ATHENS — Kirby Smart said it has been a good fall camp for his Georgia Bulldogs, but that doesn’t mean he will be comfortable entering the Oregon game.

“It’s new every year, you never get comfortable with a first game because you don’t really know what kind of team you have,” Smart told Buck Belue on 680 The Fan on Thursday.

“The one thing I’ve learned is to expect the unexpected. You don’t really know until you get to that first game exactly how guys are going to respond.

“I didn’t know exactly what kind of team we had last year until we played Clemson, and you find out early when you play a team of that caliber.”

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The No. 3-ranked Bulldogs are a 17-point favorite over the No. 11-ranked Ducks in the 3:30 p.m. game that will be played on Sept. 3 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

Smart said most of the physical preparation is behind the team, but Georgia is still working on the players’ psyche, with many of the young Bulldogs’ seeing their first significant action in the spotlight.

Smart said last Saturday that half of the freshmen on the team will have to play a role, and some may start.

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Georgia lost an NFL-record 15 players to the draft in addition to 13 players to the transfer portal, including four former starters.

“I do think that the mental part of playing in a big stadium on a big stage for a lot of guys who haven’t played that’s something we have to prepare those guys for,” Smart said.

“Every team is going to have new player the first game of the year, that’s the one unique thing — regardless of who you are, you have new players playing, and we have to prepare our guys for good and bad and how they respond to it.”

Smart is 6-0 in season-opening games at Georgia, largely because he leaves nothing to chance.

But from one NFL scouts who attended UGA practices have told him, the Bulldogs are working as hard as anyone.

“A lot of scouts that go around to other practices said, ‘Y’all have some physical practices and some get after it practices, and we just love the way you practice,’ " Smart said.

“They’re not talking about our players, they are just talking about the organization of it, the energy of it, the buy-in, and that’s a good sign you are doing things the right way in terms of having good practices and having buy-in from your players.”

But as Smart said after Scrimmage Two, youth and inexperience in the SEC is not optimal.

“Any time you have that, you’re susceptible to lack of experience with mistakes, anxiety mistakes, composure mistakes,” Smart said.

“So we try to create situations in practice to make them want to do right as much as they can and feel like they’re in a game, so that when they’re in a game, they can just relax and go play.”