ATHENS — Georgia is halfway through its prep as it gets ready for Saturday’s massive game against the Alabama Crimson Tide.
The Bulldogs completed their second practice of the week on Tuesday and will have two more practices on Wednesday and Thursday.
Below is a recap of everything Georgia coach Kirby Smart said following Tuesday’s practice.
Everything Kirby Smart said as Georgia football continues preparations for Alabama
Opening statement
“Y’all want the good news or the bad news first?”
A reporter says ‘Good’...
“OK. The good news is we always get caught up in the business of the season and we rarely get to make mention of things like this, but it’s certainly something that I’m extremely proud of for our university. You know, UGA was ranked again in the top 20. We’re actually ranked 19th in the recently released U.S. News and World Rankings of universities and colleges. It’s the 10th straight year we have been in the top-20 national ranking, which I think’s incredible. I think it’s a credit to our administration, to our entire university. I just love it. I love the fact that we have an incredible academic institution and we get ranked highly, and that helps us recruit. But it attracts people all over the country to our university, so I love it.
“So for the bad news. I’m not going to continue to do these on Tuesday nights. I have my whole staff up there waiting on me now. It ends up eating up my time, so I’ve told these guys, they think that I’m an idiot for doing it, but I get to see you guys on Monday and then I get to do the deal with y’all on Wednesday. So I won’t be doing these unless they feel like there’s a reason to do it one week or certain weeks every other week on Tuesdays, but I don’t like my staff sitting up there waiting on me for 20 minutes while I’m waiting to get up there, so that’s the bad news. Any questions on Alabama?”
On how practice has been so far this week...
“Very spirited. Trying to make sure we don’t overdo it. It’s always the giddy-up, whoa theory, and we’ve got to hold them back this week because there’s a lot of chippiness. Guys want to play well. I mean, I would say it was not a great Monday just from coming off three days, two days off, not always — got to get them going some. And then today was good. They had a good tempo, good practice, did some good-on-good, did some scout work, did some cross-over work.
“Things have been good. We’ve got to execute the plan. It comes down to players making plays.”
On building depth during the bye week, specifically with offensive line and safety...
“Yeah, I want to build depth in the season, and we’ve got a lot of reps for guys in the off week, the bye week. We had a lot of reps for guys. We get a lot of guys reps because of the way we do our scout teams. We make things and we have coaches that know our terms and we coach the players. So if you’re a scout team player, you’re doing our defense, you’re doing our offensive plays because they carry over.
“But I can’t say that you can develop enough depth in season or in 10-to-12 days to sometimes make up for what’s missing. We’re just trying to get everybody better, and it’s not like one area where we’re like — I mean, we’re trying to grow guys. We’ve got some talented young wideouts who are trying to get better. We’re trying to get them to understand where to line up, what to do. A lot of guys just don’t know how to focus in meetings and carry it over to the field, and that’s what we’re trying to get: more guys that can play winning football.”
On what Oscar Delp has brought to this team...
“Well, he’s got unbelievable physical toughness. He’s had really good health, knock on wood. He takes a lot of reps because even when Brock was here and those guys were here, he took a lot of reps and a lot of workload. He’s really tough. His strength is probably his toughness and his point of attack blocking. You know, it’s hard to find guys that can block SEC-type 6 techniques and 9 techniques, and there’s a place for that on our level and levels above. He’s caught the ball really well. He made some really big plays in big times last year in the SEC championship and even in the Tennessee game.
“I appreciate the way he goes about his work. He doesn’t complain. He buys into the team. He and Lawson have been really consistent.”
On what Juan Gaston and Earnest Greene have been able to do so far this week...
“Just working hard, you know? That’s all they can do right now is put their head down and grind and try to get better. Continue to develop, and we’ll continue to do that with all those guys. I mean, we’ve got a lot of guys who get work right and left side. You’ve got to have guys that can swing and play both. There’s things you do to try to help guys. I mean, they do the same thing. We do the same thing. You’re constantly looking to try to find a niche for those guys to get better.”
On striking the balance of practicing hard while also being smart...
“Yeah, I think that’s my job to make sure that the tempo that we’re at is the right tempo. You certainly can’t go out there and not see fastballs then go hit fastballs. You’ve got to practice against the speed of what you’re going to play against. But we’ve got to be careful about the volume and not leave it all in the practice field. It’s been hot. I’m sure it’s hot there, so it’s one of those things we have to monitor because we’re playing at night but we’re not practicing at night.”
On Dwight Phillips Jr. so far this week...
“Yeah, he seems to be fine. He’s rolling in there, playing special teams, and doing things well, so he’s really had no limitations.”
On if Oscar Delp’s blocking has been the biggest strength or if he’d say something else...
“No, I would say his maturity is the biggest growth area. He was, I wouldn’t say a knucklehead early on, but he had his moments. He had his days when he was, you know, like all freshmen, struggling to make it through the practice. It was hard on him. We pushed him hard. You don’t ever notice that with him anymore. Really, since last year, he pushes through practice, he gives good effort. He has the physical and mental stamina to sustain through a good two-hour practice. That’s the most growth he’s made. He was always physical, but he has become a better all-around tight end.”
On what he remembers from the Alabama-Georgia game in 2015...
“Derrick Henry and wet. The run broke out late on us, and the d-line tried to fight the linebackers on the sideline because they were pissed that we gave up over 100 yards rushing, and I always tell that story. When you’ve got d-linemen that are mad and willing to fight when you’re up 15, 20, 30 points, whatever it was, you know you’ve got a good team.”
On if he has a handle on who the best players are on the right side of the line given the injury issues...
“Well I think that depends on who’s healthy, you know what I mean? Like, I could tell you who the best players are if they were all healthy, but the health brings that into doubt, right? Like, if a guy’s 80%, another guy’s 90%, another guy’s 95%, it’s hard to measure who’s better. But that’s everybody across the league right now. Our left side’s not completely healthy. Our defensive line’s not completely healthy. You know, our backfield’s not completely healthy. And guess what? It’s not going to get any better — not with what we’ve got coming down the pipe.
“So it is what it is. It’s a part of being tough. We instill that all offseason and it carries over. I mean, it’s next man up. We’ve got all kinds of linemen that go over there on the right side on the scout team, and they get better. And if we have to go to one of those guys, we’ll go to one of those guys. We just want good fighters.”
On the response from the secondary...
“I think they’re challenging themselves. We’ve done a lot of things with them to challenge them in terms of competition, in terms of drills, in terms of changes. So I’m looking forward to seeing those guys go out and compete. And they got a hell of an opportunity because they got a really good quarterback and skill group to play against. Yeah.
On Juan Gaston and Dontrell Glover...
“Yeah, good instincts, good size. They both have good strengths. They came from good high school weight programs and opportunity. I mean, if they were here last year or two years ago, I don’t know they would have. We’ve had a large group lead in terms of two things, draft, and we had several portals. And when you lose that in one position, it’s hard to replace. I have seen this year coming for two to three years in terms of a gap. Just didn’t know when it was going to hit because of Dylan (Fairchild) and some of those guys had extra years.
On Quintavius Johnson...
“Yeah, confidence and leadership. He’s very open to criticism. He accepts when he messes up. I love that about the kid. He’s not one that makes excuses. He’s not one that goes back and tries to weasel his way out of things. He owns up to it and says, hey, I can do better. And he has. He’s grown as a person, player. He had a really tough injury at the end of the spring. He overcame that and still he’s all the way back, but he’s playing well.
On Tim Keenan...
“Yeah, he’s a tremendous player. He’s explosive. He’s quick, twitchy, disruptive, hard to move. They move him around. He plays in different fronts in four down and I’ve known Tim for a long time. He’s a good football player.”
On how scheduling impacts playing injured players...“Yeah, I don’t, I mean, it doesn’t matter how you do the schedule, it’s hard. I mean, it’s brutal. And everybody’s the same. I mean, we all gotta play each other. It’s really tough, highly ranked teams, physical teams. It’s just going to continue to be a grind. I mean, looking forward with the nines coming, it’s going to be scary because you just don’t have enough. Nobody has enough depth. I guess that really don’t answer your question. But in terms of, do you want to be your best at the end? I think if it was a playoff system like the NFL or a larger percentage of the teams made it, there might be decisions we made early in the season differently, knowing that we gotta be at our best at the end. But if you don’t get to the end with an opportunity, then you regret what you did early. I mean, there’s been decisions we’ve made and decisions we probably would have made this year, if all that mattered was win the games at the end. But the games in the beginning have just as much value as the games at the end. And you can’t put yourself in a position where you don’t have the best players in the field. And sometimes that takes time.
On Roderick Robinson...
“Yeah, he’s had a hamstring during camp and he was not really 100 percent from the ankle. His ankle injury was very significant and he’s worked really hard to overcome that. But part of his strength, he’s a big guy, a big man like Josh (McCray). It’s a burst. It’s him having an explosion in that leg and hamstring. I would say he’s more healthy now than he has been since we started camp. He’s closer to full speed. But he’s still working on that. He’s still fighting to contribute and help. He’s very intelligent. He knows the offense inside and out. But there’s a lot of depth in that room. And as long as people are healthy, it’s going to be a healthy competition.”
On Sacovie White-Helton...
“He snatches the ball. He probably catches the ball as good as anybody in our group. He plucks it, natural hands, good route runner, savvy. He’s been great. He works his tail off. We’ve got a lot of confidence that we can put him in and he can execute.”On starting fast defensively...
“Stops. Don’t jump off sides on third down. That was a big thing last year. We get them in third down. We jump offsides. It snowballs into another drive. We’ve got to get lined up. They’re going to play with tempo. They always have a tempo package. We’ve got to get lined up. We’ve got to play. We’ve got to cover people. You can’t run and hide from covering people. There’s nothing that you can do to help yourself sometimes in their spacing where you’ve got to put hands on people and you’ve got to cover them. We’ve got to control the line of scrimmage, stop the run, affect the quarterback and cover their people. If you don’t do that, then they’re going to score. They’ve got good players.”
On Elijah Griffin...
“He’s explosive. He’s quick. I don’t think we’ve seen his best yet. He’s made some plays in camp and in practices that he hasn’t made in the game. He’ll get an opportunity to. I was proud of him going on the road in that environment to go out there and play. I’m sure he had some nerves. He can be a good football player if he just keeps humble and hungry.
On Georgia’s defensive front...
“Obviously, pass rush is a big thing at home in a game like this. What have you seen out of that group going into this? They’re hungry. They’re ready to get after it. They want to challenge. It was tough Tennessee. We didn’t have many third downs. We didn’t get many passing situations playing from behind most of the game. They did a good job picking things up.
“I’m excited to see these guys go play. They want an opportunity to go play and get after it. It’s going to be a fun game. They’ve got a really big physical offensive line. They can maul you and bully you. They’re big and they’re physical. They’ve got big, good backs. It’s going to be a great challenge for our front against their line.”
