What Was Said: Kirby Smart after shutout victory over Samford

Georgia head coach Kirby Smart spoke to the media after the Bulldogs’ 33-0 win on Saturday over Samford. The first half saw his team score on six straight drives. The second half saw a lot less efficiency on that side of the ball. And both halves, the defense shut out the opponent. Overall, a lot to be happy about but also plenty for Smart to still want to see. Here’s what he said in his postgame press conference.

Kirby Smart Opening Statement

“I just want to say thoughts and prayers going out for Claude. He’s watching I think his daughter in-law getting married or his niece getting married. He couldn’t be with us and this is the first time Claude couldn’t be with us for a long, long time. Claude’s not here but family comes first.

I want to thank our fans for the great job they did. I was a little worried about the weather. I thought we might not have great turnout because of the weather. They came and they were loud. That always makes for a special feeling for our players which I think is important for them to feel good about that.

A lot of respect for Hatch and the job he’s done in terms of coaching at Samford. Their kids played really hard. A lot of respect for those guys. They were outmanned and outmatched today and they played really hard and physical today. They did the best job they could. We’ve got to play better. We didn’t play our best game. We know that. Our kids acknowledge that. We start the SEC gauntlet next week.”

Smart on red zone 4 field goals in 7 trips

“Any time you get in the red zone for us, it’s a priority for the offense and defense to be elite in the red zone We talked all offseason about our defense. Last year it was pretty good in the red zone. The offense didn’t score the touchdowns they needed to. They did that the first game and we didn’t today. We have to go back and watch the tape. We have to get better at that. We can’t get end games just kicking field goals.”

On AD Mitchell, injury update

“He looks OK. We thought he could have gone back in. But we held him at that point with an ankle.”

Kirby Smart on defense communicating better

“Hard to say. I don’t know if you can get a great evaluation. They were outmanned up front. Had to get rid of the ball quick. They don’t have the dynamic guys that we play against on the perimeter. They had to get the ball out quick so it’s hard to evaluate. They tried to slow down once we got ahead and as you saw they just ran the clock. It wasn’t as a great evaluation for us. We had a lot of three and outs and when you have a lot of three and outs so when you get three and outs it’ hard to sustain drives.”

Smart on two-minute drill before halftime

“It’s great. Especially when you capitalize on it. We were able to get the ball back and we got a shot at the end zone where we might could have gotten it if we had executed one play better, we might have a shot at a field goal. …We kind of wasted a play for us and lost some time.”

On his impression for Dillon Bell, Jackson Meeks

“I those guys who have done a good job in practice continue to improve, but hopefully we can get some more depth and guys who can go play for us.” 

Kirby Smart on the power run game today, if there was more of it

“I don’t know what you mean by power run game? … He (Milton) ran the ball a few more times today than he did in the past, but power to me is when a guy pulls. We had some pull plays, we had some zone plays, we had some inside-out plays … we ran a couple of gap-scheme plays.  

We didn’t hit any real explosive runs. You can’t expect every run to be a home run, but when you’re hitting for four, five, 10, six, seven, is plenty good. But you can’t shoot yourself in the foot.” 

Smart on Mykel Williams sack 

“I was proud of Mykel. He does a good job. Mykel works really hard … he’s a kid that just works. You look out there on Sunday and he’s out there hitting a sled, running. It pays off like it did today. It was good to get out there and get after the quarterback. They weren’t going to let us rush their quarterback; they’re trying to keep their quarterback healthy for the rest of the season, so the ball is coming out really quick. That can be frustrating for a defense. 

But when you get three and outs, you tackle people in space, that certainly helps out get off the field.”

On an emphasis being put on three and outs? 

“It’s an emphasis every game. We weren’t playing Oregon today, we were playing Samford. You want to get off the field as fast as possible and get the ball back.  We executed well, but they were out-manned.” 

Kirby Smart on the 12-minute fourth quarter

“We didn’t really talk about it. He reached out to one of our staff members and one of our staff members got to him. He asked about it. I’ve got respect for Chris (Hatcher), and I wanted to be fair to his players. But that conversation, that stays between me and Hatch.” 

Smart on nothing being made of the championship

“I have not had one conversation with anybody about that. I don’t know what the expectation should be. I am so thrilled about last year, but I’m so into this year … Nobody said, ‘Oh, coach Smart, do you not want anything?’ It’s not my decision to say we don’t want anything. I haven’t even thought about it. Like, we’re worried about South Carolina now. But today, we’re worried about Samford. It’s not really fair for this team to celebrate that because this team didn’t do that. Last year’s team did that.”

On if he came into the game not wanting to play starters in the second half

“Going into the game did I want to only play the starters a half? No, absolutely not. I mean, we need conditioning. The only thing we need is to play. I mean, I would love to play 15 minutes. I’m respecting my opponent and his wishes also, but we need to play football. Now, granted, you know, we’ve got some guys who have played a lot of football, and I didn’t go into the game thinking they’d play a half. I mean, I didn’t know how long they’d have to play. They’re going to play until we were comfortable in a lead to put the other guys in. We have a set of players that play regardless of the score, and then we talk about with headphones who plays as we score, as we build a lead. I just was disappointed altogether with, you know, execution would probably be the right word on offense. It just wasn’t crisp as it should be.”

Kirby Smart on if he felt the game wasn’t crisp because of the second half

“Oh, both. Both. I mean, the red zone stops. You know, we cash in two red zones, we’re probably sitting here feeling pretty good about our 1 offense, right, because we’d scored, you know, maybe one field goal and now we’re 7 plus 5, I don’t know how many drives. We had six. Maybe we’re 12 out of 13 touchdowns and you had one field goal. That doesn’t bother you. But when you don’t get it multiple times in the first half and then the second half you come out and you don’t get and then you put Carson [Beck] in and he didn’t cash in on a chance in that area, it’s something you’ve got to be working on. And I’ll guarantee you it’s easily fixable, but a lot of it comes down to execution.”

Smart on 11 players catching passes in the first half, what that says about offense

“You know, I don’t know it’s [inaudible] — it’s not gaining depth. We have a good system that allows us to put people in places to say, ‘Is he a give-the-ball-to guy?’ ‘Cause you better know who those guys are when you play elite opponents. Some teams will take those get-the-ball plays away from you. Then you get narrowed down who to touch the ball. And ultimately football comes down to who can win one-on-one, and we’ve got to figure that out. Fortunately, we played a couple teams, right now, that we’re better than and we can get the ball to anybody. You know, it’s not going to always be that way. That’s what we’ve really worked hard on during the week of practice is finding out, when it’s good on good, who the best player is. What I call good on good is our defense against our offense.”

On not allowing a TD on defense, what is biggest conern with where defense is right now

“How they’re gonna respond when it gets tough. How they’re going to respond when it gets thick, when it gets physical, when it gets fast, when they get tired, when they give up a touchdown. My biggest concern is what is the response mechanism, and what are they wired with.”

Kirby Smart on how he felt about the energy level coming into the game

“Great. Really good energy. Was fired up. I didn’t think it was real good coming out of halftime. But I think playing at home helped with that, almost got a little kick and a little juice because it wasn’t running. (It was like): Oh I expected it to be one way and it wasn’t, and I thought we had really good energy in warmups, really good atmosphere in the stands. We started fast, we just didn’t score touchdowns.”

Smart on Dillon Bell getting first TD to establish himself

“I don’t think it was about a touchdown. He’s got to go out there and play. AD being out allowed him to play a little more, and Jackson (Meeks) to play a little more. He gave us a little more confidence. De’Nylon is a guy who’s had a really good week of practice, but he didn’t get all that stuff in camp that Dillon got. So we need those two guys, and CJ, to grow up, we need Arian back. There’s guys there we’ve got to get to be able to stretch the field vertically to have a complete offense.”

On when Arian Smith could come back?

“Don’t know. Don’t know.”

Kirby Smart on what he was saying to Stetson Bennett after the Hail Mary

“Just that he did a good job of getting the ball off. That play is designed to take awhile, right. The escape route is usually in the pocket, and he went out to try to outrun everybody, and where that’s the offensive line is trying to block them to. We don’t get to work that play live a lot. So I was trying to get him some more. He did what he had to do, he got the ball to the spot, to try to take a chance to make a play. But he did it the hard way.”

Smart on Stetson Bennett’s arm strength

“Yeah, Stetson’s never lacked arm strength. He has a good arm. He’s got plenty of arm talent.”

On Kamari Lassiter’s play

“I have to reserve judgement until I watch the tape. Nothing sticks out to me. He practices really well. He’s extremely physical, smart, I love the way he competes. But I’ll have to watch the tape to see.”

Kirby Smart on looking ahead to South Carolina

“Well they’ve got tremendous athletes. The quarterback we looked hard at both him and their offense in the offseason, studied those guys. They’ve got a tremendous team and they’ve got a tremendous atmosphere. And this kid is really believing and buying in to Shane and their staff. And they’ll be a tough opponent. They’ve gone out and played on the road in the SEC already. And we’ve got to go on the road to play in the SEC. And we really haven’t played that type of game in the SEC yet to see what our team is all about.”

Smart on if Stetson Bennett is trusting his feet more

“I don’t know. He’s not trusting his feet to me because there’s several times he could have run, he could have taken off. He’s always been mobile. The third down sack that took us out of field goal range – I probably shouldn’t have kicked a field goal – you can’t take that sack. You can’t do that. You’ve got to throw that ball or away or just run it and ensure that we get three whatever yardage you get. The decisions to run it probably have been less for him, and he’s made some throws. You know, he made the throw to Ladd across the field on the run. He made a nice throw. Those are things that we can always second guess, and it’s easy for me to second guess. He’s got to be the guy out there playing quarterback, but we’ve got to protect the ball and make good decisions.”

On how the offensive line has handled the rotation

“I think that’s a little overrated. Who’s beside you? What does that really matter? You’re doing your job. He’s doing his job. It’s not like they speak a different language. The pieces, they practice all week that way. I think it gives us more stamina, more depth, more ability to go fast. But at the end of the day, there better not be much difference in the guys if you’re going to play them all. You better play the best ones when it matters most.”

Kirby Smart on there being so many true freshmen on the field late

“It’s great, but I’ll be honest with you, I hope they don’t have to play because that means somebody else can’t play. We want to get them better, we want to grow and develop them. It’s a great opportunity for them. What they usually realize is that they’re not ready. When you turn the tape on, they usually watch it and can’t believe that they did what they did. There’s a certain number of snaps that every freshman has to take before they can execute at a high level. We’re just trying to speed that process up.”

Smart on Darnell Washington, his love for physical football and he’s first couple of games

“I’ve seen through camp an extremely physical blocker. Now, he hasn’t really gotten to display that much. He got to display that a little more today, but he hasn’t really gotten to showcase that talent. He’s a really good, physical blocker and a really big target. He’s practiced really well. He’s done a good job. I continue to say, offensively we’ve got to be in great shape, we’ve got to be in conditioning shape because we’ve got to be able to play with tempo and do things. Darnell has done everything we’ve asked him to do. He’s practiced really hard, he’s played really hard, he’s maintained his weight at the right level, and he’s getting rewarded for it by getting some catches, some touches, and also being really physical.”

On Tykee Smith, what he’s seen in his return and how close Nyland Green was to being able to play

“He’s gaining more confidence. He hit some higher speed this week and we played him more. He got an opportunity to play a little more. He’s growing and getting better. He’s got to get confidence too. His confidence in his knee, his confidence in our system.

And then Nyland, I don’t know how far away he is. He didn’t dress. He wasn’t able to go or workout.”