Everything Georgia Football coach Kirby Smart Said After UGA's 41-13 Win Over Oklahoma
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ATHENS - Georgia football coach Kirby Smart spoke with reporters after Georgia’s dominant 41-13 win over Oklahoma.
Opening statement....
“Excited for the turnout, the atmosphere. That's what SEC atmosphere's are supposed to be like. Really amazing, awesome atmosphere. I thought it was a great deal. Excited for our guys and they played really hard. We’ve got to keep getting better.”
On Chris Cole’s touchdown...
“I'll be honest with you, I don't think Chris gets the credit for that, right? He's Johnny on the spot. The credit is the pressure, the calls, the effort of the other players. He certainly was in the right spot at the right time, and that's not the guy you want to be chasing because when he picks up a fumble, he's hard to catch.
“Big time play of the game is Dink's punch out. You know, there's forced fumbles and then there's gifts. The dogs didn't beat the dogs today, but the Sooners in a lot of ways beat the Sooners and they, they gifted us multiple turnovers that could've been touchdowns and the game would've been different.
So opportunistic and little luck, but proud of Chris for running it back and KJ's interception.”
On Talyn Taylor...
Yeah, Talyn got a lot of confidence. He has confidence every day in practice, so it's not one of those deals that I think all of a sudden he's got confidence. He had confidence going into this season. He had confidence at the end of last season. He's just gotten an opportunity to showcase it and, he's taking advantage of it.
On the 14-point swing...
“Not really. I mean, there was, I mean, every game has adversity at the start of the game. You know, once you get in the flow of the game and you, you know, you get a 14-point play, that doesn't happen in football much. They're going in and we score. Those games are hard to overcome when you do that because it's literally their seven to your seven.
It's a 14-point swing. It's really hard to overcome that, and, um, it's hard for them too. And, uh, uh, you know, I don't know how much adversity we got to face after that, but I do know that our team is getting better. Um, we had a good work week, and I go by the work week we have in terms of improvement, um, and we improved this past week.”
On Gunner’s INT...
“Similar but a different ball. You know, the ball was a little closer, it was a little flatter. There wasn't as much air under it, but it was more of a drive throw.”
On the running backs...
“The other backs did a great job. We gotta hang onto the ball, gotta get more yards after contact. We talk about dog yards. And if we're gonna be an elite team they’vr got to turn three-yard runs into five-yard runs. They gotta turn five-yard runs into seven-yard runs. They gotta get yards after contact.
And I don't know that we actually did that today. I think we played against a really good defense, really good defense, but we did not knock them out, blow by blow take them out of the game like we wanted to with physicality. We’ve got do a better job of that.
On the “lull” in the 3rd quarter...
“Yeah, I don't know. I don't know that. I mean, there was definitely a lull, and the good teams don't have lulls. They don't sleep-walk and do things. And usually when we watch the tape, it's something we did. In the first half, I went in and said, "Hey, they didn't stop us. We stopped ourselves."
And that's important. I think in the second half they stopped us some. But in the first half, we didn't do that.
On 3rd downs...
“Some good, some bad. I mean, we, we didn't, we didn't convert a lot of third downs today. I mean, we, wwe didn't, you know, I, I don't know what it was. What is it? They were 2 of 14, we were 3 of 12. I mean, obviously that's not too good. We gotta be better than that, and we can't be in third and longs.”
On where his team needs to improve...
“We gotta get better at everything. We gotta get better at everything. We gotta be more efficient.
Defensively, we’ve got to have more three-and-outs, more disruption, you know? We pressured today didn't finish. We affected the quarterback, but we didn't really hit the quarterback, okay?
On the backup quarterbacks...
“They’re great every week. I mean, Ryan Montgomery does a great job. Beaver does a great job. I told the team in the locker room the best week of scout defense and scout offense we've ever had in terms of the look and the way they went about their business. But Buda was a part of that.
On Dwight Phillips...
“He did some nice things. He gave a really good picture of Mateer’s explosiveness. We’ve got to get Peanut more touches and find ways to get him the ball. I mean, that, that's what we saw all spring and fall. We just got to get more opportunities. And some of these leads have hurt our opportunities to get him in because, you know, you want to protect him too.
You don't want him out there taking hits when you're up 30 points on somebody. I was really proud of him today. His ball security, his hitting the hole, but then he also had a special teams tackle on one of the best returners in the country, and, and that's what we challenged him to do this game.
On Raylen Wilson...
“He's in a long line of good linebackers. I think Schuman does a great job of teaching those guys fundamentals and awareness. He's able to be the signal caller and get us in and out of calls based on certain things and he's a good player.
On Mateer’s running ability...
“I don't know if we took his legs away. I talked about we affected him. Um, so I don't wanna say that we took his legs away. He's a good athlete. He still scrambled. We had a lot of missed tackles. We expected that coming in but he's a good player and we’ve got to finish better on the quarterback when we have a chance.
