What Was Said: Kirby Smart on Tuesday before UT-Martin

ATHENS, Ga. — It’s Tuesday, and that means an opportunity to hear from Georgia head coach Kirby Smart after he’s seen a pair of practices from his team. This week, the Bulldogs are preparing to play the UT-Martin Skyhawks in the season-opener, a first showing that Smart certainly is excited to see. Here’s everything Smart had to say on Tuesday before UT-Martin.

Kirby Smart Opening Statement

“I’d like to send our condolences to the Seiler family. One of the first people I met when I got here in school was Sonny Seiler and his family. Obviously the obvious meaning that they’ve had to the University of Georgia and Dawg Nation, they’ve been incredible. We’re all mourning the loss of him, and just share thoughts and prayers with his family in this tough time.”

Smart on what he looks for in a first game…

“I think procedurally, when you haven’t had it on – in practice it’s not the same. Discipline for onside, cadence, turnovers, the little things that usually get you beat. The first game is no different than the last game in terms of the things that get you beat, but I do think first game jitters exist, and you want the players to get comfortable to be able to go out there, cut loose and play and get the anxiety out of the way, the first hit out of the way. I want to play our brand of football, play really disciplined and not have a lot of penalties and sloppy mistakes. Communication things, things that you just beat yourself, you want to avoid.”

Smart on Kendall Milton, Daijun Edwards and how they’ve looked in practice this week…

“They’ve both done more. Daijun stayed in a black. Kendall’s been out of a black. Both are looking good. We’re giving a lot of reps to a lot of other guys, we’ve got a lot of other guys to get prepared, but they’ve both been in indy, they’ve both done drills, they’ve both worked during the run periods and the pass periods. Feel good about both of them.”

Kirby Smart on when he can sense it’s time to play somebody else…

“Well, with the way things are now, you could feel that way during the spring, the summer. We do so many glorified walk throughs and try to change up the monotony. I can’t pinpoint a day because I think you have to be willing to go against each other and not let it become monotony. I told everybody today, that one rep of inside zone that you take today has to be the greatest rep of inside zone you’ve ever taken. That one stunt step you take as a defensive lineman has to be the best one you’ve ever taken. Repetition is the mother of all skill, and you’ve got to get a lot of reps to get good.”

Smart on Julian Humphrey…

“I think Fran’s done a tremendous job with Julian. He’s a fast guy that came in kind of raw talent, had not played a lot of the techniques that we’re teaching in terms of multiple coverages. He had played a lot of man. He’s grown as a player. He’s gotten tougher, he’s gotten more physical. He still has not arrived, he still has moment that make you wonder what he’s doing, but then he has some ‘Wow’ moments. He’s done some really good things in camp, but he has to continue to play in and buy in to the process of getting better at that position. He’ll get better because he’s talented.”

Smart on if talent can outweigh knowledge if they simplify things when it comes to playing defensive freshmen…

“Well I think if you simplify things, it takes away a little bit of our advantage. We don’t have to simplify things because we’ve got players with experience, who are good teachers. We had two freshmen that last year that were talented enough and smart enough to walk out there and start, a third by the end of the year with Jalon Walker. Between Mykel, Jalon, and Malaki, we’ve proven that we can play with freshmen and have volume. We don’t look at it as we have to give up one to get the other. We’re going to do all we can to help people have roles and learn and get the best people out there to give us a chance to win.”

Kirby Smart on Zion Logue and his progress and the value of having an experienced guy like him…

“ Well he creates a lot of value in the locker room. He’s a lunch pail guy. He carries his lunch pail every day to work and he gives you an honest day’s work every day. He competes, he covers down. He’s always one of the hardest guys when they throw the ball and he breaks and covers down. When you’ve been in this program as long as he has, there’s a lot of work that he’s done that we certainly appreciate as a staff. He buys into the hard work.”

Smart on having older guys like Zion, Tramel Walthour, Nazir Stackhouse to help set the standard…

“That’s what they do, they set the standard. We challenged them this week to set the standard for a game week of practice. Those guys do that. They set an example. They’re able to carry the weight and show guys how it’s supposed to be done because they have a unique spot because they’ve been part of a lot of success. They carry the weight and they show those guys how to practice and what to do to get better. They’ve all kind of become products of that because none of those guys were immediate success stories upon arrival. They kind of had to earn it.”

Smart on how many he will dress out Saturday and having a rotation of regular receivers…

“I feel like we’re thin at wideout. Everybody keeps talking about this wide receiver corps and I’m like, we are thin. We just don’t have enough depth there. We don’t have enough guys that are two-deep to finish practice. It makes it tough. We’ve got guys dinged up, guys injured, so it makes it a little bit harder. I don’t know that you have a rotation. The year LSU won the national championship, I think 95 percent of the snaps were three receivers. They were three really good receivers. You play the players that give you a chance to play. When you have a bar and you say, this is winning football above and this is losing football below it, if you can play winning football then we’re going to give you opportunities and chances to play based on what you have shown us. We’ve got some guys that can play winning football. We’ve probably got six or seven. We’ve probably got three or four that are right on the line that aren’t playing winning football yet that we’re going to try to get ready.”

“Overall dress out, we haven’t really talked. I mean I can dress the entire roster if I want to. It’s just going to be a matter of setting how much room we have on the sideline. We’ll have some other games that we’ll have an opportunity to dress those guys for. We try to reward everybody by dressing at least one during the year. Typically we do the guys that came to camp because they’ve been through the most practices and then try to get the guys that came out when school came later.”

Kirby Smart on what was attractive about Tray Scott in hiring him and Scott’s growth…

“Well, the first thing that attracted me to him was Pete Jenkins, who is the father of all d-line coaches. One of you should go do a special on Pete Jenkins. But he is — I don’t want to call him a dinosaur, but he’s one of a kind. He has been through every SEC school maybe but Georgia. He is the father of at least 120 defensive line coaches. Tray will tell you that he helped develop him. When we needed a defensive line coach, we called Pete and said, ‘Pete, give us somebody in your tree and tell us where the best young one is. We want him to develop here at a really great university.’ And Pete talked about Tray. I think Tray at the time had just gone maybe to Ole Miss. We hired him, but he had a background that started at UT Martin like we all did. He played back in the Division II Gulf South Conference days over in Arkansas. I had some history there, so I had a lot of respect for the way Tray had worked his way up and earned it. He’s done nothing but the same here.”

Smart on halftime adjustments and if it is an overused term…

“Yeah, I would think it is an overused term. I think it’s more important now than it’s ever been with the advent of the offense. There’s so much volume of offense out there that by half you feel like you have an understanding of where they’re trying to attack you and what they’re trying to do, so you obviously get more time to go in and adjust at halftime. Back in the days of, let’s call it 2008, 2010, 2012, it wasn’t like that. There was a physicality to the game that’s probably unseen now from direct runs and people playing in a phone booth, and there was a little less adjusting you could do to that. You could tweak some things, but now there’s alternatives and there’s a lot more offense out there. 

Every offensive play has three plays on it, so defenses have to find ways to be creative to create an advantage. I think there’s a lot more strategy now. Some offenses hold things for the second half. Some defenses hold things for the second half. I’ve always been a big believer that if it’s good enough to use it, you better use it in the first half and not save it for the second. We try to do a good job of doing that. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it has a lot to do with the players and not the adjustments.”

Smart on if he’s studied any teams that three-peated to learn about some of their traits…

“No, I have not — not that I know of. I don’t think that we have. We really haven’t studied anybody that three-peated. The All Blacks was more about being the winningest organization. I don’t know — now, I would assume if they were the winningest organization they probably three-peated, but I don’t even know if they have. Like I said, each every year is independent of the previous, and there’s nothing about the other two that’s going to help us or hurt us in this season. It’s completely independent just as last year was. We’ve kept it that way. We’ve focused on this year. Our team is, I don’t know, 80% new from the one two years ago, so it’s a new group.”

Kirby Smart on replacing Nolan Smith at Jack OLB…

“We’re not doing a whole lot different. I mean, Nolan, God bless him, but he was not as productive as you might make him seem. A first-round pick would probably usually have more production than he had. But he was a really tough, physical run player, he was great at knowing whether it was run pass, he sacrificed a lot of rushes to break the pocket and get quarterbacks out of there and try to create scrambles. He did a lot of really good things, so we have to replace him. But he was not exactly a huge sack producer. He didn’t have a lot of sacks as a junior and his senior year, obviously he got injured.

So, who’s going to replace Nolan? Well, a group of people are. When I say a group of people, I mean it’s by committee. We’ve got guys that go in on third down to give us similar rush that he does. We’ve got guys that play on first and second that give us similar run value that he gave us in terms of toughness and closing and scraping and effort and energy. And he was probably most valuable on special teams. He made tackles on kickoff, he blocked a punt. So, you don’t replace him with one guy. You replace him with a lot of guys.”

Smart on former teammate Drew Camp and his son Cal, who plays for UT-Martin …

“I remember Drew here as a player. He was certainly a really good player and we were around the same age. I don’t remember his son as well. I remember when he was here locally and came through and worked out and was growing up. I’ve got a lot of respect for their family and looking forward for them to come to Sanford Stadium. I know it will be special for them to watch him play in that same stadium.”

Smart on how has Georgia’s offense changed over the years…

“We’ve all talked about it before, but you start with Nick Chubb and Sony (Michel), and you go to George Pickens and Brock Bowers and Darnell (Washington) and the guys we’ve had out there like Kearis (Jackson). I mean, it just got kind of evolved over who we’ve been able to recruit. And I think that evolution is constant. Probably the biggest change is the spreading of the ball. There’s so many times we’ve come out of a game last year and sseven people would have receptions, eight people got recptions. I just don’t think you’re able to find many people in the country that are able to spread the ball around to that many people. Sometimes you don’t control that. Sometimes it’s controlled by what the defense does, which can be a good thing or a bad thing. If the defense is controlling where (the ball) goes, then they’re telling you where they want you to throw it. That’s usually the right decision, but if you’ve got a guy that needs to touch the ball you’ve got to find ways to do that as well. So, I’m proud of the evolution of it and what they’ve done, but a lot of that had to do with who the coordinators were.”

Kirby Smart on how Kamari Lassiter and Smael Mondon have progressed with their foot injuries…

“Smael’s foot injury is from the spring and he’s done a really good job with that and has been practicing and looks great out there and has done everything in practice this week. And Kamari has looked good out there and done everything. He’s dealing with a foot sprain, but he’s practicing and done everything this week.”

Smart on Dan Jackson’s progress…

“The foot injury has been great; he’s had no issues with the foot. He’s had a hamstring frm early in camp. Biut he’s practice for the last, I don’t know, four days, five days. They all run togehter on me, but he’s practiced since the last scrimmage. I know that. He did low volume in the scrimmage and he’s picked up volume ever since and he’s taking all his reps right now.”

Smart on what stood out about Todd Hartley when you hired him…

“I had tried to hire Todd prior to that. When coach Beamer left we tried to Todd at that time he was with Coach Richt and he was at Miami and chose to stay. Then I had a second chance to hire him when we had another opening and he chose to come home. 

I knew him when I got the job here, he stayed for a couple of weeks or maybe a month with me. I’ve known Todd for a lone time and had a lot of respect for him. He’s very detail-oriented, he’s get it done, he knows the questions to ask to get things done. When you give him an assignment he does it really well. He’s got a bright future in coaching and I’m certainly very thankful we’ve got him on our team.”

Kirby Smart on developing walk-ons in the program…

“Our staff and our state is incredible. Our staff does great research, we leave no stone unturned. We don’t just go recruit 5-star guys. We go to high schools and visit and try to find out the intangibles of good football players and if they have interest in coming to our organization.  

Your organization and culture is made up of just as many walk-ons as it is scholarship players. I have a lot of respect for walk-ons and what they do. I don’t know relative to others, because I don’t have a way of researching that. When I look at a team’s roster, I don’’t know who the walk-ons are, so it’s hard to identify that. I do know we have success nurturing those relationships and developing those players. A lot of times they are your smartest and toughest and they do exactly what they are coached to do. You get good production out of them. We’re very blessed to be in a state where high school football is good that you can find guys that can help.”

Smart on Kearis Jackson making the Titans…

“We announced that in the team meeting, right before practice I got a text Kearis and one of the guys from the Titans texted me and the whole team went nuts and was ecstatic. Who better deserves that than a guy that went through 2-3-4 injuries, he was on the leadership SEC committee and represented this university on every board he could be on, and stood up in front of the team and led. Just an unbelievable leader. He had all the cards stacked against him and he still overcame all that and made it in one of the toughest things to do in all of sports, and make that 53-man roster.”