UGA Football Defensive Coach Raves About Superstar Malaki Starks

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ATHENS - The Georgia Bulldogs consistently have one of the best defenses across college football, and the 2024 season should be no different.

Here's what Bulldog co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach Travaris Robinson told reporters on Tuesday...

Opening Statement

"I'm very excited about this opportunity. I'm excited to be at the University of Georgia and get a chance to meet you guys. As we go through this entire process hopefully, I'll get a chance to see you guys around and build relationships with you guys."

On working for Muschamp, Saban, and Smart…

"Obviously both of those guys, Coach Smart and Coach Muschamp, obviously worked with Coach Saban for a long time and some of the core values of the organization and how we do things is something that they really looked at and you can tell that they've done a really good job of learning from Coach Saban and doing those things. But I think as I got here at the University of Georgia, I saw that Coach Smart was able to take some of the things that we did at Alabama and expound upon those things. And I think from how we practice, the energy, the different things that we do, I think is very important and he does a great job of doing that."

On Will Muschamp…

"I've been with Coach Muschamp for a long time. I GA'd for him at Auburn, worked with him at University of Florida, was his defensive coordinator at South Carolina. He's a guy that's been a mentor to me, father figure. And everything that I've done in my career, he always assisted me in. When he told me that he was looking into not being here full time, but being here a lot of the time, it's something that I wanted to do. Because he wanted someone, because he's a big time Georgia guy, obviously played here and did those different things. And he wanted to pass that torch to somebody that he felt that can come in and kind of run things like he did. And I was excited about that call. When Coach Saban retired, Coach Smart called me and Coach Muschamp and him got on the phone and told me exactly what it was going to be. And I was excited to do it. And I wanted to be a part of the same type of culture, the same type of environment. And I thought it was the best thing for me to do."

On Malaki Starks…

"Man, what a great kid. I talk to my kids a lot about Malaki. Malaki is a guy who you want your son to be like. I'll give you a quick story. I was gaining a little weight. Okay. Alright. So, I'll be the first person to say it. I was gaining a little weight. I told Malaki, ‘I'm going to start running.’ And he was like, ‘Okay, what time are you going to run?’ So, I said 5:30. So he says, okay. So, I get in at 5:30 and Malaki's in the dang indoor waiting on me. Alright, so I run the first day. So, I'm like, alright. So, he said, ‘What time are we coming tomorrow, Coach?’ So, I said, ‘All right, we're going to come at 5:30 again.’ Same thing. So, then the next day I was kind of, my knee was bothering me a little bit. So I said, ‘I ain't going to run tomorrow.’ But I wasn't going to tell Malaki that. So, I get home. It's probably about 10:30, 11 o'clock. And I get a text from Malaki. Hey, what time are we going, Coach? And Malaki's a lot faster than me in case you guys are wondering. And that's even when I played. So, you know, he's straining, he's doing all the things, but it's the same thing he does on the field. Right. He's holding people accountable. I think that's one of his greatest traits. Yes. He's a good football player. Yes. He's a great ball hawk, all that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, Malaki holds people accountable, and he holds himself accountable. That's why he's a good player."

On Muschamp’s analyst role…

"His role looked like the same thing if he was a head coach when he was coming down my neck every single day. I mean, he's in every single meeting with me, bothering me all the time. So, it's crazy, man. My entire career, whether it's been Coach Muschamp, Coach Saban being in the room. Now I'm at a place, I'm at the University of Georgia, Coach Smart's in the defensive back room. He's a DB guy. Coach Muschamp's in the DB room, Coach Donte's in the DB room. I mean, it's like an AFCA clinic every single day, man. But you know, at the end of the day, man, it's been, it's been great. I really enjoy Coach Muschamp being here and helping me kind of get through the process of learning how we do things. Because some of the things that we do here is a little different than what we did at Alabama. Kirby's done a really good job and Coach Schumann of changing some of the different things that we did and making it not as complex. And I think our guys are able to play faster because of that."

On Donte Williams…

"I've known about Coach Donte for a long time. He's been kind of the T-Rob on the West Coast coaching all those guys. We heard about him in recruiting, had some really good recruiting battles with him. But he's a very personable guy. He's a guy that has a lot of energy. I don't know if you guys had a chance to see it, but one time I was out at practice, I guess my first or second day, and I see a guy running down the field with a helmet on, but he had no jersey. So, I was like who don't have a jersey at practice? I thought it was a player. It was Donte going there and doing some different things with the corners, working on back shoulder fades and different things like that. And I asked him, because he's kind of a pretty boy, he's a good-looking guy. And, he said to me, he did it before when he was at other places, and he got hit in the face. So, he started putting on a helmet because of that. But Donte's a really good dude, very smart coach. I'm very excited to get a chance to work for him. He's a relentless recruiter and I'm excited to get a chance to work with him here at Georgia."

On Joenel Aguero…

"I'll tell you what the good thing about these guys, I recruited a lot of these guys, so I had a previous relationship with Joenel. So, always knew that he was very explosive, knew he got great coverage ability and different things like that. So. getting a chance to come here and watch him develop and learn the system and learn how we do things and why we do things, it's been very good. I thought he did a really good job in spring and he's processing through camp. And I think he's doing an amazing job of learning how we do things and trying to do what we're asking them to do. But he's a talented guy. We're in a competition battle all across the board. Like we told our guys first day, we stood up Malaki Starks. Yes, two-time All-American. Now, he don't have a job. The motto this year is assume nothing. So, if everybody takes that approach of assume nothing, everybody will get better. And I think Joenel has kind of taken to that and he's doing a really good job with the reps that he's getting out in camp."

On running with Malaki…

"No, I'm not, as you could tell. Obviously, we in camp right now, so he isn’t getting up and doing that with me right now, but I need to take my butt back out there and start running. So maybe I need to make him hold me accountable again."

On comparing Kirby Smart and Nick Saban…

"First of all, I would say, you see this microphone right here. That'd probably be the main difference. As far as from the energy and different things like that and getting out the guys and holding guys accountable, I would say is equal. Say the same thing. I would say the microphone, getting that public talking to, cause it's a little different now when a guy come run to you and tell you something, or when you hear it on that microphone and your players hear, I'm talking to you, hey T-Rob, this guy don't know what he's doing or you don't know how to coach it. So, it holds everybody accountable. It's really good. And anybody can get it, man. That's the great thing about this place. Coach Saban has been a mentor to all of us. We talk to him all the time. He's a guy who, everything we learned, we learned from him and, he's been great to us. So, excited about those guys and excited to be here."

On the freshman secondary players…

“The guys are doing a really good job. You look at, from the safety position, we brought in KJ Bolden. We brought in Collin Gill, who was a guy that transferred in from Oregon, and we brought in those guys, and those guys are learning the system, learning how we do things. KJ is really doing a good job with the reps that he's getting. Obviously, he was here earlier. He was a mid-year, so that helps. It helps a lot because he understands what we expect from him like the drills that we're out there introducing to them, he'd done them before, so nothing's new to him. It gives him a little confidence that he can go out there and get it done. When you talk in terms of corners, you look at Ellis (Robinson), you look at Ondre (Evans), you look at some of those guys, and those guys have done a really good job. They have a chance to be really good football players, but they're learning, and this is their fifth day of practice going into their sixth day of practice and fall camp. Those guys are going against some of the best athletes in the country, and they're doing a good job of trying their best to hold their own, but it's a lot. It's a big learning curve. It really is. It's a big difference between high school and college, and those guys are learning how to do things the right way and do it at the right time because they have always been the best athlete, but it's different when you get to college. The higher you go up in sports, the competition becomes so much greater, and those guys are at the best place in the country, and they're going against the best athletes in the country, and they're doing a good job of getting better.”

On going against Carson Beck in practice…

“I think it's Carson Beck. I think it's the offense. I think it's the running game. I think that all the different elements of what we do is hard. I was fortunate enough that I got a chance to play in a real game against Carson Beck. I got a chance to prepare against Coach Bobo in a real game, so I understand the difficulties of some of the things that we do that cause problems to a defense. I think the tempo and the different things like the motions, and Carson is a really, really good quarterback who knows where to go to football, gets the ball out of his hand very well, and really throws the deep ball well. So, I'm excited and challenged every single day, and I talk a lot of trash to Carson, and he does a good job of handling in the right way. He does a really good job of responding. He makes bad plays. He picks it up and he goes and does something different. And then he hurts us. He's a talented guy and we're going at it and battling every single day.”

On the simplification of the defense…

“I think we did a really good job. Coach Schumann and Coach Muschamp and the rest of the defensive staff is doing a great job of compartmentalizing the calls. We have different families and it's easy for our players to learn when you go in, and you say NFL quarterback is this. A generic man is that. This is what you do, so I think we do a really good job of simplifying those things, the verbiage and all the different things. We have a bunch of calls that the star doesn’t have to worry about lining up when they're going fast. He’s lined to the field, so we’ve got some different things to get guys, younger guys, more guys on the field to go out and execute. I think they've done a really good job of shrinking the system. I'm still doing the same variance of what we do but simplifying it so we can do it in faster ways.”

On mimicking Coach Muschamp…

“No, I'm not coming up with anything new. I am who I am. I learned from who I learned from. He's a guy that I respect in this profession. I respect as a man, I respect as a father, I respect him. He's a great guy, and I think the one of the things that I do is stay true to who I am and what I believe. I’ve got a different delivery. Coach Muschamp and I, we say some of the same stuff, but I say it a little different to him. I’ve got a little nicer side than he has sometimes.”

On the SEC Championship Game…

“It was just two good football teams going at it, and one football team happened to win the game. It was nothing that they gave away. It was nothing like that. It was just two really good football teams battling and competing. They have the same mindset because they came from the same type of environment.

On difficulties for freshmen in the secondary…

“The margin of error is very small back there. When you make a mistake, it's seven points. When you’re a defensive lineman, if you jump out of your gap, the linebacker has a chance to tackle. If you're a linebacker and you missed the tackle, the safety has a chance to tackle. Well, that safety is a guy who hadn't played a lot of ball or don't feel that he can get it done or makes a mistake or something like that, it’s seven points. We're on a back level where it's like being a quarterback. We have to do a lot of different things from a communication standpoint. We have to be on the same page. Everything that we practice, it doesn’t necessarily show up in the game. There's going to be some new stuff show up in the ball game that you have to have your experience. You got to have guys that have been in the fire, that've done it. That's why it's a little hard to play at that position, but we have guys do it every place I've been. If a guy's mature enough to do it, a guy's capable enough to do it, handle it from a mental standpoint and talented standpoint, then he'll be just fine.”

On Mike Bobo…

“Coach Bobo is the most competitive dude I know in no matter what we're doing, whether it's golf, whether it's cards, it doesn't matter. He's always been that way, but from a schematic standpoint, you look at all the different things that he does here, and we didn't have all those motions (at South Carolina). We had some of the fast huddle, huddle breaks, different things like that, but we didn't have all these speed motions and all these different things that we have here. It's a lot of moving parts, and it's very important to do that on offense in today's football because of all the different things that a defense is trying to do to you. The key to the drill when you're on offense is trying to make the defense talk, trying to get them to make a mistake. The easiest way to do that is by going fast and motion, and we do that better than anybody in the country.”

On Glenn Schumann…

“We call him like Rain Man. He's very, very intelligent. Very intelligent. He sees everything, has really good ideas, and he does a really good job in front of the guys. I think the guys really respect him. He does a really good job of delegating different things to the staff and giving people ownership in their job. You also should see him make some kind of edit or any kind of slide. He's the best on the computer I’ve ever seen, but he's an awesome dude. He's a great guy. He's a staff guy. He's a guy that I'm eager to continue to learn from and be a part and help with what we're trying to get accomplished here.”