What Was Said: Kirby Smart assesses Georgia at halfway point of preseason

ATHENS, Ga. — Fall camp continues on in The Classic City, at least for a few more days in the mind of Kirby Smart. Georgia players might be moved out of the team hotel that they’ve called home the past few weeks and they’ll head to class for the start of a new semester on Wednesday, but Saturday’s second scrimmage is incredibly important. That’s especially true after a less-than-stellar one last week.

Smart spoke with reporters on Tuesday to address the big week that’s ahead for the Bulldogs, recapping what he’s seen from his team so far too. DawgsHQ was on hand and has a full transcript provided for you below…

Video is also available – both from Smart and the two Georgia players (Oscar Delp and Jalon Walker) that spoke – on the DawgsHQ YouTube channel!

Smart’s Opening Statement

“We’re in the process of going through camp, obviously. I don’t look at camp as ending until Saturday’s scrimmage. We get through scrimmage two, I would consider that the close of camp. Unfortunately, our academic calendar doesn’t match up perfectly with what we’ve got going on. School will start for the players tomorrow. They’re getting their books, they’re back to being student-athletes. It’s hard to do that in camp early on. We get that for a lot more time up until tomorrow. It makes it a little bit tighter schedule for us.

Progress has been good. I would say that the first scrimmage wasn’t completely up to the standard of our expectations. We did not have a lot of enthusiasm, didn’t play until the level that I think we need to play to. But the good news is they’ve got another chance this Saturday and really every day to go out to practice. I have been pleased with like all the details that go into the leadership in terms of like showing a younger player how to do it. Guys are coaching guys, guys are on time. We must have 6,000 checks and balances in the last two weeks of what time you’ve got to be somewhere. Guys have been great about that, which says a lot about them as people.

We’ve got a long way to go as a football team. We are nowhere near or even close to where we need to be. I feel like we have less depth than we’ve ever heard. That’s kind of a common theme talking to other coaches I talk to. I call it the deterioration of football because every year we’ve been here, I feel like we’ve had more players capable of going in and playing winning football. Every year that goes down. We’ve got to keep working to increase that number.”

Smart on if injuries are a byproduct of football and if there is anything that can be done to limit them…

“That’s the unanswerable question. How do you play football, practice football, without getting injured? The guy that figures that out is going to be worth a lot of money. You can’t do that. You have to be smart, you have to be calculated, you have to know your positions. Injuries are a part of football year-round. It’s not like this time of year. We don’t really do anything different this time of year than we do in spring. We don’t do anything really different this time of year than we do in November or December. Injuries are a part of football. We’ve been lucky so far. We haven’t had significant injuries, but we have a lot of guys that are soft-tissue, beat up, banged up. We’re trying to get them back.”

Smart on Jared Wilson and Chaz Chambliss’ injuries…

“Jared’s doing well. He’s been dealing with Achilles tendinitis. He’s been great. He’s worked on the side. He’s been able to push, was able to do some things yesterday. He continues to ramp up his exposure and ramp up his reps. He’s doing well. Chaz is dealing with a soft-tissue hamstring he’s dealt with before. He’s been able to do some things too. He did more yesterday and will do more today. Both are dealing with some nagging injuries.”

Smart on if lack of depth is due to the transfer portal and if it’s easier for freshmen to help from a depth standpoint now…

“Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s the transfer portal or the deterioration of football. It could be less people playing. High schools not having as much of an opportunity to develop kids because their practice regimen and practice schedule is tougher. It’s a trickle-up effect, so we get the guys coming from the high school level. We have the same number of players, so you can’t blame the transfer portal for that. I think you lose some continuity in terms of guys that have been in the program multiple years. Therefore, your next statement of making it easier for a younger player to play, I don’t know that it’s any easier because he’s up against guys that come out of the portal. But we have less guys that know and execute our system. We’re not even really considered a portal team. I don’t know how many we’ve averaged over the last four years. I can’t imagine it’s even double-digits. We don’t have many guys coming from that. It’s not as much quality depth that I’m used to, but we probably have more than a lot of people.”

Smart on Jordan Hall’s injury status…

“Jordan was coming back, starting to run from his stress fracture in his tibia. He is now dealing with the exact same thing in the other leg. The other leg had the same thing, it was strange for it to occur but he didn’t acknowledge it until he started running to get back from the first one. We had to fix the other one. He’s on a good timeline, it’s not a long term deal, and now he knows what to expect because he’s had it done to the left and the right. He had the other one fixed. He’s going to be back. We don’t know the exact timeline for that but he’s been in good spirits. Just glad they found it when they did.”

Smart on how the offense and defense are coming along…

“I’ve seen both sides of it. One day it’s one way, the next it’s the other way. There’s not been a dominant side of the ball. There’s been explosives, and then there’s not been explosives. A little bit of that is predicated off of eye control, execution, depth, who’s in practice, who’s out of practice. At the end of the day, both units have had glaring moments of success and moments of not success. There was a consecutive four play stretch from the offense where they had four explosives in a row Saturday, but there were some stretches when they didn’t. It’s like every year, I can’t sit here and tell you one side has been explosive and the other side has given them all up. It’s a balance.”

Smart on more explosive runs in recent years…

“I would’ve thought before you said that we’ve had less explosive running than we’ve had in the past, but maybe that’s just when you start looking at the big numbers. We do have a lot of 10-12 yard runs but we haven’t had the home runs, the long runs we’ve historically had which is like another category of explosive. It’s something that we pride ourselves on, and to be honest with you, explosive passes happen off play action, so you’re not going to be an explosive passing team off play action if you can’t run the ball. The balance of those two is really critical. We’ve been more explosive passing the ball in the last two years than previous years. A lot of that has to do with skill players, it has to do with quarterbacks, it has to do with how the coordinators call the game. But we certainly need to be explosive in both. I think we’ve got the backs to be an explosive run team, we’ve got the perimeter blockers to be an explosive run team and we’ve got the offensive line to be an explosive run team. I hope that we’re more capable of longer explosives so that when we get through to 10-12, we can turn those into 40-50 and not 20-30 yard plays.”

Smart on if he expects more familiarity when Clemson prep starts because of recruiting overlap…

“I’d reserve that until we start worrying about them. We’ve got a lot to fix. We’re not where we need to be in terms of depth and having enough guys to play winning football. I”m really so focused on how we can get better today and how our team can get better. That’s down the road.”

Smart on Nate Frazier…

“I don’t know that we know that yet. He’s certainly a guy that’s trying hard to learn to understand. I don’t think he’s ever had the detail of, ‘On this run, this is your key.’ He just gets the ball and runs and there’s a lot to our blocking schemes. Who is he reading? Who is he looking at? What are his steps? What does he have to do in protection? He’s got a lot to learn. He didn’t go through spring so his spring is now. His spring was in the summer. He’s got a lot of catching up to do. He is an explosive kid. He’s got good track times. He’s got good speed. He’s got great toughness. He’s a little ball of energy. 

But there are a bunch of guys in that room that are doing a great job. Chauncey is going do a great job, young kids, Dwight is doing a good job. Those guys are all doing a great job and we need them to help us this year.” 

Smart on the running back room… 

“That room has been really good in camp. They’ve worked really hard. Cash is a guy they just don’t give enough credit to. He’s great at picking things up. I feel like Trevor is the leader of the room and understands things. He does a really good job of setting the tempo and setting the standard. 

Branson has been great. Roderick has been dealing with a little bit of a toe injury that he’s dealing with. And then the three freshman. We’re looking forward to getting all of those guys ready to go.” 

Smart on Carson Beck and the players around him… 

“Yeah, I think I talked about it a little bit. The one’s can go out there and execute get calls and line up. Might not do it just as right but there’s not a lot of errors. There’s a good nucleus of guys that have played a lot of football when you count Arian, dillon, Oscar, Dom and those guys. 

But there is not the depth around Carson at the skill positions that there have been at the past. That puts more pressure on him to feel like he’s got to be perfect. To feel like he’s got to make the right decision, the right protection check, do this, do this. Can I count on that guy who hasn’t done it yet and trust that he’s going to be able to do it, even though he’s a freshman. Those are things that Carson, he’s got to get familiar with those other guys. That’s the hardest part in the depth. We count on our quarterback to put us in the right play or make the right decision on so many plays. Carson does a great job of that. I think he’s had a very detailed, attentive camp. Assertive is not something that he is. He’s not naturally going to go out there and be assertive vocally. He’s assertive in his checks and he’s assertive in decision making. That’s certainly much more important than what he says to the group as a whole.” 

Smart on what stood out about the defensive backs in the first scrimmage… 

“Got a long way to go. We don’t have a lot of proven playmakers. They have to prove it by how they play. They have to have better eye control, got to tackle much better. We did not tackle very well. We didn’t run to the ball and punch the ball out to the level we need to. 

I got a lot of confidence in the players in the secondary. They have to go do it live action, scrimmage this Saturday, practice every day to get to where we’re going to be really comfortable with them.” 

Smart on managing the potential raise to 105 scholarships… 

“Not really doing anything with it. We’re focused on our team, our roster. We have to make some decisions. We have a timeline set apart for like the off weeks, different times in the season when we sit down and look at our roster currently, our roster next year, how that looks, what do we have committed and how are our numbers going to be. 

I think you’re referring to the 85 to the potentially 105. There’s a lot of gray area in that. You don’t have to go to 105. A lot of people may choose to. I don’t know that 105 scholarship players is the right way to go about it. Because you’ve got 105 NIL capabilities there. You’ve got more people that would be unhappy. You don’t have walk-ons when you do that. 

I don’t think it’s set in stone yet that everybody is going to rush off and go to 105. That’s a huge burden on the budget of the athletic department. And honestly there are a lot of kids here that do a great job for us as walk-ons and you would be dismissing them to say you’re going to go out and sign 20 more kids. We haven’t really gone down the path of the numbers yet.” 

Smart on if he can identify one or two areas where depth is the most concerning…

“Yes.”

Smart on if he will identify those areas with media members…

“No.”

Smart on how the helmet communications have been so far…

“It’s great. We do it every day. Every opportunity we get we use it. We use it in scrimmages. We communicate with the guys. I think logistically it may be an issue when all the people in the stands, the crowd noise [is a factor]. I’m really interested to see how this is going to work for guys. Can they hear it in an SEC stadium because you see a lot of NFL players covering their ears and they’re, like, trying to really hear it. A lot of times are stadiums, especially at the national level in the SEC, can be hard, and so there’s no rule for that. There’s no, like, you’ve got to tell them to be quiet so we can hear. You’ve got to have a plan for how you’re going to execute it.”

Smart on what he’s seen from Raylen Wilson and CJ Allen, especially with Smael Mondon banged up to start camp…

“More comfortable. They’ve been thrust into the limelight and had to play earlier — probably before they were ready, to be honest. You grow up when you have to do that. I think you forget sometimes, like, what year they are. It happens to me all the time. 

I think Raylen and CJ are, like, experienced vets on our team because they’re in the upper echelon of play time and upper echelon in terms of years here because the majority of your team is young. Even our midyears — I’m out at practice, and I’m thinking, ‘Man, this kid’s already been here a year.’ No he hasn’t. He’s only been here five or six months. You’ve got to grow up fast with the way this thing is now because young players have to be ready to play.”

Smart on what Damon Wilson has been able to do, especially after bulking up this offseason…

“Damon’s been good. He’s been able to be a contributing factor more on first and second down. I think learning his assignment — like, he could go play on third down and play with reckless abandon and do a really good job last year. Now, first and second down he knows what to do, he understands it, he has better keys, he has better strike, he can hold up against a really physical tackle. He’s improved. Just by merely being here and going through the spring he’s improved. He’s also gotten a good bit of work with Chaz and some of the injuries we’ve had there.”

Smart on Jamal Meriweather, Daniel Calhoun, and Jahzare Jackson…

“Yeah, all three of those guys, they all have gone with the twos and threes. Daniel’s probably gone a little more at the twos with Jared’s injury and moving guys around where the other guys have gone with the twos some and threes. They continue to get better. They need to. They’re still considered young offensive linemen in our program, and that’s the hardest place to play besides quarterback in the SEC. There’s nowhere you will get exposed more than on the offensive line, so those guys are going to continue to get better and develop. They all three have size on their side.”

Smart on Jamaal Jarrett…

“Jah’s been good. His weight has been up and down. I think it’s something that he knows and he’s trying to work on. He has moments — flashes— of being able to help us, and we need help at that position in terms of depth because we’ve got, you know, injuries at those positions. I think he’s getting better. He’s more dependable. He has a little more stamina, but there’s still an area for improvement that he’s got to be able to play more consecutive snaps. That’s what we challenge him to do each and every day.”