WATCH: Kirby Smart updates where Georgia is ahead of Clemson

Kickoff and punt return duties and the status of Warren Ericson…
“Warren Ericson is doing awesome. We’re fired up about Warren Ericson. He’s been able to practice for the last two weeks and he’s done an excellent job.

“As punt return and kick return, that is actually still to be determined. We didn’t get to go outside today and we were going to do some live kicks today to finalize that. Probably Kenny (McIntosh), Kearis (Jackson), Ladd (McConkey), those are the guys in the running, DK (Derion Kendrick), so those four guys primarily. (James) Cook has worked back there and Zamir (White). So it’ll be one of those guys. Kickoff return, it’ll be more of the backs. Punt, it’ll be more Ladd, Kearis, DK, or (Jermaine) Burton but really all those guys have been neck and neck. It would probably just be Kearis but to be honest, he hasn’t gone through everything this camp. He’s had some time where he wasn’t out there and he’s been out there for, I guess, the last two weeks. So we certainly feel very comfortable with him.”

On using more than two cornerbacks and having a rotation…
“We typically play the best corners. So we don’t rotate at corner unless we feel like, a, there’s a conditioning issue, b, there’s a matchup issue, but your best guy has got to be out there at all times. In all my years coaching, conditioning has never been a factor for corners unless maybe he’s coming off of injury or coming back from something where his stamina doesn’t allow him to play the whole game. We’ve had years where we rotated in where we thought guys were equal but it’ll all go game by game. What are the matchups? What is he good at? What are they good at? Those kinds of things.

On using more DBs because of Clemson’s spread and tempo…
“No, I mean the tempo doesn’t allow you to play any more guys. We’ll play typically like we always do. We’ll have four DBs on the field some, we’ll have five DBs on the field some, we’ll have six DBs on the field some and then we have packages with seven DBs. So we’ll carry the same packages that we’ve always carried. There’s no difference for us. We’re just not as deep but that doesn’t keep us from doing our package.”

On the DBs going up against Clemson’s big wide receivers. What is difficult about defending guys that size?
“That is definitely a strong group. They are big, they are physical. They do a very good job of going up and getting the ball. They’re really good 50-50 ball guys. We’ve seen a lot of them on tape. Justin obviously has been a great player for them for a long time and now he’s coming back. I know they’re excited to get him back. They are a matchup problem, but in some ways we’re bigger at corner then we’ve ever been too. We’ve got three guys that are 200 pounds rotating through there. We’ve had really fast, we’ve had really long guys. Uniquely, the three or four guys we’re playing now are all 200 pounders. Their guys are 210, 220. The thing that concerns you are 50-50 balls, blocking on the perimeter. That’s critical to be able to block on the perimeter. If you don’t go against guys that size, we put our guys up against tight ends to try to simulate what we think they’ll see in a game the size of those guys. Getting on and off blocks, it’s critical in every football game, but it’s really critical to this game because we know the spread element, the perimeter screens, the ball out quick. You’ve got to be able to tackle and get off blocks. Those big guys make that hard to do.”

On being asked on Marty & McGee about about what it would be like to win a national title at Georgia.
He said “It will be special and it’s coming. It’s a matter of time for our players.”
Why do you feel that it’s coming?
“Well, it has to be coming, right? If it’s not coming then what are we doing? I don’t look at it in perspective of when. I look at in the perspective of what’s important now, what are we doing now. I know the people in this organization, I know the administration, I know the people in this state, I know the people that love Georgia and the energy and enthusiasm they have, it’s always long overdue, right? I don’t care if you won one three years ago, it’s overdue. For me, that’s the end game, that’s the goal, that’s what you’re always trying to work towards. It doesn’t make it a successful season or a failure if you don’t. I just don’t look at things that way. I don’t let that control my thought process in my life. But I certainly pursue excellence and that’s what excellence is.”

Personnel decisions tougher because of this match-up?
 “Yeah, I feel like there’s decisions like that every week. You have young, talented players. And I’m not going to say your older players aren’t talented, that’s not fair, right, they wouldn’t be here if they weren’t talented. But you may have more talent in a spot, and you may have more experience in a spot, and you’re weighing those two options, of where does that experience of the lesser talented player vs. the talented and less experienced, where does that balance hit? And there’s some different scenarios on there, and it’s early in the season. We haven’t had a game. So we haven’t found out a lot. We tried to find out in the spring game, which we had a lot of mid-years play. We tried to find out in preseason camp in two scrimmages. But it’s hard to measure what this game is going to be like for a kid that hasn’t played. Maybe he was on the team last year, and I’m trying to think of an example, and he didn’t have a large role, and now his role has to increase. And then you have to weigh the option of the other guy. We have several situations like that. It might be on the offensive line, in some cases it’s that way in the secondary. Experience is just so valuable at some positions. I’m talking about the back end, I’m talking about the offensive line. Because one mistake on the back end, and it’s a touchdown. One mistake on the front line and you may have a sack-fumble and you may have a turnover. That’s not always the case at receiver. We chose to do that with Jermaine last year, and it helped us in the long run, but it probably hurt us some against Arkansas, some against Mississippi State. We’re forced to make those decisions, and they’re not always easy decisions. Sometimes they change in the middle of a game.”

How ready are you to play?
 “I’m pleased with the preparation. I’m ready to play a game. Our kids are ready to play a game. We need to play a game. We need to play a game to get better. I don’t know that we’re going to get better continuing to practice against each other, to walk through and to teach. There’s no more time for that. We have a couple more days where we certainly could prep these days, we got a lot we could improve on for that. But we need to go play. We’re not where we need to be. Number one, we’re not healthy to the point where need to be. But we also aren’t as good as we need to be. We’ve got some young, talented players that don’t have the experience. You know how they’re going to get it? They’re going to go play. And at this point we’ve got to go play. And I’m sure they’re no different. I’m sure nobody, with the exception of their defense, they’ve got everybody back, but they’ve got young guys that will have to go play.”

Having to play so much of the game on the perimeter, when did that happen?
“It evolved. For a long-time, you never even brought the DBs to what they call inside run. You let the linebackers and safeties, O-line, backs and tight ends have out while the corners and receivers went off and played one-on-one. They weren’t even a part of it. Slowly but surely, the RPOs, the perimeters, the plays that have two plays, sometimes even the plays that have three plays, the quarterback can run it, he can throw it or you can run a single back to the X. You have a play to the field, a play to the boundary and a play up the middle. You need everybody to defend it. It’s just very unique the way football has grown. It makes all offenses hard to defend. I can’t give a year on that. Every year, every offensive coordinator has gotten a new wrinkle.

Being home or away in a neutral-site game…
“It does not matter to us. It usually has something to do with the uniform color. I can’t even tell you who the home and away is. Claude may know that, but that’s not something I pay attention to. That’s how you get your uniform, sometimes it has something to do with who brings recruits. Some teams allow recruits to go to those neutral site games, where one year the home team might get it and the other team gets it the next. Sometimes it has something to do with the locker room. This is unique for us because I’ve never been to Charlotte for a game.”

On Dominick Blaylock…
“Dominick has done an incredible job in rehab. He’s worked really hard. It’s been a tough year for him when you think about what he’s been through. He fought all the way back, he re-tears the same ACL and now it’s over a year from the time he tore it. It’s been 12 months. He’s gaining confidence in it. Like today, ge was out there running routes. He actually went out with the scout team and did everything against the defense so we could get an even better look against a good wide out over there. He’s done everything, so you ask why can’t he go out there and play? It’s still gaining confidence for him. He’s getting his stamina back. It’s being able to get him a cumulative number of reps. He hasn’t been able to rep against our 1 or 2 offense because he hasn’t been ready. Now, he’s building confidence. I think he made a couple of plays out there today, good plays that really challenged the first and second defense. I can’t tell you when he’s going to be out there because I don’t know but he’s close.”

On what the energy is like in practice this week. Any increase or decrease?
“It’s been great. They need to play because it’s time to play. We don’t practice this game. We practice to play. There’s nobody that signed up for football and said, ‘Let’s go practice for life and never play a game.’ They want to go play a game. There’s no vibe or energy that says they’re tired of practice. The energy is ramped up with exposure to Clemson. They get excited about it, they hear about it. We’re trying to keep the reins on that and build that into a crescendo for the game and not have it in practice. Certainly they enjoy getting after it, they enjoy practice but they’re excited for a game and so am I.”

On Zamir White, James Cook and the running back room as a whole…
“I feel about our running back room like they probably feel about their defense. You’ve got all these guys back that have played a substantial amount of time. You’ve got James, Zamir and Kenny seems like he’s an old player now. Kendall got to play, Daijun too. There’s a lot of backs that have done a lot of good things. It’s not like you wish you had more of them. You wish you had more positions with the same experience that that position group has. It certainly would be the position in our team that has the most experience and confidence.”

On Jordan Davis’ improvement as a pass rusher, three down player…
“In roles, yes. He’s a three down player in certain roles. He’s elite at pocket push, elite power, one of the strongest kids I’ve ever been around. He helps you the way he’s able to run games and things because he’s just different. There’s nobody quite like him in terms of the volume and the reps. He has a third down role for us, yes, but his primary role is first and second down obviously. He’s worked really hard to improve his quickness. He knows that when he’s in there, there’s less run game between those A gaps, so it’s all about how can he affect the perimeter and cover down. That’s what we’ve tried to work really hard on.”

On “strain” as a key to this game and how you teach that…
“I definitely think that strain is important. I’ve stressed that. Will you be out-strained? It’s critical to any game. It measures somebody’s heart, courage and toughness to strain a little bit longer than the other guy. Are you going to hold your block a little bit longer? Are you going to fight a little bit harder? Everybody wants to win, but will you out-strain the guy across from you in a one on one battle, that’s what we’ve challenged our guys to do this week. Not just do it on Saturday, do it to where you can’t help but do it. It’s your habit every day in practice.”