Georgia Football Coach Kirby Smart Addresses Concerns About The Secondary
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ATHENS - It’s time to talk about the Georgia Bulldog secondary.
While the Bulldogs still have an outstanding defensive backfield, you could make the case they may not have played their best against Arkansas last weekend.
Georgia head coach Kirby Smart addressed the lack of INTs so far this season and gave an update on multiple Bulldog safeties as they prepare to take on a struggling Oklahoma offense this weekend in Athens.
"Safeties can never roam, they have a job,” Smart told reporters this week. “Their job is to play either the middle of the field, half of the field, or a quarter of the field. They can never roam or just do what they want. I think that's a perception.”
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“Certainly the evolution of football has become more spread, and with more spread, higher coverage results in less interceptions, believe it or not. There's less zone, and zone leads to more interceptions than man does. But teams force you nowadays with running quarterbacks, RPOs, run game, variations of things, pressure, trying to get negatives to play more man, and it probably results in less interceptions."
At the safety position we saw sophomore Rasean Dinkins come into the game after a late-hit penalty on Kyron Jones. A trusted defensive back with best football ahead of him, Dinkins could see his role increase more and more over time due to his instincts and physical style of play.
"He's a physical tackler,” Smart said about Dinkins this week. “He had a really good hit on kickoff last week. He's a knock-back tackler. A thumper. He has really good ball skills, he plays the ball well and can play multiple positions. He's hard to block. I talked about it earlier. If you're hard to block, you can be a good defensive player. I'm very pleased with his growth and he's continuing to improve, and he's a good football player."
Another safety who saw action against Arkansas was transfer Ja’Marley Riddle. Smart mentioned that he’s been pleased with Riddle’s play recently as he continues to bounce back from injury.
"He’s getting better,” Smart said about Riddle. “He's getting better and we're getting better. It's a work in progress with each of those guys. There are a lot of things we can do better and clean up on technique and fundamentals. But I'm proud of where Ja'Marley [Riddle] is, and I'm proud of his work ethic. He's coming off a significant injury. Most people don't associate him with injury because he wasn't here when it happened, but in the last game, you see he had a really tough injury, and he's bouncing back."
