UGA Football coach Kirby Smart, No. 1 Dawgs Set for Tough Test vs. Clemson Tigers
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ATHENS - UGA Football coach Kirby Smart gaves a full update on the Georgia Bulldogs as the Dawgs get set to open the season against Dabo Swinney’s Clemson Tigers on Saturday in Atlanta.
Opening Statement
"Welcome to Monday game week. Our guys got work in on Thursday, Friday, a little bit Saturday and then starting back today after Sunday off on Clemson. Our guys are excited for a great matchup. Looks like we'll get the earliest kick of the day, so it should be exciting in terms of all the people across the country that'll be waking up on the West Coast, getting to watch a great game and really, a great rivalry. A rivalry that when you look back, I didn't realize how many years consecutively Georgia played Clemson for a long time. Just a lot of respect for their program, what Dabo (Swinney) has done, he's done an incredible job. He's got a great culture there, a great environment. You think about their coaching staff, how intact it's been able to stay, how many coaches he's had go on to be head coaches and they do a tremendous job recruiting our state and we go head-to-head with them quite a bit. When you look across their roster, there's a lot of kids that we were really close to and I'm sure it's the same way with him. So, it should be an awesome environment. I have so much respect for the Kickoff Classic Game, Gary Stokan and his staff. Aflac is near and dear to my heart and has done a tremendous job in our state. And for them to take over this cause, I think it's a great event. To have two teams like this, it's going to be awesome.”
On what he is studying about Clemson…
Well, you study the history of the coordinators, and you look at that hard. You know Dabo has an impact on the offense, so you look at what he's done through his time being there. The most recent you look at is last year's games, and nobody is exactly what they were the year before, but you don't have any other options to study. You don't have game film of this year. This is the only game that we'll go into without game film of this year, so it all starts to change. But I'm sure everybody across the country is the same way. Do you have a new wrinkle? Do you have a new player that's an impact that you're trying to use in a certain way? What are you going to do different? What are you going to do the same? At the end of the day, coaches chase all those things, but it boils down to who blocks the best, who tackles the best, who makes the least catastrophic mistakes and avoiding turnovers and being explosive.”
On Clemson quarterback Cade Klubnik…
“It seems like he's been there forever, and this is really his third year, but he's a great, really good athlete. He's played a lot of football for a guy that age, has the ability to scramble, make plays on his feet, has more weapons around him. I think he's a lot more comfortable now in their offense. You could see that throughout the year last year as you watched the season go on, how much more comfortable he got, especially when they started going to Phil (Mafah) a lot more as their feature back and became a much more physical team. The addition of Matt Luke, who's a tremendous coach, was here with us. I think that makes them even more versatile in some of the things he's going to bring to the table. But Cade has been a great asset for them, and I know he'll be very experienced.”
On Clemson offensive line coach Matt Luke…
“Toughness. He's got an extremely experienced offensive line. I want to say it's almost 100 starts. I mean, three of the five guys have over 25 or something. That's crazy. Very rare in college football to have a person with more than 25 starts, because that means they’ve stayed for, at least, they're coming into their third season starting. They've got a tremendous offensive line in terms of the amount of experience they have starting. I would have thought ours was one of the most experienced offensive lines in the country. Well, theirs has got more starts than ours. I know Matt will do a tremendous job. They'll play with toughness, effort. I'm sure he'll add some wrinkles to their offense, but he's a really good football coach.”
On Colbie Young’s availability…
“Yeah, Colbie's been great. Ever since the scrimmage, not this Saturday we didn't scrimmage, the Saturday before that, he's been able to get out there and run and do some things. He practiced ever since we started on Clemson full go. He's been great and should be ready to go.”
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On Clemson recruiting Georgia players and its impact on their identity…
“I don't know if I have a better identity, I guess, compared to what? To other teams we play? I mean, you play more teams in your conference, and you see them more in overlap film. So, a lot of times you can see defensive players in the SEC multiple times in your breakdown. Clemson you won't see in your breakdown very often. We do know a lot of their players, but it's offense and defense both in terms of that. There are a lot more, it seems like Georgia flavor to their defense. Some of that may be the area that their coaches on defense recruit. I know they've got a former high school coach of Georgia on their defensive staff. There's a lot of good defensive players from our state on their defense.”
On the running back room…
“Really excited about the backs we've got. The guys have worked really hard. They continue to grow and get better. You know, Rod's (Roderick Robinson II) toe is still an issue for him. Any time you go into the new season you're like, ‘What do I have?’ You don't really know what you have. That's why it's so critical in our spring to go out and play our spring game like it's a game because it's the first version of your new self. Then you go through the scrimmages, which we've had two, and you try to figure out the best version of yourself in those scrimmages because those are preseason games in the NFL terms. I felt really comfortable with where our backfield is in those games and doing a good job. I mean, at Georgia we don't like to say, ‘Okay, let's start all over.’ There's these guys that have been in our program that have been picking up stunts, blitzes that our defense runs. We do two-spot walkthroughs where they're getting to pick things up. There's a lot of guys that have had a lot of reps doing those things that hopefully have a great game Saturday.”
On Warren Brinson’s and Roderick Robinson II’s statuses…
“Warren (Brinson) looks good. He's practiced every day. We've practiced for Clemson. He's done a good job. He's been out there competing. I mean, he didn't get the luxury of going through camp, which to me is like, you know, camp is what you build your foundation on. So, he missed some time in camp. But he also has had four camps in his time at Georgia. So, it's not like it's his first go-around in terms of that. And, yeah, Rod did have surgery on his toe.”
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On Warren Brinson’s and Roderick Robinson II’s statuses…
“Warren (Brinson) looks good. He's practiced every day. We've practiced for Clemson. He's done a good job. He's been out there competing. I mean, he didn't get the luxury of going through camp, which to me is like, you know, camp is what you build your foundation on. So, he missed some time in camp. But he also has had four camps in his time at Georgia. So, it's not like it's his first go-around in terms of that. And, yeah, Rod did have surgery on his toe.”
On Carson Beck’s relationship with the team…
“I think that each individual person responds differently to how they perceive NIL. So, to assume that it's a problem in a locker room is probably not a good assumption, and to assume that it's not is probably not a good assumption. So, we try to address that early in our team back in January and February when you start brand new that everybody is in a different position. It's no different. We show the NFL salary cap. We show the NFL minimum. We show the NFL the highest thing you can get at each position in franchise players. It's very obvious what quarterbacks make as starting quarterbacks in the NFL, and by no means do I think that we are the NFL. But our kids acknowledge and recognize that the quarterback is a different position when it comes to NIL, and Carson does a good job handling that. It's never been about that with him. He's very humble. He works hard. He's a leader, and the players respect what Carson went through to get where he is. And I think he earned that.”
On Beck’s comfort with the offense…
“I was pretty comfortable with Carson last year, to be honest with you, because he's seen a bunch of live bullets in practices. When you've got a guy that's been in your program as long as he has and done as many drills and pickups and blitzes and third downs. I mean, the guy, that was not my biggest concern last year, and it wouldn't be my biggest concern this year in terms of his ability to execute, to understand what defenses are trying to do. He's seen most of it. It's more about can he elevate the people around him in this game? Can he make them better? And that's one of the things he's been working on.”
On Beck’s experience and improvement…
“He's very comfortable in the offense. I think Coach Bobo, Coach Hartley, all the guys on offense that make decisions, they know they can probably put a little more on his plate in terms of volume. But you're always limited by the other people around you. And I think that's key in the first game, is that we're not overloading their plate to appease Carson and being smart about how much you game plan and how much you put in versus what do you do well and what do you do all year round well.”
On Trevor Etienne and the freshmen running backs…
“I'm excited about all those guys. I don't really talk about any of the other stuff in regards to any of our players with suspensions. But I'm excited about all the guys that are going to get an opportunity to play it back.”
On Roderick Robinson’s recovery…
“Not real sure. Probably be week to week. Not sure how long it will take in terms of the surgery.”
On if suspensions have been levied…
“Like I said, we don't discuss those. Thank you.”
On Clemson not adding players from the portal…
“I think that's much ado about nothing. I mean, you have who you have, right? So, in the spring, you have, I'm going to guess, 90 percent, 95 percent of your roster. You might pick up some after that. But I think everybody makes a big deal about that. I mean, I'm like Dabo. If I could keep my entire roster, my roster, I'd be all for keeping my roster, my roster because I believe in the kids we sign, I believe in the kids we recruit, and I want to grow them to get better. It's not realistic to think that you're going to keep all your players right now. I mean, what is realistic is that you need to be operating with as much depth as possible, and it's made it tougher to do that. But as far as evaluating the opposing team, whether they have kids or don't have kids, one thing you know is they're going to know their system because they've been in it. They're not new to it. They're ingrained in it. They know their culture. They know who they are. They know how they play. They know what their standard is. And that, to me, is you can be envious of that, the fact that they have the guys that have been in their program are in their program.”
On Mykel Williams changing positions…
“He's not really at a new position. All the things he did last year, he's done this year. So, he works last year at outside linebacker in individual period, and he worked with defensive line. So those two are like a mirror, they almost share the same responsibilities. He's done the same thing this year that he did last year. I think that's more of a souped-up answer that he's playing a different position. He's not really playing a different position. He's got the versatility to be able to go out and be an outside linebacker because he's a really good athlete. He can cover and play people, but it's one of the best qualities. The most rewarding quality is rush, and we want him to be able to rush.”
On familiarity with Mercedes-Benz Stadium
“Hard to say. That's about five minutes' worth of value. Once the game kicks off, nobody's thinking about where they are, they're thinking about the person they're playing against.”
On Clemson’s defensive line…
“You look at it on paper and people say, well, they only have a certain number of defensive starters, but two of the best players and statistically their best players they had last year, are back, and they were freshmen who technically didn't start. Those guys were dominant players, (T.J.) Parker and Peter Woods both were really good players, but we knew those guys in recruiting, and they're tremendous athletes, and both very productive with other guys coming back. They've got experienced guys coming back. So, when you look across the defensive front, Clemson is never going to be short there. They have twitchy, fast, hard-playing guys. The linebacker crew is extremely instinctive and well-coached. You can see the carryover from when Brent (Venables) left. They don't miss things in terms of keys and recognition, and they play really hard on defense.”
On Clemson linebacker Barrett Carter…
“First of all, he's a tremendous kid. He's one of the high academic kids, went to a great high school right there at North Gwinnett. Just a fun kid to recruit because he had a great personality. He enjoyed recruiting, he was upfront and honest. He didn't get too enamored in the process; he handled it the right way and made the choice that he thought was best for him. He's become a really good player, a dominant player, you can see on tape his instincts and his athleticism. He's a playmaker, and they've got a good one in Barrett.”
On Branson Robinson’s comeback…
“It's been a process. The kid was down in the dumps because he was having a great camp last year, the injury happened, and he wasn't with the rest of the team for a lot of the time. He had to break away, go about things a different way. He spent a lot of time in the training room. That is a grueling injury to go through and work all the way back to the point where he didn't get to go through all of spring. He did a lot of things in spring, but he didn't get to go through that in spring. So, this fall camp's been big for him in terms of confidence. He's gained confidence through special teams. He's gained confidence through reps. But he had a good body of work before, so it wasn't like he didn't have that entire freshman year where he took a lot of reps that 2022 season.”
On Clemson running back Phil Mafah…
“Physicality. He's got a downhill way about him. He's one of those guys that was that way in high school. The more carries he gets, the harder he is to tackle. I think he enjoys it the more he gets it. They hung their hat on him there towards the later part of last season, he was really physical, and a really good runner. I think with that offensive line tying the experience they have and size they have to him, it makes any offense work better when you can run the ball.”