WATCH: Kirby Smart speaks after Georgia win over Kentucky

LEXINGTON, Kent. — No. 1 Georgia escaped from Lexington with a close win over Kentucky, beating the upset-hungry home team 13-12 under the lights of Kroger Field. As the score might indicate, the Bulldogs didn’t quite look like the nation’s top-ranked team the entirety of the contest. There absolutely were moments – like when Carson Beck, Trevor Etienne and the Georgia offense drove 10 plays and 68 yards for the game’s only touchdown – but head coach Kirby Smart didn’t think that the Bulldogs played quite as well as they are capable of.

DawgsHQ was on hand for the game and postgame interviews with Smart and Georgia players. We’ve got that shared with you on our YouTube channel, plus a transcript of what was said below…

Kirby Smart Opening Statement

“You know, I think I’ll open with an immense amount of respect for Coach Stoops and the atmosphere and the culture he’s created here. I tried to tell everybody all week, but nobody would listen to me. I know what this team’s made out of. I know how tough he coaches. I know several of his coaches on the staff. I’ve known him for a long time. I have tremendous respect, and when they get disrespected like they did last week and they listen to it for a week, they come out ready to play.I think our kids listened to that. I think they understood it, but I also think it’s a tough environment to play in.

I’m so proud of the resiliency our kids showed. They never flinched. We thought this would be a blow-by-blow game, and we talked all week about blow-by-blow, delivering more blows than them. We said the first chop of the tree doesn’t chop the tree down. It takes sometimes 272 ax chops, and it took every single one tonight to get the job done.

What I will say is I’m proud of our team. I’m proud of our leadership. I honestly believe we won this game with culture, and the culture of our team never panicked. I saw more leadership tonight than I’ve seen all season, and you guys have asked me a thousand questions about this team, this, what about this team, this. I don’t know much about this team, but I found out more tonight than I’ve known up to this point, and that makes me extremely proud of how they responded and how they handled some difficult situations.” 

Smart on how important it was to face adversity tonight…

“I’d rather not have faced it. I mean, I didn’t prefer it to be that way, but I also told people all week, you know, I knew it. I mean, we played on the road at Missouri two years ago, two years ago, I guess, three years ago. I don’t know when it was, and then we played on the road at Auburn. I get it. When you go on the road for the first time in the SEC, at night, and you keep a team in the game, you don’t start fast, it’s going to be a challenge, and we responded to the challenge. The best thing is we got a lot of things we can work on.”

Smart on the severity of Tate Ratledge’s injury…

“Don’t. I was told ankle and knee, but I don’t know which is worse or how bad it is. I don’t know much about it.” 

Smart on if there is anything stylistically about Kentucky that makes them a tough matchup…

“I don’t know that. I mean, stylistically, they’re physical, and that’s always a tough style. They play really well, I feel like, against us. I’ve got a lot of respect for Mark. His defense does a great job. They do a really good job. They’re good football coaches. There’s not like a weakness. You don’t look out there and go, ‘Oh, they got this in special teams. They got this.’

I think people looked a lot at last year’s game, and a lot of things happened bad for them early in last year’s game, and it kind of snowballed and got away from them. I know playing up here that that can happen to you. There were moments that it was starting to slide for us right, penalties, things happening. But we were resilient, man. We responded to them. That’s the true sign of a great fighter is not how hard you punch, but what punches can you take.” 

Kirby Smart on his postgame embrace with Brock Vandagriff, Jamon Dumas-Johnson…

“I love those kids. Those kids were tremendous for our program. I mean, we probably don’t win two national championships back-to-back without those two guys.

I mean, Brock did all kinds of things to help our team, scout team. He was a competitor. I mean, the guy cried in my office when he told me he had to leave. It ate away at him, and I’m really happy for him. 

And Pop as well. Pop and I had a great relationship, and we were fiery with each other at times, but he was also a tremendous leader, and I just respect Pop.”

Smart on importance of the bye week with injuries and Alabama ahead…

“Yeah, I don’t know that we can rest and recover. I mean, that’s what people think bye weeks mean. We’ve got to find a way to improve and get better. You know, we were really beat up coming into this game, specifically at one position, and it was a really tough week for us. I’ve got a lot of respect for the guys that stepped up and played.”

Smart on defensive line, Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins… 

“I’ll have to watch it and see. I mean, I felt like he played good, but, I mean I can’t say without seeing the tape. I know he played more snaps than he’s ever played. Christen Miller, Naz (Nazir Stackhouse), I mean, they manned up and played a lot of snaps. We knew going into the game if we couldn’t get three and outs and they were going to sustain drives, it was going to be a tough game. We were going to have to score on offense because we didn’t have the players to play a 70-80 snap game defensively, and it kind of turned out that way. We’re just beat up right now.”

Smart on Xzavier McLeod return, impact that had on the defensive line… 

“It was good. I don’t know how he played. I don’t know how many he gave us, 15 snaps I’m guessing, maybe 20, I don’t know, but I’m glad he was able to go and the training staff did a tremendous job to get him back to that point.”

Kirby Smart on the biggest things he learned…

“Toughness, resiliency, response, leadership.”

Smart on an explanation for Jalon Walker’s penalty…

“I think they said he drove him into the ground. Jalon didn’t feel like he did. I mean, Jalon’s not a violent person in regards to that, but they said he kind of finished him and drove him into the ground. I actually never saw it. I don’t know.”

Smart on biggest changes offense made in the second half…

“Well, I thought we got on rhythm a little bit. When we hit plays, we were able to do some drop back passing. We hit a couple plays, went fastball with it. But we never really found any rhythm the whole night, and that’s disappointing because we’re a better offense than we played tonight. I can’t answer why. I’ll have to watch it and see, but we’re better than we played to.”

Smart on Trevor Etienne impact on touchdown drive…

“Huge. The guy ran, I mean, he made something out of nothing about eight times.Some of those were some of the best runs we’ve had all year because people standing in the hole unblocked and he’s making them miss and getting extra yards. A lot of respect for the way he played.” 

Kirby Smart on resiliency the Georgia defense showed…

“Yeah, I felt like it was a bend but don’t break kind of scenario. Kept giving up plays, but the one thing I thought – Schumann and the defensive staff did a tremendous job game planning, I thought he called a really good game, he helped our players. A couple of drives or penalties would have been punts and not three points, and I think the game would have been better for us. But I’m proud of the way they played. They bowed their neck when they had to, and we took away a lot of shots. They are a shot team and they have extremely fast wideouts, and I thought we covered the shots well.”

Smart on if he’s concerned about Georgia’s penalties… 

“I think everybody in the country is. I watched games today and it was like crazy, and we’re higher than we’ve ever been. I watch all these games, they’re higher than they’ve ever been, and I’m like, what’s going on? We’ve never, we have been a low penalty, smart team, and I can’t figure it out. I don’t know if it’s the way it’s being called. Is it being called tighter? Because everybody’s got more, but we certainly got to reel it in some.”

Smart on Daniel Harris making the trip after an arrest on Thursday night…

“Daniel was available tonight. It was the coach’s decision. It was my decision.”

Smart on if Georgia is playing with fire starting slow offensively…

“Playing with fire? Define playing with fire. Not scoring in the first place. I wouldn’t call that playing with fire. I’d call it not playing. Right? Like playing with fire is like, I guess you’re talking about dangerous.I’m talking about playing with your hair on fire and playing hard.

I do think they play hard. I think that we have a really good offensive staff. We have a really good offense. We have people around them, and we’ve got a good quarterback. We’ve got to do a good job and go out and execute. I mean, say what you want about Kentucky’s defense. Kentucky’s defense is pretty good to me. We’ll judge that at the end of the year. I think people are looking at it the wrong way of the South Carolina game.

I actually think Kentucky’s got a really good defense, and I think Clemson’s got a really good defense. I think we’ve got a really good offense. So we’ve got to do a better job of starting faster.”

Kirby Smart on the road atmosphere tonight coming in as helpful experience down the road…

“Well, we get to go to Bryant-Denny and many other places on the road this year. So it’s going to be an adventure every time we go out on the road. I mean, it’s a tough schedule, guys. When we got it, I knew it. I mean, the first game I pointed at was Kentucky because everybody was talking about the other three on the road. I’m like, guys, we’re going to go to Kentucky on the road. And people just don’t credit them because of the turnovers against South Carolina. They didn’t play real good against South Carolina. That team was going to play tonight, and they did, and we responded.”

Smart on Carson Beck…

“Well, Carson is a great leader. He didn’t panic. He made plays when he had to. Look, the last drive of the game, he had to go play and make throws. He did. He ran the ball. He put us in the right plays. He’s a really good football player that we put a lot on and asked to do a lot. We’ve got to do a better job of protecting him, and we’ve got to put him in better situations.”

Smart on Jalon Walker applying pressure…

“I think he did a good job. I don’t know. I don’t get to see it as much. I thought he was back there in the backfield a lot. He’s playing really hard. He is a natural-born leader, and he’s affecting people on the sideline with positive energy and loves the game. So, you know, the kid is just a remarkable kid.

Smart on if he watched any of Alabama-Wisconsin earlier in the day…

“No. I mean, I watched a few games. I don’t think I even saw that game. That’s the last thing on my mind right now.”

Kirby Smart on why night games are more challenging…

“Well both teams have to do it, so it’s kind of balanced, you know. It’s not like one of them doesn’t have to do it. So I talked to Mark about it. They do things. We do things. I mean, to me, the only thing the night thing does is bring the atmosphere up a little higher because fan base is sometimes inebriated.”

Smart on taking a delay of game late in game instead of kicking a field goal…

“Yeah, we’re sitting there thinking if we miss it, where do they get the ball? And if they miss it, they still need a touchdown to win. It’s a long field goal. They can block it and score.Bad things can happen. We can punt the ball, play with our defense, which we think is really strong. We think we’ve got a great two-minute defense. We can also punt and milk the clock. Field goal is going to be three or four seconds. If that ball hits the ground and rolls like we wanted it to, the game may be over or closer to over and just felt like it was a safer play.”

Smart on if he was getting input from the booth about the clock…

“We’re always talking from the booth. We do that every time. That’s standard operating procedure, 100%. We knew once they had the review — they got us a little bit on the review because when they reviewed it, they had called timeout. They didn’t tell us they took the timeout away, so we had a mishap in that we went up there and snapped the ball thinking there had been a timeout so the clock would be stopped.

So Carson snapped the ball with 10 to 12 seconds that would have gone off the clock, which is a huge mistake. It just infuriates me that we did it. But it happened, and it was a little bit of a communication error because we assumed there was a timeout. Once they went to the review of the fumble, there was not a timeout and they were going to start the clock. Well, Carson wasn’t thinking the clock was going to start, therefore the game could have been over or closer to over, and that’s something I take a lot of pride in that we just screwed up.

But that has nothing – I mean, your question is, were we talking about it? Yeah, we were talking about it. If we got one more first, we would have been really close.”

Smart on four straight games without giving up a touchdown and why the defense has had that kind of success…

“Good red zone defense, staying away from explosives. I mean, look, football’s hard these days. Our defense takes a lot of pride in how they play. I think our defensive staff does an incredible job. They work really hard on game planning for people, and we’re going to play better and better offenses. We’ve got to get better and better, but it’s pretty hard to do. I mean, I don’t know if anybody in college football has been able to sustain that. It’s just hard.”

Kirby Smart on Branson Robinson getting the goal line carry on an eventual TD…

“Well, it was a rotation. I mean, Trevor was tired. Trevor had driven down there, and I don’t remember exactly the situation, but I think Trevor was gassed and we stuck Branson in there. He had a little juice, he made some people miss, and it was a really physical run that I was really proud of. I mean, Etienne played dinged up tonight, and just proud of the way he stuck it in there and played. And the other backs supported him because they can’t all be in there at the same time. 

This is a big win for our program. I’m proud of our university, and we’re going to keep chopping and get better. That’s the next step. Thanks.”