What Was Said: Kirby Smart shares as Georgia arrives at Orange Bowl

MIAMI, Fla. — Georgia and Florida State are set to meet in the Orange Bowl later this week, and both teams are now in South Florida. The Bulldogs landed safe and sound at Miami International Airport to hop on busses and head to their home for the next few days. Head coach Kirby Smart and a pair of players met with reporters upon arrival, and here’s what Smart had to say.

Kirby Smart Opening Statement…

“We’re excited to get down here. We had a Monday practice on Christmas Day, we got a Tuesday practice in this morning. We wanted to get down here so we could get used to the weather a little bit tomorrow, and hopefully avoid rain on Thursday. But our guys have been great. Had really good practices the last two days. Practice has been a lot better since we came back. Got a lot of midyears here. I’m excited to see how these guys are going to play.”

Smart on any drop off in practice…

“Absolutely not. I don’t know that the practices leading up to Christmas break were what I would love. Since we have been back, the two we’ve had have been really good.”

Smart on potential opt outs…

“Right now we’ve got our guys that are healthy playing, guys who are healthy and have been cleared to play have said they are going to play. They’ve been practicing, doing everything. We do have guys who are dinged up and injured trying to fight their way back, we’ll see if they can go or not in the game.”

Kirby Smart on preparing for Florida State…

“We’ve taken the approach of, it’s not about them, it’s about us. We don’t really know, but it doesn’t matter to us. We’re trying to play to our standard, and we’re always trying to play to our standard. We’ve had a lot more good on good in practice. It’s probably been the best bowl practice in terms of not going against the scout team and going against each other. When you don’t know what you’re going to see, your better off going against really good people. We’ve done a lot of 1s on 2s, 2s on 2s, a lot more 3s on 3s than we ever have with the good depth from the nine, ten, eleven midyears that are there now. We’ve been able to get a lot of depth.”

Smart on if transfers, midyears can be with the team…

“It depends on if they’re admitted to school. If they’re admitted to school – I don’t know if you’re talking about midyears (early enrollees) or transfer midyears. London (Humphreys) is here but not all the guys. Just the guys that are admitted to school.”

Smart on if Santa hooked him up…

“Some good food and good fellowship. No gifts or anything that I can think of.”

Kirby Smart on the balance between fun and football…

“We want them to enjoy it. They’ve earned this opportunity. That’s what bowls are. They’re meant to be fun. I think our senior class of guys, they really want to finish on top. They want to get to 50 wins for the senior class, we’re at 49. It’s really important to them that they hit that number and do something special. They want to walk off the field winners. Sedrick Van Pran, all these seniors, they want to finish on top.”

Smart on Brock Bowers…

“That’s up to Brock. Brock’s been with us the whole time and he’s been doing all the things he’s got to do. It’s more important though that he’s 100%. The guy probably played earlier than he should have, came out there and competed his butt off. He’s done everything he can for Georgia. He’s not 100% so it makes it a little harder to do.”

Smart on Ladd McConkey…

“Ladd’s been great. Ladd’s been practicing with us, working out. Ladd wants to play. Ladd’s missed some games and hasn’t been able to play in some games. He’s still coming off of an injury in the SEC Championship Game that he’s still not 100% from. But he’s out there every day, taking reps, catching punts, he’s doing a lot of good things. He’s doing a lot of good things (inaudible). He’s practicing, hitting good miles per hour. Ladd should be good to go.”

Kirby Smart on what he’s looking forward to the most…

“I think the kids getting away from our campus and getting sunshine and getting out there and competing. I’m ready to see them play. I mean, I want to see the guys play. There’s a lot of guys that have working their butts off moving up and down the depth chart. We’re probably healthier than we’ve been for the last four or five games of the year. It’s great to see these guys go out and play. I’m really proud of the guys that are dying to go play. Everybody thinks like guys are going to play. Our guys are going to play. Our guys want to play. Our guys are excited to play.”

Smart on Jared Zirkel playing and if any other portal players will…

“No, Zirkel was a special circumstance. He was, I don’t know, a fourth-year or a fifth-year. He’s been here forever. He asked me — he said, ‘Can I go in?’ I didn’t even know if he’s going to go anywhere. He’s got his graduate degree. He’s graduated. He just wanted to stay with us and kick the final one. A lot of guys don’t want to go do that. They want to go look, shop around, figure out where they’re going. That was never the intent for him. He just wanted to see what options were out there.”

Smart on if the transfer portal calendar is problematic…

“Well, it is what it is. We’ve been dealing with that for, what is it, four? I don’t know how many it is. Three or four, but they shrunk it some this year and reduced the number of days. I don’t think they got what they wanted out of that. I don’t have complaints about it because they want kids to have flexibility. My biggest problem is trying to finish what you started and finished the season. If you notice, the teams playing in the Playoffs aren’t getting hit with it as much. It’s making the bowls harder to deal with for people, but not really for us. The kids we’ve got there are all in, wanting to play and do a great job. It’s not really been an issue or a big problem for us.”