ATHENS — Kirby Smart knows exactly what he wants to see from his team during the bye week.
Unfortunately, those two areas somewhat work against each other.
“Recovery and conditioning level and getting healthy would be one answer, but getting better would be another answer,” Smart said on Tuesday. “But those two don’t necessarily co-exist well, so you have to be careful about who you’re talking about. Is it a fourth-year player? Is it a fifth-year player? Is it a guy that has played a bunch, and he’s beat up because he’s played a bunch of snaps versus a guy that hasn’t, and you’re trying to gain those inches that we just talked about in those margins.”
Smart didn’t just touch on Georgia’s bye week, as the head coach wrapped up some lingering questions from the team’s loss to Auburn.
Below is the full transcript from Smart’s remarks.
Everything Kirby Smart said about Georgia football bye week
Opening statement...
“We started getting ourselves better, doing a lot of looking within, self-scout. They got a lot of goals for this week. We got the players in yesterday, got some good rehab in, got some walkthrough in. Then we’ll practice today, light tomorrow, and then practice again Thursday before we give them a break, much-needed break, and then get ready to come back and start up on Florida next week.”
On field goal situation in second quarter of Auburn game...
“We do that every day at practice. We have what we call [toura toura] field goal. We work that in terms of speeding things up and trying to make sure we go quickly. Gunner thought we were punting and just came off the field because it was a little bit longer of a field goal. But I never thought to burn the timeout for me because I don’t really believe in burning timeouts when you need them for extra possessions. I regret using the timeout for the fourth-and-4 with the hard count, but we felt like it was worth it because the wind was in our face. The wind was with us on his kick, so decided not to use it. We do. have those hurried kicks every day in practice, so I feel good about that.”
On the assessment of special-teams unit...
“It’s really hard because you don’t get many opportunities to impact the game. We’ve talked about it for three weeks. There’s hardly any kickoff returns in our conference because the kickers are so good at kicking them out. Kick return gets negated. Now a couple of teams have, and you could say Tyriq Green ran a touchdown, but it wasn’t in SEC play. Then you go to punt returns, and across the league, there aren’t a ton of punt return opportunities in SEC vs. SEC play. So then it’s like, how do I flip a field? Well the best way to flip a field is you don’t have an elite punter who hits bombs, and our offense has been really pretty efficient and we haven’t had a lot of punts. We’ve had a lot of inside 50 what you’d call pooch punt opportunities, and that’s been the biggest weakness. We haven’t pinned people inside their 10 at the rate that we would like to. That’s probably the most glaring, but there’s a lot of special-teams stats that are just misleading. This is where you are in kickoff coverage, or this is where you are in kickoff return, but they’re miniscule because you don’t get opportunities. You only get 2-3 returns every five weeks.”
On Gunner Stockton concussion symptoms or effect of hit on first play...
“He has not had any concussion symptoms, so I can only go off what medical people tell me. I look at him in the eye and talking to him, there was no issue with any of that. Now, he did have a stinger in his shoulder. That can affect you. That’s hard. That’s what linebackers get. That’s what Ja’Marley got. That’s what a lot of players get. But you bounce back from those quickly. Everybody’s making specultion and things, but the guy played really good against Alabama, and he could’ve really easily had two interceptions right? I mean, he had one, and the other was debatable right? So he played pretty good and had two interceptions. He still did some really good things in the game. I don’t think making it about a head injury when there’s no symptoms of that are realistic.”
On trend of so many top-7 teams losing in one weekend...
“I don’t know. I’d say it’s a new day and age. It’s easy to say the word parity. I think everybody’s used that. Anybody can beat anybody on a given Saturday. The world we live in now, everybody’s got good players. Everybody’s diversifying in terms of the amount of talent that spreads itself out because kids want to play, and kids want to get paid, and starters get paid, so more players go to more places, and there’s just more parity. I think you’re going to see more of that. It’s actually going to be who deals with it best? Who can manage it and deal with this best? You could say a team that’s used to having 3,4,5 losses, they deal with it better than a team that’s used to 1,2,3 losses. We gotta do a good job of managing that and dealing with it because the margins are just tighter.”
On thoughts on defensive performance during self-scout...
“Well, I want to see growth in a lot of areas with our whole team. You start with special teams. You start with offensive, whether it’s explosives. We can get better at everything we do. We don’t look at it and say, we’re first in red-zone offense, we don’t need to improve on that. That would be a terrible thing to say. I think the biggest thing on defense, frustration-wise, has been red-zone defense because the stats say that you’re not good. Sometimes the stats can lie. We had two plays the other day that, really, were kinda fluky, freaky plays. I mean, a halfback pass that’s double covered, it’s just, it boils down to making the play. We covered it. Did everything right and a guy made an unbelievable play. And then the fade catch, you make people run it in on you. You don’t let them throw it in on you. That’s usually what we’re really good at, which is stopping people in the run and doing those things. We’ve had two times in red area — because, when we study, we go and say where was the breakdown? — well, it ends up being a DPI high in the red area that ends up putting people first-and-goal. If you win any one of those matchups, your numbers can change and be skewed. So it’s not a schematic issue. It’s not anything like that. It’s playing better and making more timely plays in the red area, but we have been more productive in sacks. One of the glaring things to us is we want to tackle better. We’re higher in missed tackles than we’ve been in years past. That’s a big target area for us. We think missed tackles are up as a whole across college football, so we’re not immune to that. We’re part of that problem, but how do we do it better than they do it? That’s really what we’re trying to do this week. How can we get better incrementally and gain inches? When the margins are tighter, the inches are everywhere.”
On Ryan Puglisi’s opportunity...
“That’s why he practices. He goes out there every day and takes his reps. He takes much less than Gunner, but he was a part of the plan on all those plays. He sat in the meeting on all of those plays. I don’t think when that happens you can just shut down and say, OK, I’ve gotta change the plan. That was the plan in those situations. One was, I think, second-and-medium or long. The other one was third-and-short. The other one was, I guess, first-and-10. But he managed those situations really well. That’s the reason we practice him, so he’s able to go in and do what he does well.”
On 9-1 after bye weeks and what this team needs to do...
“I think every team is different when it comes to a bye week. If you said, what’s the No. 1 thing we can get out of the bye week, there’s as bunch of things. It depends on who you’re asking. Are you asking about which player? Because recovery and conditioning level and getting healthy would be one answer, but getting better would be another answer. But those two don’t necessarily co-exist well, so you have to be careful about who you’re talking about. Is it a fourth-year player? Is it a fifth-year player? Is it a guy that has played a bunch, and he’s beat up because he’s played a bunch of snaps versus a guy that hasn’t, and you’re trying to gain those inches that we just talked about in those margins. We’re really kinda prescribing this week for each player what they can get better at, what they can improve on. Some of that’s conditioning. Some of that’s health. Some of that’s reps. Some of that’s situational football. But we’ve got different guys out of our, however many players in different spots, that they all need different things.”
On possibility of 10 games left and 24-team playoff providing relief...
“I think only time will tell with the 24-team playoff because it’s obviously who knows how this thing’s gonna turn out in our league? But I think the coaches that we agree it’s — I don’t know the right word — it’s brutal, it’s gauntlet, it’s already the fastest it’s ever been in terms of every SEC team having a loss. So what does that trajectory look like in 4-5 weeks? Or six weeks? I don’t even know how many more weeks that is. Is it going to be SEC champion with three? Is it going to be two? I don’t know. I just know that any given Saturday, somebody can get their butt beat in our league, so the 24-team playoff part of it is just going to extend it longer. You’d like to think it gives more teams access and opportunity. But at the end of the day, there will be a lot of teams in really tight margins, and there will be those arguments there are every year. It’s just going to be the argument is going to be from 20-28 instead of 8-16. There’s going to be overlap there. I certainly hope we can manage the coming weeks with our players health well. It seems that we’re more beat up than we have been in the past when I sit in injury reports. That’s not because we’re doing more. We’re doing less. But it’s just a tough gauntlet of games and even more to come.”
On 10 years at Georgia and looking back on 2016 team memories...
“I saw some of those guys at the game. It was weird. I saw Nick and Sony. I saw Isaiah McKenzie for the first time in forever. It was just No. 1 great to see them and see them come back because I love those guys. They went through probably the toughest year here, at least since I’d been here. It was tough on them too because ultimately they had won games before I came. It wasn’t like they weren’t winning, and we didn’t play to the standard to what Georgia is now that year. We struggled. We practiced at a different facility. It was a wild year altogether. I really appreciate that group. I’ve kept in touch with a lot of them. They come around. They were the first to really believe, especially that second year in what we were doing. It wasn’t always easy.”
On what KJ Bolden has been dealing with and bye-week recovery...
“He was not dealing with anything before the Alabama game. He actually cramped around halftime around the touchdown score right before the half, and then had an injury that came up towards the end around the sack, which he never had to go back in because we ended up keeping the ball during that time. In terms of him coming back, we’re hopeful to get him back. I don’t know what I have to see. He’s just gotta recover and go through the doctor’s protocol.”
On linebacker tackles numbers working as designed...
“I think some of that’s situational. I mean, that’s going to be based on the team we play. They’re a run-first team and a quarterback-run team with a really big, physical quarterback, so those guys have the best opportunities to make those tackles. They’re most built like him, 230, 240 pounds. All three of those guys are right at that weight, so they end up being the guys getting him. Some of the plays they made were because some of the other little guys didn’t make the tackle, and that’s not always a good thing. So when the back end misses it or can’t get them down — and that’s what I talk about with the missed tackles — those guys end up finishing it off. If they’re making the tackles, 5, 7, 10 yards downfield, that’s never a good sign.”
On Bo Walker’s reduced role in Auburn game...
“Bo’s doing a great job. Bo works his tail off, had a good week of practice, worked really hard and took advantage of some good opportunities against Alabama. This game, Nate was back healthy, playing. It didn’t help any that we fell behind at some point and got behind trying to play catch up some. Both Nate and Dwight are really good in the pass game and do a good job. Those are the guys we were going with, and it’s nothing that Bo did wrong or right or indifferent. It was opportunity for Nate to come back.”
On Chauncey Bowens’ injury length and Nate Frazier’s return...
“I thought he did a great job. I don’t go off of stats. I go off of looks, runs he got, plays he got. He ran hard. He ran tough. He got some really tough, hard yards. They’re a really good run defense. They play physical. They did a good job. I was really pleased with Nate’s toughness and getting in there, sticking it in there. As far as Chauncey, time will tell.”
On wide receiver room’s growth...
“I think as a whole that group, everybody wanted to question and say things about them coming in. I think Talyn’s grown up a lot. He’s made a lot of plays for us. He’s really been a consistent guy that practices hard, plays hard, gets open, wins 1-on-1 opportunities. London continues to improve and get better. We’ve probably been as injured at that position has we’ve been any. Throw the wide receivers in there with the running backs, and it’s a tough combination that Coach Bobo and the offensive staff have had to work through, but we’re really pleased with the receiver group as a whole. There’s a couple of those guys that you don’t get to see that haven’t played as much that get really good work in practice, that have been coming along, doing good things that we hope we get to see this week and get some more reps and do some things.”
