What Was Said: Kirby Smart shares after win over Georgia Tech

ATLANTA, Ga. — Georgia head coach Kirby Smart met with the media Saturday night at Bobby Dodd Stadium after his top-ranked Bulldogs squad beat in-state rival Georgia Tech 31-23 to finish the regular season 12-0. It wasn’t the prettiest of wins, but winning on rivalry weekend is hard – as Smart made sure to point out. It’s also never easy to go on the road and secure a W. Smart shares on all that and more, and DawgsHQ has a full transcript of his comments below for you…

Kirby Smart Opening Statement

“Yeah, great atmosphere for college football. I tell you what, it was a lot of fun having that kind of atmosphere. I think our kids  really enjoyed it. I thought our fans showed up and did a great job, made it feel like it was like 50/50 with our fans out there. 

A lot of credit to Georgia Tech. They did a really good job, played hard, played physical. I thought Buster and his staff did a great job with the run plan. We expected to get a lot of quarterback run. They did a good job of that. But once again our kids show up very resilient, tough. I mean, this game is not measured by stats and rushing yards and first downs — it’s measured by heart, and you’ve got to have a whole lot of heart to go out there and fight and play like our guys have done week after week after week. I mean, you see across the country in these rivalry games what happens. I know better than anybody that it can go either way in these tight games. 

Very emotional, very different week in terms of Thanksgiving and everything going on, but I thought our offense played with a lot of consistency. We were able to run the ball really well and really physical up front. The line of scrimmage won the game for us.”

Smart on Kendall Milton’s performance…

“Really physical. He’s getting his pads down, running through contact. He breaks a lot of arm tackles. You know, I saw two or three of their guys have to go out from having to tackle him ’cause he’s really physical and downhill. But make no mistake about it: it’s not just him. It’s a lot of them dudes up there in front of him. It’s quarterback run-checking, front o-line moving people, tight ends and receivers blocking downfield. It’s a team effort, and he was a big, big part of that tonight. I mean, even Daijun had some good runs, but I thought Kendall was really physical.”

Smart on 29 consecutive wins for Georgia…

“It says we’ve got a tough one next week. I mean, humility is a week away. That’s what we say around our place. It’s a great honor. I mean, it’s something we’ll look back on. It’s not one person. You know, if I’m thinking right, that’s three different teams, right? There’s a lot of kids that aren’t in that locker room that were a part of that. That’s not the focal point for us. The focal point for us is to get better, you know, and we’ve got to continue to get better. Our kids have a lot of pride, and they want to get better. You know, the offense felt like they left points out there. The defense feels like they didn’t play the quarterback run game as well as they should, so the good thing about that locker room is a lot of guys know there’s work to be done.”

Kirby Smart on if Brock Bowers, Ladd McConkey, or Tate Ratledge were close to playing…

“Define close…. If they could play, they would have played, 100 percent. If they could have played, they would have played. I don’t think you measure it, it was a championship game. It was a state championship game. They wanted to play, all of them wanted to play. But guys, we’re beat up. We’ve got two freshman linebackers out there playing, I don’t know, 50 percent of the snaps. Smael’s out there fighting his tail off, he’s hurt and beat up. Everybody does, we’re not going to whine and cry about it. We’ve just got to get the next man up and got to continue to make plays with the other guys.”

Smart on if Brock Bowers was just sore after last week…

“Yeah, he was more sore this week than he’s been. He was not able to do much during the week. He tried to go, he wanted to go, but it just, I mean, he’s sore. He’s got to be honest with us and tell us.”

Smart on Dillon Bell…

“Really important. He’s a good football player. He’s a jack of all trades. He’s a great kid, hard worker, makes plays with the ball. I think the offensive staff deserves a lot of credit for finding different people. When you talk about five starters being out on offense from different spots and then still to go out there and do what they do, they just find the next man. Who’s the next man to touch the ball? They’ve done a good job of that.”

Kirby Smart on if the team has done enough to earn a playoff spot…

“I really wouldn’t even want to answer that. I’m so worried about what we’re doing and getting better. I’m going to leave that for you guys. I’m not worrying about lobbying for anything. I’m worried about playing for an SEC championship which is really hard, really hard to get. There’s one of the greatest venues in all of sports is the SEC championship. I’ve been very fortunate to coach in it a lot of times from DC position and head coach position. It’s probably the best atmosphere I’ve ever been around. We’ll be concerning ourselves with that.”

Smart on rating the defense overall this season…

“It’s hard to rate it. Game by game, probably easier. I’m really proud of the connection they have and how hard they work. I haven’t even looked at the stats, I literally don’t know what the stats say. I just know that there’s some times we could play better and there’s some times we’ve had to play with guys that might not quite be ready yet, but they’ve had to step up and answer the bell. I love coaching them every day, I love being around them. I love our defensive staff. I love all that. But we’ve got to get better.”

Smart on what it says about the team’s depth to have guys out and still make plays…

“Well, it says that our offensive staff can find ways to get them the ball. They’ve got to keep finding the next man up. It is what it is. It happens to everybody. I’m proud of the depth we have, but I don’t think anybody’s got enough depth. We’re thin at some spots, we’ve had to practice different ways the last couple weeks just because of how thin we are.”

Kirby Smart on the pass play that led to the interception… 

“Oh, yeah. We were trying to score a touchdown. We’re not going to play for a field goal. We called a play to score a touchdown. Unfortunately, I think they dropped eight and the ball either got tipped or richotted, I’m not really sure, off of our guy or their guy. Unfortunate. That happens in the game. You try to avoid that. You’d like to have a situation there where you get the points, the field goal. But if we can score a touchdown we need to score a touchdown.

Smart on the ineligible man downfield penalty… 

“Yeah he said they were pass the threshold for how far he should be. I’ve never had it called for me, now I’ve had it called against me. I’ve been dealing with that thing for a lot of years.”

Smart on winning this game as an alumni… 

“It’s not about me. It’s not about him. At least it’s not for me. It’s about these kids. I want these kids to walk out of here with a zero in the loss column. And that’s what I want. There’s a group of seniors in there that got a chance to do that. That’s what it is about. Dominaiting your rivalires. SEC East, crossover opponent and instate rivalry. You have to win those to have good years. Those kids have done that for three years now. 

Kirby Smart on Oscar Delp and his blocking… 

“Don’t know. Didn’t really get to watch it. Oscar is a tough dude. Love the way he works and practices.

Smart on the Zion Logue tip… 

“Huge play in the game. Huge play in the game. Momentum is going to swing the other way with the PI call. That tipped ball is big and coach [Tray Scott] stresses and works on it all the time. We always kid Z-Lo, he’s finally starting to get some of those tips in his latter years. It’s a big play for him.”

Smart on Haynes King... 

“No. 1, he’s an incredible athlete. I don’t how much he extends plays with his legs, as much as it is how good he runs the ball. Their run scheme is really good. They’re running a form of the triple option from the gun. He has multiple ooitopins on each play. He made good decisions. We looked like we misfit somethings. I don’t know. I got to go back and watch it. They might have just whipped us. But it will be interesting to go back and watch it and see.

Kirby Smart on Georgia’s run defense…

“It depends what kind of run it is. We go back to the conversations we’ve had before, there are different kinds of runs. There’s quarterback runs and gap runs which are really hard to defend if you have a good quarterback who can run the ball. I’ve seen it all over the country. We’re pretty good at stopping a lot of runs, but we’re still working on stopping some of those runs. We’ve got to do a better job.”

Smart on what SEC Championship week looks like…

“Like it does every week. We’re going to start tomorrow and prepare. You don’t change what you do because of who you play. We have a really good routine that we feel comfortable with. It’ll be a game week.”

Smart on ending of Iron Bowl…

“We were in the locker room, and somebody came up to me when we were on the field for warm ups. They said Auburn had won, and that it was 4th and whatever. I didn’t think about it again until we were coming in, and somebody said they ended up converting that and winning it. I never saw it, just heard about it.”

Kirby Smart on special teams tonight…

“It was huge for field position. Outside of our rushing offense and offensive line, that was the biggest win in the game. That third element, to be able to dominate the kickoff returns – nobody gives the kid credit, but Zirkel didn’t give them a chance to return one. As much as we got to return it, they didn’t. It was probably the difference in the game. That, and recovering the onside kick.”

Smart on Alabama run game with Jalen Milroe being similar to Haynes King…

“I haven’t seen them. I don’t know that. I know they’re physical, they’re big, they’ve got a really good quarterback, good wideouts. They’ve got a good team.”

Smart on penalties…

“I don’t ever talk about officiating, but it’s one of those where we go to a different conference and they have different standards. We evaluate every crew that we get, and their crew had more penalties than any SEC crew going into the game. We just thought it was going to be a more penalized game. I guess they call it closer, more holdings, more personal fouls. They just have more fouls in their games than we average in the SEC. It just so happened that a lot of them went against us at inopportune times, but I don’t question officiating. I think those guys do a great job.”

Kirby Smart on Marvin Jones, Christen Miller sacks…

“They work hard. They get their snaps, they go out there and compete each day. Marvin’s getting better and better each game, and Christen’s been getting better. He’s been going down to the scout team and growing as a player as well.”