What Was Said: Kirby Smart opens Tennessee Tech week

ATHENS, Ga. — It’s on to the next one for Georgia. The Bulldogs have time to reminisce on Saturday’s win over Clemson. Instead, Kirby Smart’s squad turns its attention to Tennessee Tech as the Golden Eagles come to town this weekend.

Smart, as he does every week, spoke with reporters on Monday to get things underway. He was joined by a pair of players – JaCorey Thomas and Lawson Luckie. DawgsHQ was on hand and has video of each interview for you on our YouTube channel. If you prefer to take in what was said in the written form, we’ve also got a full transcript for you below…

Kirby Smart Opening Statement…

“Excited to be here. Excited to get moved on to pursue getting better. We open with Tennessee Tech practice today and we’ll start attacking these guys. They played a very hard fought game with Middle Tennessee the other night, had a great come back and have a lot of respect for the way they played in that game for sure. Our guys will start getting prepared on them today.”

Smart on how you adjust when opponent’s game plan is different than what you prepared for…

“Not necessarily. They’ve been a pressure team, but not necessarily man to man pressure. They play a lot of forms of pressure, very similar to what we do. Zone sims, two traps mixed in with some man to man. They probably played a lot more single high man and zone than they have in the past to load up on the run. But I wouldn’t say anything our offense gets surprises us. We have a huge volume of defense so they typically get exposed to a lot of defensive structures. That’s neither here nor there. You can do a lot and be no good at it or you can not do a lot and try to be good at it. It’s a lot more about the players.”

Smart on green dot defense helmet, whether that’ll be the same every week…

“Hadn’t really thought about it. We share who uses it every day in practice. CJ had it some. Smael had it some. Raylen might’ve had it some. We have two helmets so it depends on which pairing of players are in. We have other players who have green dot helmets in case they have to play a position that they’re not normally playing. We had a couple of situations like that on Saturday that we thought that might happen with injuries so we had other guys ready and prepared to use the green dot but as far I know, we just had the linebackers use it.”

Smart on Arian Smith…

“We want to depend on everybody because you don’t want to be a one dimensional team. The idea is ever since we’ve been here is to spread the ball around, have a lot of guys with a lot of touches, nobody with a ton individually. Arian has been a great case study in that because he’s touched the ball vertically, he’s touched the ball sideways, he’s become a more complete receiver and route runner. I thought he made some plays on the sides with the rocket sweep things and edge runs, he made some plays catching the ball outside and that’s big for him. That’s growth, and we need more guys to be able to step up and do that. We’ve got to be innovative in ways to get guys touches that make us hard to defend.”

Kirby Smart on Georgia injuries…

“Joenel was close to being able to play. Worked out before the game, thought he might be able to go in an emergency. Don’t really know any more today. We just did a walk through, he walked through. Hoping he’ll be able to go this week. Warren has got a little bit of an ankle contusion. Wasn’t able to go, and we’re hopeful he’s able to go. Mykel has an ankle sprain. It’s a grade 2 but it’s stable. He’ll be week to week. Probably questionable this week but it’s not going to be a long term ankle. We’ll see.”

Smart on his process of looking at the bigger picture and the direction of the program…

“Organizational conglomeration of information. I mean, I can’t answer that question. I’m very process and detail oriented. We have a way we go about things. We talk about it, we visit with others, we brainstorm, we do what any good business would do and we try to make the best decision. When it comes to NIL, what can we raise, what do we have, what do we have available, what’s the best value, and what kids fit our culture and who’s going to be unselfish and come here and play for the University of Georgia and not just for the money. There’s a lot of things that go into that decision and those other decisions you talked about. There’s a ton, especially in the offseason.”

Smart on how Jared Wilson played…

“Knock on wood, I don’t think we had an errant snap, and that was something that was really important. We chart his snaps every day, and he’s been about 95-96% snap accuracy. That’s something that you can’t afford to have. It’s got to be 100%. I thought he did a good job of doing that in the game. I think if you asked Jared there’s some things that he should’ve done better or he could’ve done better and that he didn’t play his best football game, but like I tell kids all the time, if you miss time in training camp it tends to show in the first game. He missed some time. He did some really good things, some really athletic things, and then he had a couple plays that he didn’t make. He was the first guy that came up to me walking off the field and said he screwed up a couple plays, but that’s football.”

Smart on London Humphreys coming in and making those big third-down catches…

“Yeah, it’s great. He does a good job. He’s probably more in relief for Arian. He did a good job. He’s got SEC experience. I think that’s what the portal provides you: to go get a guy that’s been successful and played well in our conference. He’s done that. He’s proven himself as a guy that can make plays, and he was ready when his number was called. We talk about it all the time: your opportunity’s coming. Are you going to seize the moment when the moment jumps in front of you, and he did that.”

Kirby Smart on Malaki Starks playing STAR and the flexibility that provides…

“He did a nice job when he played the STAR, especially for a guy that didn’t rep there but last week a few times. I mean, he didn’t get any reps in camp there. He did a good job of jumping in and filling that role. 

Flexibility, it just depends on the depth at other positions. Malaki can be our best player at five positions, so it’s more a matter of what’s around him and what’s healthy working and what are we going to do defensively, you know? He plays a role at safety, he plays a role at strong safety, he plays a role at STAR. He does a tremendous job. It gives us some depth, but I’d rather not have to be reliant on the depth and rely on the guys that practiced all camp.”

Smart on what it is about the skillset of players like Jalon Walker who can play inside or outside linebacker…

“Well, we’re unique in our defense — I shouldn’t say unique. I don’t know how many others do what we do defensively because I’m not in their programs. We’re very different in regards to what NFL scouts and personnel tell us in that we still train, you know, outside ‘backers to be SAM outside linebackers.

I learned a long time ago you need to develop two skillsets because the game has changed and evolved and be more spread orientated. These guys that played outside linebacker against a two back I set, they weren’t finding homes. They might have a home in the NFL but they didn’t have a home in college. And we make promises we’re going to develop you in multiple ways. Going back to Natrez Patrick, he can play on the line back and also play inside backer. And he was used to rush and do things here. Lorenzo was used that way. Quay Walker started at outside backer and inside backer and had flexibility. 

We think it’s part of your growth. We say all the time, you’re gonna get 98 percent of your football reps in practice. So why not experiment and grow and then that 2 percent in the game, you get to show off all these things you’ve learned. And then when the next level comes calling, they’ve seen you do multiple things. It’s really important to them that you can play into the line backer. Because their style of football still has some traditional nature to it. College is very different now. 

I’m very proud of Jalon because he’s had to really grow and get uncomfortable at inside backer. He’s more natural at his outside backer position.” 

Smart on KJ Bolden… 

“KJ is very confident. He’s played more football than most seniors. He’s been playing since he was six years old. In the heart of Atlanta in one of the toughest leagues there is to play football. He’s played up against older kids all his life. He’s extremely athletic. The moment is not too big for KJ. He’s very gifted athletically, but he also has football instincts and intuition. He’s been coached by his father, he’s tough. I think that gives him a leg up on other guys coming in because he’s been playing football for so long.”

Smart on Damon Wilson… 

“Effort, like I did last year. There’s things he’s got to improve on and do better. He missed a couple of opportunities to make a couple of plays that I thought he should’ve made. But I don’t judge Damon on that body of work of those snaps. I judge Damon on the body of work of the 1,000 snaps he’s had in camp. And he’s had a really good camp. He’s improved himself physically. He can play more downs now. He’s got to continue to get stronger and maintain his weight. Our guys didn’t play many snaps. We only played 56, 57 snaps. I think we had 18 guys that played over 28 snaps on the whole team. There wasn’t a large number of snaps played by anybody so that body of work is not really big.”

Kirby Smart on limiting Clemson’s snaps… 

“I really don’t know what their decisions are for their offense. When you stop people on third down and you’re hard to run the ball on, you’re not going to have a lot of snaps. We were fortunate to get off the field on third down.They were also unfortunate because they had a couple drops early that would’ve gotten them rolling. 

As far as the snap count numbers, I think people with the headsets, you may have less plays than normal because people want to wait and talk.” 

Smart on Arian Smith… 

“Arian works, there hasn’t been a harder worker on our team than Arian Smith. He’s the product of a really tough, physical program. He’ll tell you today, he stands in front of the team and he is just completely different person. He had never had to practice and strained like he does here. He has made decisions that he wants to be really good so he works really hard at it. There’s not a play that I can find that Arian doesn’t run hard to the ball or try to block somebody to do something extra. He does that on special teams. He made a huge special teams play in the game. He continues to improve by doing those things.” 

Smart on Lawson Luckie… 

“More confident in the system. Healthy, tougher and more physical, but needs to improve on that. And just a passion for the game. He’s really, really football savvy. He understands football and leverages and has made a lot of plays in the passing game and continues to play more physical.”

Smart on the importance of getting inexperienced players in vs. Clemson…

“Hopefully, the work they get every day in practice, I know for you guys every thing is about that small snap shot you see in the game, but for me it’s what are you going to do today? What are you going to do tomorrow? Because you’re going to get 40 or 50 snaps against a really good football player today and tomorrow. We really try to impress upon our guys, there’s so much value in our practice that it’s held in higher esteem a lot of times by NFL organizations than the game is. That’s not understood by the common fan, that practice is more important than the game, but it certainly is here.

Kirby Smart on Micah Morris not playing more…

“Micah’s got to continue to improve. It’s one of those deals where we’re going to play those guys who practice the best and if he practices better, he’ll get to play more.”

Smart on Anthony Evans development and punt returns…

“I thought he did a great job of fielding the ball. The ball hits the ground and it bounces and I watch all these games, these college games, where the ball bounces and 20, 30 yards of field position is getting flipped. It takes a lot of confidence to go judge the ball, especially in that dome. There were some strange punts, some balls doing crazy spin. It was a left-footed punter so one of the wins of the game for us was not letting the ball hit the ground. He did once and it went into the end zone which was a judgement call by him. So I was very pleased with what he was able to do in terms of punt return.”

Smart on the biggest improvement he wants to see from week one to week two…

“I can’t pick one thing on improvement. There was so many things that we’ve got to do better. All of it. There’s just a lot there that we want to improve on. Some of what you’re doing is dictated by who you play. People just think it’s a stat game. It’s not a stat game. It’s who you’re lined up across from and how good is that football player because that does dictate things, the matchups.

Smart on Carson Beck’s reaction to first game with helmet communication…

“We’ve done it every day for 32 practices so it wasn’t different than the 32 practices that we did it. It shuts off at 15, you talk before it, it wasn’t any different than our scrimmages, it was exactly like we practiced, and you had probably 60 walkthroughs. So between the walkthroughs and the games, we’ve got some form of communication. The walkthroughs it can’t be in a helmet so it’s an earpiece but he’s heard it all.”

Smart on his team’s focus from opponent to opponent…

“I don’t know that I have this year because we haven’t done it. Every team is different in terms of… and over time they change. I can’t compare 2018 to 2020 to 2022 because the teams are different, the maturity level, the experience level. It does seem that every year we get younger so every year its a great burden and challenge on the older players to set the standard and hold people to how we go about our preparation and putting a game behind us and moving on to the next one. But it’s the same for the coaches and we don’t change how we go week to week. We have a protocol. We have a checklist and we follow that.”