three or four seconds to do it, and we were bad off in a bad personnel grouping against empty that we actually had messed up the week before. And so I was trying to get to Schumann to get that changed. But I reached out to the kid. He was great. He’s a really good player, going to be a good player in this league, and he played better as the game went on against us.”

Smart on preparing for Arch Manning and Quinn Ewers…

“I don’t really understand what you’re saying. Do we prepare for two quarterbacks? No I don’t, it doesn’t change how we’re preparing. They’re different style quarterbacks, but they’re not really different style quarterbacks, they’re both really good. I’ll say this, you watch the games that Arch played he played really well. He did some really good things when you look at his numbers. He comes out first couple plays against Mississippi State ripping it and firing it in his first SEC play and they played really good. But Quinn’s a great player and they got a great quarterback they got a great situation because they got two guys that really most capable of winning the plan well.

Smart on what makes the Texas defense elite…

“Size, speed, two best front guys. I mean let’s let’s every defense starts with train wreckers big guys, physical guys at the point of attack that are hard to move. They’ve got them. they’ve got guys on the edge that are elite rushers, they got an elite player out of the portal. They went and got DB from Clemson who’s playing really good. I mean they patched up some holes they had. They’re the complete package on it because they’re really consistent. They don’t give up explosives. They’re really good in the red area they. Hard to run the ball on I mean the consistency you watch them play with it reminds me of you know some of our better teams here, our best teams here. I’m like man they’re they’re good on D, they’re good on O, they’re good on special teams and they’re playing at a high level.” 

Smart on his composure on the sideline…

“It depends on what happened. But I mean realistically I think that’s something that Jackson Meeks and I talked about last year. It was great because we had a fumble or something on punt return and I was upset with Ladd (McConkey) and Jackson came over and said ‘composure, composure card coach.’ 

And sometimes that is the you know there’s there’s an intentional look you got to be intensem you got to you got to know what you got to do, you got to understand that. That’s important and our players talk about that all the time and I think we had several penalties in that game that had a chance to to lose composure or they had a chance to lose composure that were teaching moments too, whether that’s Damon or Chaz’s or London had a play where you know he had a drop came over there. I think those were great teaching moments for players and tried to do a good job helping them to that.”

Kirby Smart on the Georgia secondary….

“It’s different because the deep shots, I mean we’re talking about two distinctly different offenses, but when you watch the tape, when we played correctly and use the right technique we played well. We did not win every ball. Joenel Aguero is a great example. He covered the guy exactly like he was supposed to and the guy made a great throw and a great catch. We’re going to take that. We’re going to say, you know what, we’re not going to win every battle. We’re not going to win every 50-50 ball, but we’re going to try to win more than we lose. But when you don’t cover someone period, as a coach you’re going what is wrong here? Like we didn’t cover the guy, we had bad eyes, we looked in the backfield, things that you harp on every day. They happen. That’s what offenses do, they try to give you eye candy and try to get you looking at the wrong thing. We have to remove those. But the Texas presents a completely different, because they’ll have you sitting at the line of scrimmage because you think it’s a run and they ran right by you. They’ll have you looking at a motion and you don’t see the guy running down the field past you. They’ve got great speed on the perimeter and great size. So they present maybe a different challenge than Mississippi State, but a challenge.” 

Smart on getting players to play winning football and if that’s still an issue…

“No I wouldn’t say that’s a challenge or issue for this team. I think it’s a challenging issue for every team, not relative to us, right. I don’t think anybody, when I talk to my coaching peers and we share messages, I think everybody lacks the depth maybe they had the year before. You know, maybe one year you’re like, oh, I got a few more linemen than I had last year, but on the whole, there’s not great depth, right. Our issues have really been inconsistency, not depth. And we’ve had some injuries in some spots and we’ve got four or five starters out depending on how you count a couple guys from injuries. But inconsistency, I would say yes. Portal slash depth, no, not yet. I would like to have more guys that can play winning football. I would like to have played more players by now, but we’re looking at our snap counts and they’re higher than they’ve been years before from starters. Why is that? We’ve been in tighter, tougher games.”

Smart on metrics used to determine passing defense success…

“For us we usually do yards per attempt, including everything in tha. You know to see yards per attempt and it’s not as good as it’s been in years past. We’ve had a couple like really good three, four years. I think the Tykee, Kamari, Bullard has an effect on that because you got three players that are really good, drafted. You’ve got to always have people stockpiled behind it. We probably haven’t played as well at that position and we have younger players. But for us, the metric is like you have three or four incompletions and you give up a 10 yarder, well you’re okay there because you got 10 divided by four or whatever. But when you give up a 75 yarder and a 77 yarder, that’s not good. That’s not we were historically around here. We haven’t given up massive explosives.” 

Smart on Bill Norton…

“Bill Norton, what a great kid man. This guy worked his tail off here, worked really hard. You know I go back to, I forget which year it was, it had to have been three years ago or four years ago when he was in, one of his key roles was special teams. He played on our field goal protection unit and was the best at doing it we had. He was a, you kno, he’s a backup defensive tackle and played some snaps, but that was his role. I want to say, maybe the Ohio State game or one of the games, we lost somebody and he had to go in and take over and play a role with that and he did it with great pride. He was always like positive and enjoyed practice and was fun to be around, funny guy. Now he’s been I guess two places. He’s playing for them and he’s doing a really good job. He subs in and rolls in as one of their backup DTs.” 

Kirby Smart on Gunnar Helm…

“First of all he’s a tremendous blocker. He’s not a one-way tight end. You know, he’s got great size. I mean this guy’s huge on film but he’s a great pass catcher and the scheme that Sark has, they do a great job. It’s not like they say, ‘Hey go out here and go one-on-one and get open.’ They’re sprinting out, throwing back. They’re play action boot naked, okay throw screen off of it. Everything that you don’t honor because you’re thinking about another play they got to play off of it that makes you honor him.

He’s a tremendous blocker. I think the quarterbacks are really comfortable with him so when you get zone elements and holes and zones they trust him to go to be at that spot and catch the ball. I wasn’t aware of him going into the week because I had not really heard of him and now watching tape, this guy’s a really good player. And you’re right, he had a big game last week.”

Smart on Mykel Williams…

“I’ve seen just that. I mean, you don’t see much out of him until the game. I think he had six or eight snaps against Auburn and 10 or 11 snaps this last game, Mississippi State. He looked better to me during the week this past week so the what we were able to do Auburn game was get him better to Mississippi State. Now we’ve gotten another week under our belt and we’re hoping that he’s healthy and full and ready to go. I don’t know that until we get out there. I don’t get a great evaluation during the week because he’s only been able to do some of the work.”

Smart on Steve Sarkisian…

“Yeah I don’t know that he’s changed as a play caller and designer. His elite ability is to get players the ball. That’s what he’s elite at because he’s had really good wide outs before and they were really good. He’s had really good backs and he found ways to get them the ball. He’s had good tight ends like he has now and he’s finding them ways getting the ball. His offense, it is complicated because it has motion shifts and a lot of window dressing but he gets back to the plays that he’s going to run and he’s able to be versatile enough to say, ‘Okay, I got this guy. I gotta get this guy the ball.’ And some of the plays are like ours now where they’re not built for one player. They’re built for, what does the defense do? I’m going to get it to my weapons. There’s probably more similarities between the two offenses than some of these offenses we’ve faced.”

Smart on Quinn Ewers…

“His awareness. There’s nothing that he sees he hasn’t seen. You know, quarterback you get confidence by playing the position. You’re not gonna have some guy that just doesn’t play and goes out there and plays great. He’s played a lot of football, he’s a really good athlete, he’s been in Sark’s system. I mean, I think the comparisons between he and Carson are so similar in terms of the kind of quarterbacks they are. They’re both better athletes than people think. They both have awareness of coverage and they’re really good in the pocket. I mean, this guy’s taken off and hurt people running when he needs to. but he also can stand in the pocket and make all the throws and change the protection. I’ve really been impressed with him, but that was the case even last year when I saw him play.”

Kirby Smart on what he wants to see from Georgia this week against Texas…

“I want to see them play their best game against Texas. I mean simply, stated, we have not played our best game. We have not put a complete game together, and that’s what every coach’s goal is. Right? To play your best game moving forward. That’s what’s going to be needed to go on the road at Texas and play. We got to play better and that’s the only goal I’m thinking about right now, how we play this week.”