Everything UGA Football coach Kirby Smart said After Wild Loss at Alabama Crimson Tide
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TUSCALOOSA - UGA Football coach Kirby Smart talks about the No. 2 Dawgs’ wild game with the No. 4 Alabama Crimson Tide.
Opening Statement
"Well, obviously, one hell of a game. Great atmosphere, a lot of respect for Alabama's team, their fans, the venue, it was one hell of a game. A tale of the two halves. Obviously, we were not really prepared, and that falls on me. In the first half, we didn't do a great job, especially defensively, but we also gave them short field, and the short field in a quarterback like Milroe creates a lot of tough times. I am extremely proud of our team. At halftime, I thought our coaches made good adjustments. Everybody was positive. I told them 'Look, guys I've been in the stadium down to Texas A&M, probably just as bad, and came back to make a game, had a chance to win the game and didn't make more plays. So a lot of credit to them and for us, humility is always a week away, we got to go get ready for another tough opponent coming to our place so that I'll open it up."
On what went wrong in the first half and how it was fixed in the second half
"Well, we probably weren't as aggressive. We were more aggressive in the first half, and took some chances and probably got hit on some things that they did a good job of packaging run and pass with him, and you know he's hard to defend. But when he's 28-of-31 halftime, he was what it was. There was not very many incompletions. He's really hard to defend. So you have to pick your poison. Do you want the guy to take off and beat you running? Do you want to play loose coverage and try to keep eyes on him so he doesn't take off. He ran the ball well in the perimeter, and we lost contain. And then he also threw the ball well, which made it really tough. In the second half, we played some tighter coverage. We made some stops. We possessed the ball at offense. We just you make stops, you give yourself a chance."
On Ryan Williams and Jalen Milroe
"Great player. I mean, I got asked by the Game Day crew before the game about what are you gonna do special for Ryan Williams? I said 'We can't do anything special.' They got a guy back there at quarterback who can be the best running back in the country, and he throws the ball. So you can't put two people on Ryan Williams. You can't do it. You got to make him make throws. We've known Ryan for a long time. He came to our place several visits. He's such a great kid. He's extremely fast and elusive. He's got great ball skills. Malaki (Starks) had really good cover of him on a double move he got on top of Malachi. If I had to do over again, we would challenge him more and get up on him. We were off a lot, but the play he made was actually in press coverage. They were late and that's okay to give that up. That's hard, but we caught that ball now, check tackle. Gotta get them on the ground, make them snap it again, and if we have momentum, make them drive it through. We came on the ground, that's the biggest fatal flaw of that play."
On Jalen Milroe
"I was surprised we turned the ball over I don't know how many times, two or three in the short area, short field, and they did a really good job in the red area. We were going to make Milroe throw the ball in the red area to beat us. We didn't have to. He ran around us. We had our best player on him on fourth-and-one, and he outran him to the sideline, and then turned up and scored. He ran outside of a blitz defense that we got more people than they can block in there, and they ran up what we call a moon sweep outside. He's a really good football player. He's a really good football player. So if you could just stop him and not worry about him throwing, I think you could do it. But when he's throwing it well and they're catching it more, really hard to stop."
On the message to Georgia during halftime
"Get stops. We gotta get stops. You know what I mean, play by play. You got to do a better job. You got to settle down. You got to communicate well. If you go back to the first drive or third-and-seven, and we worked all week [on this]. They go fast on third down. They hard count. They look to see what you're in. And we practice that all week. And we talked about not jumping outside. We jump off sides. And they're deadly on third-and-two. They're hard to stop on third-and-two. So we have third-and-seven, three-and-out, we're going to get the ball. Doesn't happen, and they score, and then they score, and then we turnover and they score. It was tough sledding for sure and I give them a lot of credit. They did some different things, very similar plays, but they had different looks to it. Good job with their backs out of the backfield too."
On Carson Beck in the first half vs. second half
"I don't know if there was a huge difference. We had four downs to do everything in the second half. So the four downs made a big difference. When you got four downs, you got a couple of waste in there. We got to the point where we had to be aggressive and go fast, which opened some things up. I was really proud of the way he played. You know, some of the one of the interceptions were not his fault. He did what he was supposed to do, and the fumble was probably the one that he'll look back on and say 'It's first-and-10. Just throw it away. Just throw it away.' We don't have to make a play there, because we got four downs. We got second, third, fourth, and to fumble that, when we go back to red zone, makes it really tough."
On his assessment of Alabama as a team
"I think they got really good players. They got a great program. I got immense amount of respect for them. They do a great job. I mean, they get some pretty good players. Kalen (DeBoer) got new players in here. It's a tough battle. Two of them have been here, you know, and they've been tough. They've been really tough battles. So a lot of credit to those guys. Respectful."
On what he said to players as they walked off of the field
"Well, there's no greater response of a leader than to be with the guys who go to battle with you and those kids went to battle tonight. But make no mistake about it, that group we got in there, man, they're connected. They're proud. They got pride. And I told them, 'Guys, I don't know what the second half is gonna look like, but I do know this, when we watch it, we're gonna find out a lot about ourselves. We're gonna see what kind of character we got. And I'll be honest, I thought we were a team that was in really good shape. I thought that we could play them into the fourth quarter. Once we had the situation we were we just had to get one moment at a time, and I didn't want to walk off the field without telling each one of them how much I appreciated how they responded to those true, tough adversities there."
On if there's anything different from what he previously learned about Alabama
"We can't turn the ball over and win games. I mean, we know that. We've been one of the few teams that hasn't done that, but we flirted with it, you know, and we had several times tonight where we turned it over. And we were more explosive, but so were they, and they're an extremely explosive team. I mean, they're going to be explosive all year because they got a group of explosive playmakers. But I know, I know the team I got never I didn't learn anything tonight that I didn't already know because they're fighters."
On the late touchdown to give Georgia it's first lead
"Great play design by Mike, and we thought that it was there all week and had to be the right look. And I felt it was a great call. I didn't even know at the time he called it, but it was one of those that we thought we could take advantage of their aggressiveness. They got some really aggressive safeties, and he bit on it, and it was a great throw by Carson, a great play. He came again."
On his evaluation of Georgia's offense
"Well, tonight is hard to judge, because third down was second down. I can't, you know, say tonight, I mean, we were behind so early, this was a hard game to evaluate from an offensive standpoint when it's that quick. You know what I mean? And I do think we got to communicate better. We got to execute at a higher level. And that was one of the things we said coming out of Kentucky. But look, it's hard to communicate in that environment. I've been in this league a long time. You go call a play and try to get 11 people on the same page and execute while not being vanilla. It's a challenge, and they make it tough play on the road, and we got to do a better job of executing a high clip. I mean, we get a max Blitz. We check to a screen. It's a great call. It's a perfect thing to do, and a guy misses it, and he doesn't see the signal, and we throw a pick, you know? So it's like, you can't do those things against good teams at the end."
On Carson Beck's turnovers
"Pressure. Carson just didn't protect the ball. He had one hand on the ball. You know, you can point to anything, and turnovers, they had too, you know, since it was really important that you don't turn the ball over, but we had to take risk too. So every time we had a fourth down, it was a potential turnover. They had a fourth down that we stopped, that was a turnover. So it was a lot of big plays in that game. A lot of big plays to get ahead."
On UGA players
"We're not built like that. We're not gonna do that. I mean, that's not who we are. We fight too much each day out of practice to sit down and quit. I mean, they had a great response in halftime. I thought (it) was great the way they handled it."