What Was Said: Kirby Smart after Georgia victory Saturday night

STARKVILLE, Miss. — No. 1 Georgia defeated Mississippi State 45-19 on the road on Saturday night at Davis Wade Stadium to clinch the SEC East and its spot in the SEC Championship Game. After the game, Georgia head coach Kirby Smart spoke on his team’s effort in the victory. He didn’t want to look any further ahead than his what happened on the field Saturday night and Georgia’s matchup against Kentucky next Saturday. Here’s what Kirby Smart had to say.

Kirby Smart Opening Statement

 “I was really proud of this team. You go on the road, anytime in the SEC, you play in an environment like this one the road, it’s tremendous adversity and our guys responded. Again, again and again, we found ourselves in some tough situations. It shows to the commitment to the practice we have. This is a really good defense, guys, but we kept responding, we kept competing and made some big stops on defense. I thought fans, our crowd and our fan base came out and I’m really proud to see that many folks there. Our team keeps getting better, I think we’re ascending at this time and I was proud of the way they competed.”

Smart on getting the momentum back in the third quarter 

“Tremendous job offensively to get the ball in the second half. We thought that would define the second half, to take the crowd out of it if we could get some momentum back. 

We lost momentum in the first half at the end of it, but a tremendous job by Darnell Washington, just elite perimeter blocking. Ladd breaks one tackle, Rosemy has blocks downfield and Ladd outran them. It was just a great play call, a great design. It was a play that we put in this week for that look and it hit.”

Smart on Georgia’s offense being able to create 12-play scoring drives

“Well, it may seem that, but a couple times we went three-and-out that I certainly wanted to chew more clock up there, you know, after the big fourth-down stop. But we were kind of backed up, took it conservative, tried to eat some clock, punted the ball and punted it really well in that punt and just flipped the field position. But they’ve been consistent. Look, look, Stetson understands our offense, and he put us in some really good situations. He made some really good throws. He did have a couple picks, a couple poor decisions he got away with that weren’t [picks]. But he made some good throws. The protection needs to be changed, and he got the ball to Ladd, which was really elite down there — the throw to Ladd on the 1 was big. But we’re doing some good things offensively — we’ve just got to be more consistent.”

Kirby Smart on what happened at the end of the first half

“Bad. Bad. It’s as bad as it’s been. We discussed it before we went out there: we were going to throw a screen on first down, which is a chance to get it going. You know, you hit Ladd right there, you get it going. The clock’s running, and the decision there once we hit Ladd, we thought, ‘OK, we’re going to go two minute and try to get it going.’ Then he threw it incomplete. And then the decision was to run the ball. We called a run, but it has an option of throwing it. And that goes back to, you know, maybe us reigning it in some, not putting so much on Stetson. It was a quarterback with the option to throw it. And then once we threw it, now we’ve got problems. We’ve got to punt. They only had one timeout, so we had three timeouts. Usually you want to play that aggressive and use that, and it backfired on us. We also protected on the punt and they rush it, and we didn’t have but one gunner in. So, once they got out, we didn’t have enough speed on the field to get him down. It was a very, very poor job of managing the before-the-half situation. It was as bad as I’ve ever been a part of.”

Smart on anything specific he said at halftime to spark Ladd or Stetson

“I just told them I was disappointed in the way that we had handled some things, that we had really played well defensively and give up one play and we needed a spark. You know, it was the first time we were going to have the ball starting out the second half it seemed like in forever, and we needed to go out and make a statement. The first run went 4-5 yards. I thought we mashed them. And then the next play we hit the big one, and that kind of got our energy back where it needed to go.”

Smart on winning the SEC East 

“We didn’t really talk about it in the locker room. That’s wasn’t our goal, our intention in coming over here. We came over here to beat Mississippi State and we’re going to go and try and beat Kentucky next week. Those are things that come from it and we acknowledge that, it’s one step at a time. You can’t get ahead of yourself in this leage. You look across this league and playing on the road, it’s difficult and hard. This is a tough place to play. And really it’s a tough offense to play. For the third week, we’ve had no overlap in our calls. We’ve had Florida, Tennessee and Mississippi State. I don’t want to minimize what our team is doing right now in terms of commitment to practice and toughness and doing things the right way. I’m really proud of them. I think people take it for granted sometimes. It’s hard to do what they’ve been doing.” 

Kirby Smart on what he means about no overlap between opposing offenses

“Yeah the calls don’t overlap. One is a traditional NFL type offense. Then you got a wide split, spread-out and then you’ve got an Air Raid. They’re nothing alike. There’s no overlap whatsoever. We had seven or eight calls we don’t use all year. What’s happening with young players is it’s like starting over on Monday. We’ll go back this Monday and go back to a little more traditional, we’re playing our offense, we’re playing Florida because  Kentucky is a little more traditional. But it’s harder when you do that in season. It’s like playing a triple-option team in the middle of the year. But we knew that, we knew that at the start of the season. We worked on it, practiced it off week. I thought (Glenn) Schumann and his staff man, they did a great job on defense getting some critical fourth down stops.”

Smart on Georgia’s issues running the ball

“Mississippi State is good, they’re physical. I don’t know, you guys know their stats. They may be ranked like last in the SEC in rush defense. I don’t know. But I know this, they’ve got some big grown men that have started for two years up there. They’re physical, they come off the rock, they knock you back. I caught some of the Auburn game last week, and I’m like, ‘Well Auburn ran it pretty good on them.’ Well, maybe they weren’t playing the same way against Auburn as they were playing against us. I can tell you this: we’re going to get everybody’s best shot. I know how hard, I am so impressed with our ability to run the ball against them because of what they were doing defensively. We knew it all week guys. They’ve got some guys up there that are going to play on Sundays, and they scratch off and come off. Go look across the league. Who’s running it really really good? It’s hard.”

Smart on Kearis Jackson’s big plays

“Value, he’s a guy that’s been there, done that. That catch he made over the middle, to take that shot and hang onto the ball, are you kidding me? I was just waiting for the ball to come out. I’m like, ‘Dang, he held onto it.’ Then he made a circus catch over there on the sideline. Kearis is a veteran man. The guy is full of heart and full of love for Georgia. He’s an unsung hero of this group.”

Kirby Smart on winning a game like this, without best stuff, by 26 points

“It says we are one week away from playing Kentucky and humility is a week away.”

Smart on team’s ability to respond and turn on jets because of talent or something internal

“I don’t know that. I don’t know the answer to why. I do know that they have a unique connection for each other, a love for each other, an appreciation of things getting tough. We anticipated things being tough here so how do you anticipate things being tough? You take your DNA traits and you say they travel. They’re going with us and we’re going to use them when we need them. Because if you just lift a 50-pound bar all your life, you’re never going to get stronger, right? You’ve got to lift heavy weight. We lifted some heavy weight tonight in terms of our DNA, our composure, our resiliency, our toughness, and we were ready to use them. Because we practice them all year and it’s like, okay, here’s our opportunity guys. What do we want to do with it? 

“And I don’t think you can go into the game, ‘Oh no. We’re on the road. We’re coming off the Tennessee game.’ Don’t nobody care. Nobody cares.The only thing we care about is how we go practice and how we go play. And right now, our kids are buying into that. They’re buying into practice matters, coach. Walkthrough matters and I appreciate our kids and how tough they are.”

Smart on paying any attention now on LSU in SEC Championship

“You know what the answer to that question is. We’ve gotta focus on Kentucky. Why would anybody think that we’re going to talk or even think about them (LSU). We have two games to play, right? That’s the furtherest thing from my thought process. All I can think about is how fast I can get on that plane to get rest so I can ready for Kentucky tomorrow because they were done at 12. They played at 12 today. They played at home at 12.”

Kirby Smart on the longest runs this season coming from Ladd McConkey, Brock Bowers, and Stetson Bennett

“It’s awesome. It’s great. It’s perimeter blocking, you know. It’s not like they did it on their own. Brock’s run was off of Darnell. I guess it was against Kent State. Ladd’s run was off of Darnell. Then Stetson’s against Auburn on the quarterback draw where we split’em. It usually doesn’t happen without the help of someone else. They are just the ones who get the credit.”

Smart on how much Stetson Bennett’s experience helps the offense

“It’s huge. The same way Will Rogers’. We’re out there doing things a bunch of quarterbacks don’t see. He sees it. Stetson, he sees it, man. There’s a play on third-and-2 and we go fastball and it’s a designed run, and I’m like Ooh, it’s 2, it’s gonna be tough to get this 2, it’s gonna be a long 2, it’s gonna be fast. Boom he spits it out to Marcus Rosemy. I think three plays later or something, four plays later, we go down and score. That play was big. Roughing the kicker was big, on both plays, us and them. We both had one that was just straight stupid. It cost them more than it cost us. We got a stop.” 

Smart on if Jackson Meeks hit the MSU punter

“I don’t know. I mean it’s a plant foot. Obviously the official had a better view of it than I did.”

Kirby Smart on what happened to Javon Bullard

“He said his knee hurt on the tackle, then he came in and played after that. But then towards the end he told Will he couldn’t go. So I don’t know if it was the knee or if it was something else.”

Smart on how much did Jalen Carter help

“That dude is special. That one play he made, he beat the guard so fast, he was in the backfield so quick. Their splits are huge, I’d hate to be a guard on an island blocking him like that. They split three yards out both ways, and it’s like you’ve got to block 88 man, that’s some hard stuff. He’s made us chance to go like go where we need to go on defense. He’s healthy, he’s playing, he’s taking the burden off those other guys.”

Smart on how big Georgia’s defensive stands were, including the one led by Kamari Lassiter

“That was a great call by Schu. I mean that was a great call. He threw that to be a man meter, we weren’t in man. It was one hell of a disguise and plan to do that. On fourth and one or whatever it was, nobody plays the defense we played. We played to try to cat and mouse game. It worked out.”

Kirby Smart on staying patient against the Mississippi State offense

“It’s hard. They nickel and dime you. It’s like we talked all week about no run after the catch, punch the ball out, I don’t think we got the ball out any. We couldn’t get it out. But in exchange for the non-turnovers the fourth downs ended up like  our turnovers.”