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ATHENS - Georgia football coach Kirby Smart spoke with reporters this week about Alabama, Gunner Stockton, recruiting, NIL, this weekend’s weather and more.
OPENING STATEMENT...
“So we start our prep today for Alabama, who's got a tremendous team. A lot of respect for Coach DeBoer the way they go about things. They’ve got an extremely physical football team. They're playing really high-level football right now and I got to start watching them yesterday.
I'm super impressed with both sides of the ball and special teams. Their quarterback is playing amazing for them. Guy is really talented, fun to watch, and you've seen the growth just from the first game all the way through. The talent this guy has is pretty incredible, and they’ve got a really good scheme around him. So it'll be a great challenge for us to go into a really tough environment to go play, and I know our players will be looking forward to it.”
On Alabama’s secondary…
“Very talented. They got ball hawks. They got guys who can make plays on ball.
“They got a lot of length in the secondary. They play physical and a lot of that's brought on by their front because they create pressure situations. They stop the run. When you stop the run, force people to throw the ball it sometimes can make you one-dimensional, and they’ve been really opportunistic as well when they've gotten them running them back and scoring.
So anytime you score on defense, it's a big huge momentum swing, and they've got players that can do it.”
On CJ Wiley...
“Doing really good. He's had a couple of his better weeks of practice this last couple weeks. Continues to grow and become more physical, and really pleased with how hard he's worked these really past four or five weeks.”
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On Alabama QB Keelon Russell…
“I knew about him in high school and watched his high school tape. I knew he was an elite player, probably the best quarterback in the country coming out. Then he kind of goes away, disappears for a year and reappears and is just unbelievably savvy, had good arm strength and pocket awareness.
People will make him out to be a runner. He doesn't run unless he has to, and he can. But he scrambles to throw, scrambles to run. He's accurate. He's smart. He’s very talented.”
On Rasean Dinkins…
“Yeah he's been opportunistic. He's done a good job with the opportunities he's had.
He causes a fumble. It's a huge play in the game. His ability to make plays has probably allowed him to, to start. He's made plays on the ball in practice. Part of being a good safety player is do your job and have good eye control.
But creating turnovers doing your job, having good eye control, all those things help. “
On the Alabama defense…
“I don't know that I have an answer for that. I think that would that would their choice of what and how they feel about that. For us it's about us executing and how we play, not really about them. Maybe because they were so far ahead, they had other guys in.
You could say the same thing about us. We've had some games where you play a lot of other players in the second half, so not something that I'm really worried about right now.
On UGA’s offense…
“I think to be a good offense nowadays - you have to be dangerous. You have to have multiple weapons. You gotta have multiple ways to get those players the ball.
I think every good team scores points - they have different ways to beat you and not one-dimensional, and that's what good offenses have, and that's what we want to continue to develop.
On the UGA defense vs. Vandy…
“There were some looks that non-traditional looks where we didn't play the run real well, and some of it was scheme related, some of it was not. But I told you after the game, Vanderbilt's a physical football team.
They did a good job, with the game plan they had and took advantage of some of the looks we were in.
On Gunner Stockton…
“I don't know that it's an advantage. It is what it is is what I like to say because they’ve got a tremendous quarterback that doesn't have a ton of experience, and there's advantages in that. I’m certainly very happy and pleased with where Gunner is as a player.
I think experience helps. I think experience matters. I think how people play around you matters. I think game plan and what you're asked to do, not asking a quarterback to do more than he needs to do is important. Gunner's done a tremendous job of that. You know he played a really good game the other day, and I was really happy for him because of how hard he works at it.
But, you gotta continue to get better to give us a chance to get where we wanna go.”
On the offensive line…
“Yeah, it's great. But we've kind of always been an older offensive line unit.
In the last two years, I feel like we've been younger than we've ever been. I think that's the trend of, you know kids are less apt to wait and develop. We've got kids that were in our program starting at other programs that, that that chose not to wait and leave, and that happens. I mean, it is what it is.
But I don't think it's as traditional as it used to be in terms of that. It's great to have veteran leadership, but honestly, veteran leadership is veteran leadership. I love the fact they've been in our program and I love Drew and Ernest, so I don't want it to sound the wrong way, but if Drew and Ernest were from the portal and they were veterans, they would still be good leaders.
On the change in linebackers in today’s college football…
“You just have to have them. It allows you to defend them. You can't defend them if you got 6'4", 250 pound Mike linebacker that plays (isolation). You're not going to be able to play as well in space unless you've got Superman out there you just can't do it. You have to be able to do both.
You got to have physical toughness, you've gotta be able to play in small spaces. You gotta be able to strike people, get off blocks, and you’ve got to be able to play in space. And the eye control and the play variance you see nowadays has come so far that it demands leverage and, and striking and, and, and eye perfection that, that it's hard to sustain that.
You make one mistake, it's an explosive. And it's hard to come by to, to find people that can play all those things and that size and speed.”
On communications with Trump attending…
“No, nothing different for us. I mean, as I understand it or have been told, it's just more security and checking and doing things before we go to the stadium.”
On Alabama’s defensive front…
“Size and physicality.
They've gone out and signed portal guys. They've gotten more size and more strength to the point of attack and you know, very physical which they’ve - Alabama's always had.”
On DeBoer’s offense in the SEC…
“Obviously, he's had a lot of success at different places. I just wonder about his schemes and if he does things a little different.
There's a lot of similarities between our offense and theirs. But there's some there's some different things that they do that other teams in our league have done, but maybe not in a few years past. I, I think guys overlap in ideas and things. Certainly when you look back all the times we've played since he's been there, that all the Washington cutups are in all our stuff.
There's a lot more similarities to what he did there, but a lot of that is morphed into SEC, pictures now because he's been in our league so long and does a tremendous job offensively. Really hard to defend because you don't feel like there's a play they don't have. They've, they've got all of them in terms of, the plays you have to stop.”
On Peyton Woodring…
“He's been a model of consistency. He he's really a perfect mindset for a kicker beause he doesn't get real upset over positives or negatives, whether it's a miss or a kickoff.
He kind of reassesses things, puts himself in a, in a good place and, just keeps working at it. And I respect his, his work ethic, his process to preparation each week, and the consistency he's been for us has been been very fortunate.
On high school recruiting and NIL…
“I don't think it had anything to do with where we were. It's usually has to do with what we need. I think you gotta be careful. I don't know that the perception out there is that there's a portal program and there's a traditional high school program because I don't think there's a hit rate going around on these teams that are portal teams of how many times they actually hit.
You only know Trinidad Chambliss. You only know the guy that goes and plays. What about the thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy percent of players that they got that didn't play, that didn't have an impact? I just like to think that we're gonna do what we need to do to win. If that includes getting fifty portals, then that's what we're gonna do.
If if it includes getting ten portals, then that's what we're gonna do. But I think when someone says us, Alabama and Georgia, compared to others based on where we started at, has nothing to do with where we started in the process. It has to do with what you need. And ultimately, can you develop better than you can draft?
Or it's not really drafting, but it's going and, and, and taking somebody else's development and trying to make it your own.
On weather for Saturday night and kicking in it…
“Yeah, just assess it based on the situation what we're dealing with. Weather's obviously can be a factor. It was this time last week, it was gonna be a monsoon for the Vanderbilt game. So you know, you gotta plan based on it, and you've gotta change the plan based on future forecast. And I don’t get too much into the kickers and talking to theem about it because they practice against it.
They work in it, and we do that in the off-season, we do it in preseason camp, and we do it every week.
On Braylon Conley and Demello Jones…
“Braylon's been a great addition to our program. He's a bright kid. He loves practice, brings energy, a joy to be around competitive, smart, instinctive, understands leverages in how to play the ball in and out of phase. Been very pleased with him and Demelo and Ellis as well. Those guys work really hard every day out at practice, and, pleased with their work ethic and continuing to get better.”
Update on Thomas Blackshear…
“Yeah, he's got an upper body injury.”
