WATCH: Kirby Smart honest after Georgia loss to Ole Miss

OXFORD, Miss. — Saturday was one Georgia fans will want to forget as their Bulldogs fell to Ole Miss 28-10 at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in Oxford. It’s the second loss of the year for UGA and just the second time that’s happened since Kirby Smart’s first season. Afterwards, Smart spoke with reporters and had some tough questions to answer. DawgsHQ was on hand, and has a full transcript and video of the postgame press conference for you below…

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Kirby Smart Opening Statement…

“Yeah, first off, a lot of credit to Ole Miss, great atmosphere. They played a really good game, I thought Lane had his team ready to play. We obviously struggled in a lot of areas. We had miscues, mistakes, penalties, things that are really hard to overcome, especially when you play a really good football team, and they are.

I told our team coming into this week, I felt like they’re probably the most talented team that we have played. Counting both sides of the ball and special teams. They have elite specialists, and they have really good players on defense and the skill position on offense. So give their quarterback credit, he made a lot of really good throws and their defense affected us with the pass rush. 
So a lot of credit goes to Lane and his staff. Look, they really should be undefeated. I know people think that’s not true, but they really controlled the game against LSU the whole game, and lost it, and they’re playing good football. And they outplayed us tonight, out-coached us, and did a great job.”

Smart on offensive struggles after first drive…

“Well, we didn’t have a great run game going. Sometimes we ran the ball well. I thought that their front defensively stunts and moves a lot so they’re very disruptive, so you have to be willing to go outside. We had some outside run game. I thought Nate did a really good job. Unfortunately, he had a turnover, but he ran the ball really hard. We talked all week about how they go after the ball. So give them credit, but when you have the penalties we have, and you have the sacks, you’re not gonna be very successful, right? Penalties, stop drives, and sacks, stop drives, and we had both of those.”

Smart on offensive line shuffling…

“Yeah, it’s tough right now, because Tate (Ratledge) didn’t practice all week. We thought he’d be able to go like he did against Florida. He was not able to take many reps, but we thought he’d be able to go in the game just based off of experience. He struggled, that foot was still not completely healed, and he’s out there giving us all he can. So that made it a little harder. Micah (Morris) is still dealing with injury, too, from the Florida game. So those two guys struggled.

We tried to play a combination of (Xavier) Truss and Drew (Bobo) rotating in at guard and still playing our three tackles. They did a good job. Princely did a great job with get off. When you get in a mode of I have to throw the ball, you can get in trouble in this league, especially on the road. And we had some drives there where we had to throw the ball. And we struggled to block Princely in obvious passing situations.”

Smart on Jaxson Dart…

“Well, he’s talented. We knew that coming in, right? So there’s not a problem that he created tonight that we didn’t know about. He’s a really good athlete. We wanted to control the run game and force him into throwing it, and I thought we did that early in the game. We didn’t stop to run this late in the second half when we had to, but we stopped the run early, and we forced him to be uncomfortable. They did some good things down the field, vertical passing game. They do a really good job with their vertical passing game and getting matchups. They switch routes. They do a lot, and Schumann tried to change it up between man and match zone. I think we played decent on defense when we held everybody to field goals, but we couldn’t get a turnover, we couldn’t get a sack. We couldn’t get a momentum play, and we kept just staying in the game until they’re late.”

Kirby Smart on what you tell the team after a loss like this…

“It’s on to the next. I mean, welcome to the SEC, baby. I mean, I said when the season started that it was going to be the toughest schedule we’ve ever had in the SEC with the addition of the Texas game on top of all the others we had to play. It’s extremely tough. It’s difficult. I mean, the outlook of going to those four road games, the Kentucky, the Texas, the Alabama, and this one, we knew it was going to be really tough. And as you go through the season you get injuries. I mean, they’ve got injuries too. Everybody’s got injuries. It just makes it tough. It’s tough, but you know what, our future’s in front of us. We’ve got a big game next week. We’ve got to go out, and we’ve got to find a way to execute at a higher level.”

Smart on Georgia not having lost two games in a single regular season since 2020…

“Yeah, those kids weren’t here.” 

Smart on how the players will respond…

“I think they’ll respond like they do everything. They’ll come out and compete, practice hard. I think you guys get caught up in all those numbers and records and all that. I don’t even care about that. The only thing I’m worried about is how we get better tomorrow. Like, what can we do with our players tomorrow to get better? Our players will be fine. They’re not — it’s a different world. Like, we’re not riding this roller-coaster wave of emotions. We’re on a long journey. It’s a long journey and you’ve got play the next play and you’ve got to play the next game, and that’s the goal for this group. That’s what I told him in there. I was like, guys, our future’s in front of us. We’ve got to figure out how to get better.”

Smart on the early offensive approach whether it was an effort to protect Carson Beck…

“No, I didn’t think so. I thought he came out gunning and throwing. Carson had his best week of practice. I thought Carson did some good things. He threw some play-action strikes. He stepped up and made some great third-down plays. I don’t really know what you’re referencing. I guess you’re saying that we didn’t come out throwing the ball, or what are you saying? 

I thought Carson played good, guys. I thought he played good. I mean, some of those penalties aren’t on him. You know, now some are. He had a couple snafus, too, where he maybe didn’t motion a guy or didn’t shift somebody in as part of the adjustment, and he knows that. But we put a lot on him, and he’s playing on the road with crowd noise. But man, he stands in that pocket and converted some third downs and made some really nice plays. I thought he threw the ball away a couple times tonight. It was really good. So I’m not here to be critical of him.”

Kirby Smart on what Ole Miss did that made it difficult to move the ball in the first half…

“What I talked about. You know, getting lost-yardage plays. When you talk about 70 yards, you’re talking about with the sacks. And we had some good plays in there that negated yards when you go backwards. So we ran the ball decent. They stunted and moved up front, which makes it hard to run the ball on the interior, which I mentioned. You have to get out of the perimeter on them. We had some perimeter run game that helped us. We threw some now passes, did some stuff out of there, but didn’t do enough to sustain and get things going.”

Smart on the impact of drops tonight…

“I don’t really know. I don’t know how many we had tonight. I know we had one or two there to late Dillon and Arian. It’s a missed opportunity. That’s the toughest thing, and we’ve dealt with that before. We’ve got to overcome it. 

Smart on anything Ole Miss did that surprised Georgia in the first half…

“No. They did what they do. They did what they do, and they did it well. They were short backs, so they went no-back some, but we actually had practiced and repped that some. We thought they would go no back because of their injuries. They used 11 and some of the wide receivers in the backfield. Converted a really critical fourth down early in the game with a wide receiver in the backfield, but that’s something they always do. It’s not like new or different or anything. “They’re just, they’re good, and they’re good.” 

Smart on what he learned about his team today…

“I think we need to get better, that we’ve got hard work in front of us, that we’ve got a great group of men that I respect, and I look forward to getting back to work. I mean, that’s the biggest thing. There’s nothing I’m going to learn about this team from that game, but how you respond to it, and that’s life, right? Like how you respond to tough times defines who you are.”

Kirby Smart on how much Trevor Etienne’s ribs are still bothering him…

“It’s hurting him some. You know, he was not able to do a lot during the week. He got to run a lot, but he didn’t get to rep, take shots, and take the physical contact that you probably need on Tuesday, Wednesday. A lot of people don’t realize it, but you need to practice to be able to play good. People think you can just not practice and go out there and play good. That’s hard on him, but I thought he was really tough tonight and tried to go out there and tough it out and made some good runs for us, but he didn’t feel like he had the same juice. He felt like he was a step slow.”

Smart on not riding the emotions and if that has to do with the expanded playoff…

“No, it’s specific to our league. I don’t think it has anything to do with the 12-team playoff. I think it has to do with the fact that our league is extremely tough, a lot of parity. Anybody can beat anybody. I honestly believe that, and how you prepare each week defines your team. We could be looking at, I don’t know, it’s going to be interesting the way this thing plays out. I told people it’s not going to surprise me if every team in the league ends up with two losses just because it’s that way. It’s tough.”

Smart on living through this road gauntlet…

“It’s SEC life. It’s what you signed up for. Kids want to come play in this league all the time. That atmosphere, people want to play in that. That’s awesome. That’s a great atmosphere to play a game in, and our kids will remember it forever. They’ll remember they lost, but look, guys, they create a tough environment to snap and run plays. You will never understand what it’s like to go out there and play tackle when you can’t hear anything and there’s a guy screaming off that edge. It is tough. I’ve been on the other side of that for a lot of years where you’re playing at home and you’ve got pass rushers, and it doesn’t matter what you do. You better be able to run the ball. You better be able to run the ball, and you better be able to control the game and the score where you’re not in obvious passing situations.”

Smart on if he was able to get the team off safely with the field storm…

“I don’t know. I hope so. I mean, I felt like our team, we got everybody of but the defensive guys, but it’s not something you can really control right.”

Kirby Smart on if the risk of blitzing is higher against Ole Miss...

“We could talk a really long time about that. That’s philosophical because some people will tell you blitz when you can’t cover them, right, because you give them less time. It’s not that easy. We rushed three, we rushed four, we rushed five. We changed things up. It’s not worth having a debate about right now. It’s a hard question to answer.”

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