What Was Said: Kirby Smart after Georgia win over Florida

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Georgia defeated Florida 42-20 on Saturday, a win where the Bulldogs were dominant in the first half and got by in the second despite an early run from the Gators aided by a pair of turnovers. After the game, Georgia head coach Kirby Smart spoke with the media and shared his thoughts on the win.

Kirby Smart Opening Statement

“Just open with what a great environment, great game. To the Dooleys back home in Athens, I know they’re together. It meant a lot for us to win that game for them and for all that Vince has meant to our university as such an ambassador to our program and really for all of college football. So I know if he was looking down on that one he would have enjoyed the first half. I don’t know if he would have enjoyed the second one. He and Erk probably had a laugh together about it. He’s meant so much to us. In honor of him and their family, it was special. It was a tough time for that to happen. Our fans were awesome here. The environment was good. We lost momentum in the second half. We faced resiliency, stared it in the eye and we didn’t blink. I’m really proud of our players. There was a time there when we lost momentum. That’s happened to us more this year than it did last year. We bounced back. I was really proud of the players.”

Smart on the response of his team after a couple of turnovers when it’s 28-20

“That was probably the drive of the year so far, right? They answered the bell. It was 28-20. We’ve lost momentum. We’ve had three kickoff returns that it felt like in a row. We weren’t getting field position. Kenny had that fumble. I thought Kenny McIntosh showed a little something tonight now. When he came out after that fumble. He had that eye of the tiger and he wanted the ball. He was running the ball hard and physical and getting yards after contact. That’s a lot of credit to the offensive line and a lot of credit to Kenny as well. That drive that you’re referencing was big for us.”

Smart on what he said to Kenny McIntosh after the touchdown

“I told him he’s a bad MFer. He’s tough, he’s physical. He gets after it and he responded. That’s what I talk about. You’ve got an opportunity to show resiliency—one of our four DNA characteristics. I promise you every NFL scout and every Georgia fan watching will remember the way he responded. He ran the ball with just a vicious attitude. A contact seeking running back.

Kirby Smart on Jalen Carter’s play

“I couldn’t tell how he looked. I was trying to watch the back end and make sure our adjustments were there. We’ll watch the tape and evaluate. It was great that he fought himself to get back. He rehabbed himself to get back. He wanted to play. He loves this team. It’s important to him. In a day and age where some kids don’t care about the team. He cares about the team. He wanted to play. He took on the role we wanted him to take on and hopefully he continues to get healthy. Look, we need him. We’re missing some guys in depth on the front. As we play more snaps, we struggle and it showed in the second half there.”

Smart on Nolan Smith’s injury

“I’m not even sure what it is. I want to say it was a separated shoulder. I don’t know how severe it is. We’ll find out. I know that Chaz (Chambliss) came in and did a really good job. Beefy (Robert Beal) did a good job and filled in for him. Marvin (Jones Jr.) had the flu so we couldn’t get Marvin in there. We had several guys who were sick coming into the game.”

Smart on the confidence that comes from a win like this over a rival

“Any win. Any win exudes confidence. You guys criticize the wins. I’m great with the wins. In the SEC, when you beat Florida, any win. They’re hard to come by. They’re tough. They’re physical. They’re hard fought. I’m proud of the way our guys played.”

Kirby Smart on where he was when he found out Vince Dooley had passed

“You know, we had just landed in Jacksonville. So we took off an wasn’t aware of anything then the phones started dinging and the text messages started coming through and Derek (Dooley), his son who I worked on staff with sent me a text. Claude (Felton) sent me a text. So we knew that it was kind of eminent and I had got to visit with him last week a little last week and sat down. He was in the training room and we got to talk for a little while and of course I didn’t know that would be the last time. That’s probably my fondest memory because even then he was telling stories about Georgia football. He’s been around my family. He’s been in the box during these SEC championships and National Championships and my kids have gotten to be around him. It’s funny because my kids had no idea. Who’s the old coach? Who’s the old guy, you know? Now they know. They know the history and what all he stood for and what his family did for this university. I’ve got a lot of respect for him.”

Smart on his relationship with Vince Dooley as a player at Georgia

“Probably more interaction, he was the AD and he would come in and speak to us once a year. I was close to Mike (Bobo) and Mike is married into his family there with the Meshads. So I’ve always been around him and I remember him talking at an LSU football clinic when I was coach there. He was the keynote guest speaker and they had him come in. Just an incredible job, someone so wise and classy and he’s really a person of the arts. You don’t find that in our profession and it’s really cool and unique just who he is and how he’s treated everybody. What’s cool to me is I see all the social media, there’s not one person I look at on social media from Twitter to Facebook that doesn’t have a picture with him. And they all post the picture with him. And it’s there memory of him. He touched every life in the state and just did so much for our program.”

Smart on the run of dominance Georgia has had winning five out of the last six in the Florida series

“Well, it’s hard to win any series in the SEC you know, especially when you’re talking about a top program in the country. I mean, you know, I don’t look at it as runs — I look at it as each individual year, you know? I mean, I still think we should have won the year we lost here. That’s the game that probably haunts me the most is that we didn’t play worth a crap two years ago here, and if you wonder why and you worry about each individual year. You don’t worry about runs, and Billy’s going to do a great job. He already is because he’s recruiting hard, and those guys didn’t stop. They didn’t quit fighting now. They came out the second half and answered the bell.”

Kirby Smart on this year’s team and if this journey has a different feeling

“They’re all different. I mean, they really are all different. I mean, this team is so different than last year’s. This team continues to work hard and get better, you know? Stetson’s playing good. He had some moments tonight, but he also did some really, really good things in that game that maybe the normal eye doesn’t see. And if we could take away the couple decisions, he played really well, and it allows us to score because we’re probably not what we were defensively last year. But we play as a team, we play complimentary football, and that’s important you know. But we have to keep getting better — like, we’re not there. And people want to put us there, but we’re not there.”

Smart onn his reaction to the Brock Bowers TD catch

“I immediately thought it was karma for the other one — the one to Darnell. It was just like, we didn’t get the Darnell one, but we got that one and it bounced back our way.”

Smart on gaining momentum in a stadium with a 50-50 split

“It’s hard. You start losing it, and you start thinking, ‘What can we do?’ You know, you’re looking, you’re searching. That’s where as coaches we’ve got to do a great job with our players. You know, we’ve got a young true freshman that doesn’t get over the top in Cover 2 and gives up a huge play — I mean, just a momentum play. And, hey, guess what? He’s got to go back out there and play. He’s going to have to go play. As a coach, you can’t lose them because I’ve seen them get that look in their eye. He bounced back, made some good plays for us and is going to be a good player.”

Kirby Smart on what went wrong on that 78-yard TD for Florida

“We just didn’t play it right.”

Smart on seeing the best come out in players after a mistake

“I don’t enjoy losing the momentum in a game. I enjoy the fact that we never blinked, and the kids were saying the right things on the sideline. You know, there’s two things when adversity hits: You fracture, or you connect. And our team connected. They reached out to each other, and they helped each other.”

Smart on concerns about how the Tennessee offense will attack through the air

“Well, I mean, is it a concern? They run the ball really well, guys. I know you don’t believe me, but they run the ball really well — which is why they throw the ball outside because everybody’s got people inside. They have a perfect storm: they’ve got really fast, elite wideouts, a quarterback with a really strong arm. You know, if they have a quarterback that couldn’t throw it, you’d say, ‘Well, they’re one-dimensional.’ But they have kind of a perfect storm going for his offense, and when he has that it’s really, really, really hard to stop. They go at an elite pace, and they do a tremendous job.”

Kirby Smart on how much they affected Anthony Richardson

“I thought we did a good job affecting him. He’s hard to tackle. You can’t finish on him. There’s really no way to simulate it. We tried to do drills all week where we were tackling a big back that’s like the quarterback. When he gets up next to you, he’s a big man. He’s a hell of a football player. I think he’s gotten a lot better.” 

Smart on whether he enjoys playing this game in Jacksonville

“I enjoy all games. I do. That’s why I coach, you know what I mean? It’s not about where it is, who it is, nothing about that. It’s about rivalries, about the SEC, it’s the pageantry, it’s the emotion back and forth. It’s incredible.” 

Smart on how he’s seen Brock Bowers get better this year with a career high in yards today

“Yeah, I think he, he gets opportunities, right? He got touches, he got opportunities, he made the most of them. He makes a lot of contested catches. That catch on fourth down, I don’t think that was going to be a first down. I think it was going to be fourth and two and we’ve still got to convert. Well, it didn’t matter. He went and got the ball. He makes a lot of plays on the ball. He is the ultimate competitive excellence guy. Hartley talks about it all the time. Competitive excellence is when it’s 50-50 or when you’ve got to go make a play, can you make it? We’ve seen him do it over and over again. “

Kirby Smart on giving it to Kenny McIntosh between the tackles

“Y’all kill me with this between the tackles thing. There’s no run that says between the tackles. There’s an inside zone, there’s an outside zone, there’s counter, and there’s all these different plays. They hit different places based on what the defense does. Kenny ran the ball really, really hard and did a good job. We ran it between the tackles against Auburn. We ran it in between the tackles against other people. Sometimes we move them, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes they slant, sometimes they don’t. I thought when he came back after the fumble, he came back with a vengeance. You watch the way he ran the ball, it was like, that dude’s running possessed. He wanted it. It reminded me of Nick and Sony the championship game against Oklahoma where he was like, oh man, give me the ball back coach, I messed it up. He ran pissed off. That’s what Kenny did.”

Smart on the offensive line depth

“Yeah, we were getting dinged up. Warren’s shoulder was messing with him. Truss had a toe. He still played, he played on field goal, PAT. I don’t know how severe that is. Mims’ knee, but I think he’s going to be fine. It’s a slight MCL, not like Jalen’s. Again, you don’t know the answer to these things until tomorrow or further.”

Kirby Smart on Jalen Carter feeling comfortable

“He felt like he was. He told us he felt good in warmups. We tried not to put him in a pounding situation but they pound all the time. It was third down and we knew there was a threat they would run it. I got to watch the tape because I don’t know if he made any plays but his snap volume was huge for Naz and Zion on first and second down.”

Smart on first-half run defense

“It was awesome but it was just as bad in the second half. I thought we tackled poorly. At the half, I don’t know defensively if we had played better in a half than we did that half. Then the drive in the second half, the first one, I don’t know… we’ve never played that bad. It just snowballed on us.”

Smart on Daijun Edwards

“Tough, he’s a patient runner. He eats yards after contact. That run that he broke out of there I think was really big for us that took it from eight to 15. That was a huge run. He was really patient. I don’t know if those guys can see him behind him because he’s so little.”

Kirby Smart on how to simulate Tennessee’s pace in practice next week

“Good question. That’s will be an age-old question. I think every defensive coordinator across college football is trying to figure that out. We’re all searching. There’s no way. Let’s be honest, you can two-huddle, three-huddle, shotgun huddle, go against air but they do it and they do it really well. It’s really hard to defend.”