After a bye week, the No. 1 Georgia Bulldogs will face Florida on Saturday in Jacksonville, Fla., for their annual rivalry game. Georgia coach Kirby Smart met with the media Monday and below is a transcript of his remarks (edited for clarity).
First, here’s Smart’s opening statement: “As we get moving forward for Georgia-Florida, our guys took Friday, Saturday, Sunday off and getting ready to go back to work today. It’s another exciting matchup with these guys in Jacksonville. I have a lot of respect for (Florida coach Billy Napier). I’ve known him for a long time. One of the most intelligent coaches I’ve been around in terms of preparation and understanding what it takes to run a program, an organization. I think he does a fabulous job. I know a lot of guys on his staff. Got a lot of respect for him. And being a high school coach’s son in this state, we grew up very similar. So it’s on to the Gators and we kind of started on them last week at the end of the week. And looking forward to a good week of practice.”
On Napier, including his time at Alabama …
“Like I said, he’s very thorough. He’s an extremely hard worker. Great husband and father. He’s a good leader of men. And I knew from the first time he got to Alabama, I don’t know what year it was, but whatever year he got there, he was going to be really good because he paid attention to detail. He took a lot of notes. He was just really smart. You knew he was there to learn. And I think he capitalized on his time he spent there to look at football from a different perspective maybe from what he looked at previously. And he was really successful at ULL. Which is a great school, great location, a lot of good football players. But they won a lot of football games with him there.”
On injury updates for linebacker Smael Mondon, defensive lineman Jalen Carter and wide receiver AD Mitchell ...
“Smael was able to practice toward the end of the week and did a good job. Didn’t see him, really, yesterday in terms of doing anything. So Smael looked good toward the end of last week. Jalen and AD, like I said last week, weren’t really practicing with us. Trying to get back. We’re hopeful to get those guys back but still don’t know. And Kendall (Milton) was able to practice non-contact on, I guess it was Thursday, the last practice we had. So we’re expecting him to be able to go today.”
On what offensive improvements Georgia focused on during the bye week ...
“Just situational football. I mean, the things you work on the off-week are, No. 1, opponents. No. 2, a lot of work. Probably 90% of our work was good on good against each other; situational football, third down, two minute, red area, second-and-10, third down, team run. I mean, there’s no area in three practices that we didn’t work on.”
On injuries to Mitchell and Carter …
“AD is a high ankle sprain. And high ankle sprains when you talk to everybody across the NFL and across college football, it’s hard to pinpoint a measurement. The first thing you look for is do they need to do the repair? They do the tightrope and things like Arian did. His was not that kind of injury. But it is lingering. It’s a pain in the butt. So he’s battling to come back and doing everything we ask. In terms of Jalen, it’s the knee right now. It’s the MCL. But the degree of that, severity of that, just depends on conditioning level, how fast he can get back. He’s working to get back, and we’re hopeful to get both of them back.”
On the absence of Carter …
“He’s a really good football player. I mean, he’s – y’all have seen the plays he’s made over his time here. He has not been healthy since the very first play of the season. The very first play of the season against Oregon is when the ankle injury occurred. Now he continued to play through that ankle injury. Some of that, I think, was on adrenaline. But I think the ankle bothered him from that point forward, and then, you know, he injured the knee. And the knee’s kind of bothered him since then. It’s not a combination of. Because he feels really good about his ankle right now. It’s more so to do with his knee. It just so happened that right when he got back from (the) ankle, he got the knee. And, you know, he’s a phenomenal player. I think you can look at the history there and see. And how does it affect you? You know, it affects your depth more than anything. But it’s not like he’s a one-trick pony. I mean, he’s like a - he can really pass rush good, he can play the run, he’s disruptive. So he’s not a, you know, just affects just our pass rusher. No, it affects everything because he’s a really phenomenal player, and you’d like to have him out there.”
On defensive back Christopher Smith’s growth ...
“Well, first off, he was a really good prospect in high school. He played corner, he played safety. He could do it all. He came here. We flirted with him at corner and safety. He kind of played wherever we needed him to play. And he’s done that ever since coming here. He’s taken reps for two to three years at corner, he’s taken the safety, he’s played nickel star. I mean, he’s one of these versatile DBs that can kind of do it all because he understands leverages. He knows where his help is. He’s an instinctive football player. And we’re lucky to have him and really proud of the way he’s, you know, he didn’t have success right away. He’s one of the guys that truly became a better football player through development, practice habits, learning the system. And he had some good players in front of him when he first got here. And he’s been able to work his way into a good football player.”
On how Mitchell affects the offense ...
“AD is a really good wideout. He has twitch. He has explosive quickness. When you watch just across the country and you watch all these teams play, there’s, you know, there’s dynamic receivers.
“I think AD is a dynamic receiver. He’s hard to cover one-on-one. I mean, I get to see him, you know, every day at practice when he’s been healthy. And, you know, when you got a guy that can, that can go compete, do some things. He’s got toughness; he’s got quicks. But to say it’s been substantially different with him in or out, I don’t know what the analytics say. And, you know, it’s hard to figure that. Because so much of that is based on what personnel grouping we’re in, how the defense is playing us. You know, are they off, are they soft, are they Cover-2, are they split safety, are they middle field closed?
“There’s a lot of thinking that (goes) into that. So I know that we’re a better football team with AD healthy, 100%. But we’re trying to get him back as fast as we can.”
On Florida quarterback Anthony Richardson …
“He’s grown a lot, and he’s gotten considerably better to me during this season. Like, from the start of the season, game one, you watch every game in sequence and you say, man, this guy is growing and getting better. And they don’t just limit things for him. Like, they put a lot of shift motion, they put a lot of things on top of him to handle, and he manages those well. The toughest thing dealing with Anthony Richardson is how you affect him. Because you got to be careful. Some of the runs he’s had have been better than backs have across the country. And he’s had 60- and 70-yard runs. And he can take off at any point in time, and you don’t know who’s going to have him or who can get him down. He’s got elite arm talent in terms of strength. They clean things up for him on a lot of reads. And he does a really nice job. So I give them a lot of credit, Billy a lot of credit for the development, what he’s done from the start of the season to now in being successful both with his legs and his arm.”
On Florida’s defensive line …
“Extremely disruptive. You know, the size and girth in the middle is what you want in the SEC, to control run games and control the A and B gaps. And then they still got the edge guys with Brenton (Cox), being probably the most disruptive guy that we’ve played in terms of just violence, striking, knockback, setting edges, affecting the quarterback. He’s a game-breaker at that.”
On the success of Oregon and South Carolina this season, after Georgia beat them …
“You answered the question initially. I haven’t been paying attention to it. I mean, I really haven’t. Our focus has been on the next opponent since Thursday of last week. And not to not answer your question, but I just don’t concern myself with it.”
On motivational messages to the team …
“I think it’s just how you feel like where your team is. You know, what space they’re in in terms of confidence level, focus, attention to detail. And a lot of times, it comes better when it comes from the players and the leaders within the team. Which the best teams have guys capable of communicating to each other, and they listen to each other much more than they listen to me. So I don’t, you know, I don’t calculate it, figure out when I’m going to do. If it’s, if the appropriate time is there and I think we need it, then certainly we do it.”
On the team’s post-practice dessert during the bye week …
“I had to go speak to the superintendents of Georgia, which they were in town. So I never got to see it. I bolted off right after practice. So I didn’t get to partake. But I was glad the players were able to get a treat, you know, for an off-week. We got some guys that need to gain weight, so I figure that’s a good way to do it.”
On the recruits coming to Georgia-Florida …
“We’re allowed to use tickets, but we can’t host them. We can’t do anything. So I never understood, I never understand, what would we do with them? We can’t legally see them. We can’t talk to them; we can’t host them. Visit with them. We can say, ‘There’s a ticket at the gate. Enjoy the game.’ So that’s, really, all we can do. We’ll do that. We’ll have some kids go to the game.”
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