What Was Said: Kirby Smart on Carson Beck, Vanderbilt matchup

ATHENS, Ga. — Georgia head coach Kirby Smart addressed the media Monday in Athens. Ahead of UGA’s matchup versus Vanderbilt on Saturday, Smart talked a ton about quarterback Carson Beck, some on NIL and the challenges of the transfer portal era in College Football and a little bit on other topics too. DawgsHQ was on hand and has everything Smart said for you below.

Kirby Smart Opening Statement

“For us, on to Vandy yesterday. We got a start on these guys in terms of watching games. Clark Lea’s team. I’ve got a lot of respect for Clark. He’s been a good friend for a while but really become closer friends since being in our league. He’s a very intellectual guy. He ran our meetings. He was the head of our meetings for the SEC meetings and thought he did a tremendous job of leading the discussion about issues and things we come across in our conference. But he does a tremendous job. He’s gotten more energy and had some big wins since arriving there. I know he’s an alumnus and takes a lot of pride in being from the school as I know myself. And we’re preparing to go up and play these guys on an early kick in Nashville. we’ve got to prepare our guys the right way, so we’ll start on that today.”

Smart on if he expected the transition from Todd Monken and Stetson Bennett to Mike Bobo and Carson Beck to be as smooth as it has been…

“Yeah, I made a quick decision there because I was really confident. We had the luxury of having the quarterback coming back that really wasn’t your typical first-time starter. When you have a guy that’s been in the system as long as he has, I felt comfortable that he knew the system and that I wanted to keep the system the same. And those guys have transitioned well together.”

Smart on the unique challenge that Clark Lea faces rebuilding a program like Vanderbilt…

“I don’t think I can because I don’t know. I don’t know his issues and problems. I think we all have our distinct institutional things that we deal with, and everybody’s is different whether it’s geographically, academically, financially. I mean, everybody’s situation is completely different. So I can’t draw a comparison to his, and he’s not one to sit around and complain and cry about it. He’s from there. He’s proud of it, and they’ve done a tremendous job. I think he has the right approach. He knows the area. He knows that state. He knows the institution, which institutional knowledge is powerful information. So it’s hard for me to draw a comparison. I have a lot of respect for him, and as you know one of our coaches’ sons is committed there. I know that Will [Muschamp] has a lot of respect for their program and what Clark’s done. I mean, he went on an official visit there, so he has a lot of respect for what they’re doing.”

Kirby Smart on what Beck brings to QB that allows him to operate at such a high level…

“A great mental processor. He’s a great processor. I mean, Carson’s very intelligent, guys. You know, you can say what you want about the quarterback position, but you have to process information rapidly. And the more information you can handle, the more flexibility your offense has. The flexibility of an offense is usually tied to what the quarterback can handle. Our quarterback — not only because he’s smart but because he’s also of age and been in the same system for multiple years — has been able to grow from that. You find it’s very, very rare in college football or pro football for a quarterback to be in the same system more than three years. I don’t know how many years Carson has been in this system, but I think it’s three or four. So it’s like he understands it, he knows how to use it, and he’s got good weapons around him to help him with it. So his intuition along with ability has helped him.”

Smart on what allows Beck to succeed against the blitz…

“Understand his protection and understand his route structure. Carson does a great job of that because he is very composed. I think, a baseball background, I’ve learned, gives you the ability to handle pressure. There’s no greater pressure than you have to throw a strike. Nobody can help you throw that strike, no coach, no pitching coach. You’ve got to stand out there and throw a strike. That pressure is not the same as a man running in your face, but it is pressure. He does well under pressure. He has 10 good friends that are on the same page with him. We do a lot of pressure pick-up in the offseason, walkthroughs, preseason camp. We spend a lot of time on blitz pick-up, to the point of nauseam. I think that helps him. There’s not a lot he hasn’t seen. He does a nice job of executing in those scenarios. When you have a clean pocket and see him throw, it makes people want to pressure him more because you don’t want to have a clean pocket.”

Smart on Beck’s processing ability and testing that in a QB…

“He’s had it since he’s gotten here. He hasn’t been where he is, but the guy has a lot of spring scrimmages, fall scrimmages. We scrimmage three times in the spring, three times in the fall, that’s six, times three years, 18. You’re going against defensive talent for 18 of those games, in my mind, that were really talented and they’re blitzing you. You get better. He still has growth he can do and can get better in understanding things and decision-making. There’s times that he’s averaged about two plays a game where he puts us at risk of just, get out of a bad play, man. Throw it away, take a sack, take off running and don’t throw it into danger. He has to continue to grow at that. But the guy’s had a lot of practices. He’s not your typical second-year, sophomore starter.”

Kirby Smart on Georgia’s edge defense against the run…

“You’ve got to define edge defense for me. So run defense on the edge, yeah, I think you create edges different ways. I don’t know if you mean like outside run, toss sweep, or if you’re talking about counter and pullers, gap schemes. They can all end up on the edge depending on how you play them. Everybody has a defensive philosophy on how they play football. We don’t like balls to run north-south. So if the ball’s not running north-south, where’s it running? East-west. If it’s running east-west, where does it have to get to? The edge. Most of the runs we give up, by design, are on the edge. We’re not going to allow you to go north and south. If you go north and south on us, we’ve got bigger problems. If we can get it go sideways, we tend to think our speed runs it down. That hasn’t always been the case this year. We have not done an awesome job at running things down that we may go inside out. Some of that’s been by scheme, some of that’s been by protecting the corners. We’ve had different runs get out for different reasons. I’m not sitting here concerned about our edges if that’s what you’re asking. We can definitely do a better job run-fitting things.”

Smart on OL protection and blitz pickup, Beck being the Co-SEC player of the week.

“I’m happy for Carson. I think he will be the first to tell you it’s not all him; it’s protection, pass-catchers catching the ball, route running changing their routes, the level of the routes. I thought the route structure we had last week was different than previous weeks. Those guys played a big part and he certainly had a big part in that reading coverages and making decisions, so I’m pleased for him.

The time he had, some of that was due to protection, some of that was due to how Kentucky played. On defense, sometimes they rushed three; sometimes they brought four, brought five and brought six. They changed it, but when they did bring three and four, you’re typically going to have time when you have a six-man protection. You should. So, he had some time in there to be able to do that. You’re not always going to have that week to week. Some of that is going to come from, and I said it after the game, if you’re able to run the ball, you will get play-action shots and have time. There’s more buy-in to play action when you’re running the ball well.”

Smart on Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins and potentially getting him back this season…

“As I’ve talked about before, he’s dealing with a foot injury, a significant foot injury. He had a four-week shutdown, I think we’ll be on five. He’ll be able to start and do a little more next week, more being jogging and what I call weight-bearing, instead of practice. We have a plan, stages, and he’s hitting all the marks. So, we’re hopeful to get him back this year. But when that will be, I don’t know. We’re going to do what the doctors say.”

Kirby Smart on knowing when to use positive reinforcement with the defense…

“You just go on gut feeling. Where are they, how are they practicing, are they buying into what they’re believing. They have to understand the truth of what’s on tape, and the tape says, strike, block and play well against the run on certain plays. Not playing well on certain plays, some of that’s by lack of repetition, we didn’t practice it, some of it we didn’t play physical to our standards. If you show that you can do it, we’re going to show you can’t do it. We don’t try to overthink it, we just try to show them what the truth is.”

Smart on preparing to handle the ball in potentially cold weather and wet conditions in Nashville…

“We spray water on it, whatever elements are, we try to practice in and create. We haven’t practiced in much cold, I can promise you that, but we can create some things for indoor and we can create weather conditions with water and things like that. We have wet ball practices where we say, hey, practice 26-28, we’re going to do this. If we get a chance to do it, we’ll do it.”

Smart on injury updates for Sedrick Van Pran and Amarius Mims…

“Yeah, Sed’s great. He came back in, finished out the game, seems to be fine. Amarius is right where we think he should be. I mean, he’s got the same protocol that Lawson Luckie’s had, Cash has had, James Cook has had. We’ve had a lot of the tightrope surgery, and he’s right on schedule.”

Kirby Smart on Georgia having 11 guys starting at other schools and if Georgia is doing anything different to try and retain players …

I don’t know what other people do so I don’t know how different what we do is. Do we think about it? Yeah. Do we talk to guys? Yeah. I think everybody does. You know, you have to be smart and evaluate your players, talk to your players, explain where they are. I think it’s really important to have communication back home. You have to do all those things. But I don’t know how different that is from everybody else because I don’t know what everybody else does.

Smart on Vanderbilt’s passing game and QB Ken Stills …

“What stands out is they have speed at receiver. They have really good wideouts. I didn’t realize until I was watching all their games yesterday how fast they are at wideout. And the quarterback has done a great job of getting them the ball. They’ve had some injuries up front and had some guys going in and out of the lineup up front. But he buys more time, he’s mobile, he’s able to highlight the players they have and they have really good wide receivers. He buys time to make throws, off-platform throws, scramble throws. He’s got a really good arm and he’s a good athlete. When he extends a play, it brings what the strength of their team is up because it gives him more time to make plays.”

Smart on Amarius Mims’ timeline for return and if the Florida game is the goal…

“No goal. It’s really about where he is. The timeline for Luckie would put him back about there, but he may not be the exact same as Lawson’s. Lawson is a skill-position (player) and that requires more cutting and things like that. We’ve ordered a special shoe for Amarius and plan to use it. We used that with Andrew Thomas and several other kids on the offensive line who’ve had ankle injuries. But we don’t put a timeline on it just for that reason. It could be before, it could be after. It’s based on his progression and how he feels when he starts moving around and what he does.”

Kirby Smart on if keeping good players rostered is just about NIL money-matching…

“I wouldn’t say that. I don’t talk much about the guys that aren’t in our program. I love both of those young men to death. They bopth chose to come here and neither one really had the options they wanted coming out and we saw something in them to bring them here. But they chose to leave, and neither one of those kids was encouraged to leave. But why they left would be up to them, not for me to define or say. I don’t think it’s about NIL in either of those cases. Do I think it’s about NIL in some cases? Absolutely. But I don’t think it’s about that in those two kids’ cases. That would probably be proximity to home in both those cases. But I just don’t concern myself with that ; I don’t think about that. I’m not even, like, worried about that. It may be a story for you guys but, for me, it’s about the men that are in that team meeting room right over there (points to football building) that are going to practice today and that are trying to beat Vanderbilt.”

Smart on coaching kickers… 

“You don’t coach kickers, I don’t know if you noticed that. I don’t know anybody in the country that specializes in the actual technical process of kicking. I think every team in the country that has the financial stability, they have good psylogical sports management. And they have all the people that can help him psychologically. Mechanically, the kid his head been good for a while. They all have their kicking coaches back home and if they’re not kicking good they might use their kicking coach. We use sources here that are more sports psycology path than what is wrong with your stroke. We don’t have to have a kicking coach as much as we have to have a special teams background people to help coach the coaches.”

Smart on the high school NIL process… 

“I honestly don’t know what I would tell them. It’s all over the place. What does your son play? What you see your son’s net worth as may not be what Delta or Coke or Kodak or UPS sees your son’s net worth as. You have to be careful there, what you believe and what you hear. Because I don’t honestly know what the impact will be. You have to go to those local communities and say wht are they willing to do when NIL dollars tight in a time in America where they may not want to spend money on a high school kid. Certainly that is going to happen at some positions, no different than it’s going to happen in college at some positions. As far as the overall impact, you’ll have to wait and see what it is.”

Kirby Smart on angling the snap on certain field-goal attempts… 

“Well we have rules that I do not prefer to divulge, but that hasn’t changed. There’s no change in our kicking rules. Every field goal team in America has a rule they have for whether they are on the hash, whether they move it. Whether they go tackle over or don’t go tackle over. Those are things you get into geometry about with how your kicker kicks the ball. What’s the flight path, how high does it get, where is the block point, how hard do they rush? But we haven’t changed that since we’ve been here.”

Smart on what has been the biggest change he’s made since his first season… 

“It’s so far back now, not really. I’ve had games in my career, you remember the losses more than the wins. But that one doesn’t stick out for me as much as some of the others do. There were a lot games that year that were really close. We’ve won a lot of really close games and we’ve lost some really close games. The only common theme was there were a lot of close games. As far as things I’ve changed, there’s a lot to just sit here and talk about for five minutes.”