What did Kirby Smart say about the Gamecocks?

In advance of the South Carolina Gamecocks football program’s road matchup with Georgia on Saturday, UGA head coach Kirby Smart spoke to the media for his weekly press conference on Monday.

The following is an edited transcript of Smart’s remarks pertaining to South Carolina.

OPENING STATEMENT: I’m turning the page to an SEC opponent and our stadium, 3:30 CBS game. It seems like most of the years Georgia opens with South Carolina in this game. It hasn’t always been that since I’ve been here, but it’s always been early in the schedule as it is this year.

I have a lot of respect for Shane and his staff, the staff he’s assembled. They do a tremendous job with their players; they play really hard. Got a lot respect for those guys. I know they tend to have players from our state, and we tend to have players from their state.

It’s always a really important game when it comes to playing a school that’s this close geographically to you. So I know both teams will be up for the game, and it should be a great atmosphere. I hope our fans can give us a home field advantage for this game.

QUESTION: What have you seen from Spencer Rattler, and what do you expect from him the second time you guys play?

SMART: Well, he’s got elite arm talent, I can tell you that. The throws he’s made, he can make the touch throws, deep vertical, back shoulder throws. He’s thrown a couple of field outs. He had a throw against Clemson last year on third and ten that was a rope. He’s very elusive, very accurate with the ball, hard to finish on.

There are a lot of people that miss tackles on him when they have an opportunity to try to get him down. So, tremendous player, sees the whole field, and some of his best plays come off schedule. Somebody misses somebody, or he scrambles, and he hits you on the shot. He’s very dangerous.

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QUESTION: The competition South Carolina faced week one and week two is hard to compare, but what did they improve from game one to game two that has your attention?

SMART: I don’t want to evaluate it that way. I evaluate it as, who are they? I look at last year’s games. They have some players back from last year that are explosive. They’ve got good football players across the board and they play really hard. When you look at the end of the year schedule last year with what they did with Tennessee and Clemson, it speaks for itself. Their kids don’t listen to the outside noise. They go out and play like they’re coached to play. It’s going to be the same way this week for us.

[Win a Spencer Rattler-autographed football]

QUESTION: Kirby, we’re on generation two of Beamer Ball where Shane’s dad and him both make their special teams. They mix it up. How do you prepare for that when you know that they’re very good at it?

SMART: They were tops in the conference last year in the little composite thing we do in terms of looking at all of them and ranking all the special teams units and taking a composite in that. They were one in the SEC. It’s something they do a really, really good job of. I know he’s very hands-on with that; he’s passionate about it. It creates an identity for his players, and you can see them; they play that way on special teams. They play really hard on special teams units. It’s an important part of the game. If you look at our second game, I don’t know about their first one, it was impactful for us, too. You’re going to have a lot of momentum plays in those units.

QUESTION: Coach, they obviously have a new coordinator. Dowell Loggains taking over as offensive coordinator. He’s bounced around a lot over the last couple of years. When you go to study that, how deep do you dive into trying to figure out his identity as a coordinator? How do you go about studying someone who’s new to you?

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SMART: Well, you look in the offseason. We spent a lot of the offseason looking at things he had done at other places he’s been at. You watch what they currently do; you see the impact of what they’re doing this year is probably the biggest priority. You also watch where he’s been and what they’ve done last year. They were really successful at the end of last year and he wasn’t a part of that. I think it’s a mesh of all those guys in terms of what they’re doing now. We look as far back as we can because we want to get all the information that we can.

QUESTION: Coach, you touched on Spencer Rattler’s arm talent earlier. In the UT-Martin game, you spoke of how they weren’t tested too much. Now that they’re facing a guy like Rattler that can really get it down the field, how important is it for that group to really be tested, especially this weekend and for the rest of the season?

SMART: We’ve got to be prepared. It’s not just Rattler; it’s the weapons he has around him. They’ve got an elite group of wideouts and even tight ends that they use, and he makes a lot of plays, and they got guys that can play the ball down the field. The explosive plays that they’ve made in the last four or five games of theirs, pretty special, pretty neat. A lot of them are downfield throws, so we will have to play that part well.

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