NEW ORLEANS — After more than three weeks off, the Georgia Bulldogs will take the field Thursday in a College Football Playoff quarterfinal matchup against Notre Dame, with the winner facing the winner of Boise State-Penn State in Tuesday’s Fiesta Bowl.
Georgia coach Kirby Smart and Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman shared their thoughts on their respective teams ahead of the Sugar Bowl.
Below are the full final remarks from both coaches.
Kirby Smart shares final thoughts ahead of College Football Playoff game against Notre Dame
Opening statement from Kirby Smart...
“I’d first like to thank the Sugar Bowl Committee, the great hosts they’ve been for us. Through the years, I’ve had a lot of experiences in Sugar Bowls. They are second to none in the treatment of our teams, our players, our staff, making sure we get parts of the city of New Orleans seen, and they do a tremendous job. So many people put so much work into this event. It means a ton to our team, to our staff, to our families who get to come, and although this is a brief stay at the Sugar Bowl, I still commend the staff and the people there. Walter Becker and his staff have done a tremendous job hosting us and making sure we feel welcome. My next statement would be to Coach [Marcus] Freeman and his team. You know, they have a tremendous team. They play football the way that we like to play football, very physical brand of football, disciplined, tough. They’ve had a tremendous season, and just an honor to be played with two great programs matched up against each other, which that’s what the College Football Playoff was meant to be. And where better to do it than in the Sugar Bowl where there’s been historic matchups, of not only these two teams, but a lot of teams. I think it means a lot to our players when you get to play in a game like this. So his team has done a tremendous job. And then our staff and our players have earned the right to be here, and they’re excited to be here, and this is what you work for all year to get to this point. So thank you, guys, for covering it, and thank the Sugar Bowl for the great job hosting this.”
COACH FREEMAN: “To reiterate what Coach [Kirby] Smart said, it is an honor and a privilege to be a part of this prestigious game. I want to thank the Sugar Bowl Committee and the city of New Orleans for being such great hosts in this short stay that we have. We’re finishing up our preparation, and we’re going to have to use every minute that we can to be prepared for this opportunity tomorrow night. We’re looking forward to it. What a great challenge it’s going to be versus a great opponent that has earned the right to be in this game. And so we’ll get back to work after this, and we’ll be ready to roll tomorrow night.”
Q. Kirby, you’ve got some experience with Coach Freeman back in the Peach Bowl in 2020. Obviously, that defense gave you a lot of trouble. What did you see from Coach Freeman that you can recall from that game? And what do you think has enabled him to have this much success so early in his career?
COACH SMART: “Well, I would start with the way they play defense. Everybody’s tied together. It’s not a one-man dynamic unit. Defense is played as a unit. I think we both have history with defense, and that’s what you pride yourself on is everybody playing as one. They certainly did that during his years at [University of] Cincinnati, and we talk about effort counts twice around our building, and they play with tremendous effort. So, you know, whether you’re talented, five-star, size, speed, none of that matters if you don’t play with effort. With that Cincinnati team and this Notre Dame team, particularly the defenses, play with tremendous effort, and effort overcomes a lot of things. So it starts and ends with effort and toughness in all of football, and they do a tremendous job doing that. As far as his success, I think when you’re a good coach and you work really hard, success will find you. And he’s been a part of some really good programs, and he’s been around other really good coaches that allowed him to be successful just like I have.”
Q. Marcus, what have you thought of your two-running back combo with Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price this season, how that’s worked? And where are they from a health and freshness standpoint after a long grind of a season?
COACH FREEMAN: “Yeah, both of them are healthy. You know, J-Love was a little banged up last week after the USC game, but he’s going to be as healthy as he can be for this opportunity tomorrow. It’s something we’ve done in my three years as a head coach, with Coach [Deland] McCullough being our running backs coach, is that we pride ourselves on being able to rotate running backs and sell it in a way in recruiting and to your current players of we’re going to get you enough film to get you prepared for the next level, but we’re also going to make sure you’re healthy. We don’t want you to use every rep you have in your body in college. And so, they buy in to that. They’ve done a great job within the roles that have been determined for them. Aneyas Williams is another guy that’s really stepped up as a freshman this year. It’s very similar to what you see Georgia does. They have multiple running backs that can hurt you in different ways. And I think as you continue to progress in college football, that’s what you’re going to have to see, because you can’t -- the days of playing just one running back, I don’t think that’s going to really happen in too many places for multiple reasons.”
Q. With the current format of the College Football Playoffs, do you think it’s advantageous to be in Notre Dame’s situation where they had a game last week? Or is it advantageous to be in Georgia’s situation where you have a bye, because you earned it with the SEC Championship, but you also have the three weeks off?
COACH SMART: “Depends on who wins. Honestly. Because I think it can be painted either way. There’s positives and negatives about both. I can’t say I have a preference either way because we have only been part of the system where you finish the conference championship, and you play again either the 31st or 1st. So, we haven’t been in the format where you play. We thought, obviously, there was an opportunity that we were going to have to play a home football game or possibly a road football game, depending on the outcome of our conference championship game. So, it would have gone either way. We had a plan for either way. When you look at the calendar either way, you can make positives and negatives. There’s risk of injury. I think when you ask Marcus that question, he lost a very dominant player, and there’s a risk of injury in that game. But there is a level of concern when haven’t tackled and gone live. With the way college football is now with the portal, and you lose players, you just can’t afford to not have depth in practice like you really want to practice. So it’s a challenge both ways. We studied all the NFL teams that have byes verses the wild card teams that get hot and continue to play. I think that’s the closest thing you can find to it.”
COACH FREEMAN: “And for us, we knew when it was determined this was the 12-team playoff what our journey would be like and what our postseason opportunities would be. And so, I think you have to embrace your current circumstance. If I’m going to sit up here and say I wish I had somebody else’s, you’re making an excuses for the circumstance you have. And so we embrace it. Again, we embraced Week 13, which was the conference championship week, as our bye week. We had to have that mindset. We’re going to use this as our bye week. And the conference champions are going to use the first round as their bye week. And so that’s the mindset we’ve had. It was an amazing experience to host a home playoff game versus Indiana in the first round. I think that is — I mean, that was a great experience for college football and our fans and our players. And now you get a chance to play in a great opportunity that we have versus Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. So, we’ve embraced it, and we look at it — hey, you have to embrace it as a challenge for your program, and the minute you don’t, I think you open up doors for excuses, and that’s not something we’re going to do.”
Q. Marcus, you’ve been very vocal about viewing Mike Mickens as basically a defensive coordinator now but certainly a future defensive coordinator. You also have your head coach of the week program that you utilize over the course of the season. Why is it so important for you to empower your coaches in that regard? And where do you think that originates from?
COACH FREEMAN: “It originated from when I was in college and Coach [Jim] Tressel did something similar where each week, we called it in an opponent expert. An assistant coach was supposed to be the expert of your upcoming opponent. I thought it was a great way as a player to hear somebody else’s voice, to hear some of your assistant coaches in front of the entire team. And as a coach, it’s a great way for me to empower our coaches and give them the opportunity to be in front of the whole team, which not everybody gets the chance to do. And it’s been great. They embrace it. They really look forward to it, and I think our players enjoy it. As far as Mike Mickens, obviously, we have a relationship that goes way back, even to high school. And the growth I’ve seen Coach Mickens make from Cincinnati to Notre Dame to where he’s at now has been tremendous. He’s always been a great evaluator. I’ve said that from our time at Cincinnati when he was the one that stood on the table for [Ahmad] “Sauce” Gardner and some other guys. And the same thing at Notre Dame when he stands on the table for Benjamin Morrison and Leonard Moore and some of the guys we have. He’s a great evaluator, but he’s a great teacher. He develops some of the talent that he has in the room. He’s ready to be a defensive coordinator when he gets the right opportunity, but I’m not super excited to see him leaving our defensive coaching staff at any point soon.”
Q. Coach [Freeman], one of your mottos is choose hard for your program. From the elation of Week 1 to the lowest-of-lows Week 2 to 11 straight wins, all the injuries in between, primarily on defense, what would you say has allowed your team to get to this point to have this opportunity on this stage?
COACH FREEMAN: “I mean, “choosing hard” is a motto that we have in our program about the guys that choose to come to Notre Dame and play football there, and we don’t try to hide it. We want them to embrace it, but also it’s a motto for life. Every day you wake up, you’ve got to choose hard. And it’s a reminder for myself as an individual, and it’s a reminder for everybody in our program. There’s valuable lessons. Obviously, I’ve said it over and over -- that the NIU (Northern Illinois University) game has taught us and taught me, but there’s valuable lessons every week. And what we’ve got to understand as a program is that you can’t wait until you lose to have the urgency to fix the issues that you have and to improve with the urgency that you must improve with. And that’s, to me, something that we continue to reiterate. Every week, we’re chasing elevation. Like, how do we get better this week as we prepare for an opponent like Georgia? We still have to get better. Georgia is the opponent. Our challenge during the week is to still get better as a football program, and it’s a never-satisfied mindset. And so in order to get better and have that mindset, you’ve got to choose hard. And that’s something that you’ll hear me say, you’ll hear our players say, but what you say doesn’t matter as much as what you do.”
Q. For Coach Freeman, you were asked about Herschel Walker at one of your initial press conferences. I don’t know if you had a chance to check that out. And if you could speak to Herschel and the standard that Georgia set in college football.
COACH FREEMAN: “Yeah, I was asked about that game in the press conference, and I wasn’t aware of it at that time. Obviously, I was made aware that we lost to Georgia, and Herschel Walker was the running back. Listen, I grew up, you hold Herschel Walker on a pedestal that not many people are on. And I’m thankful that we don’t have to play Herschel Walker tomorrow, but we’ve got some other challenging running backs that we’ve got to try to defend. And so, yeah, I have a lot of respect, obviously, for the past, the history, what this program has been about, in terms of the University of Georgia for many years, and the history of college football that Georgia has a piece in. And so, again, looking forward to it.”
Q. Kirby, you’ve been around this for so long and faced Notre Dame in different capacities. What does Notre Dame football mean to you as a head football coach?
COACH SMART: “Yeah, I didn’t remember that game much either, as I was 4 or 5 years old and was not living in the state. So people always assume that I was in Georgia pajamas watching that game and cheering for Herschel. I was over in Alabama watching different games at that time. But certainly have learned a lot about it in my lifetime growing up as a high school coach’s son in Georgia. But Notre Dame is the era that I grew up in. Notre Dame was and has been the most dominant team across the span of a lot of years. Watching them play Miami, watching Rocket Ismail, that was my childhood watching them play on TV. I can remember the uniqueness of that. And then, my first experience was strange because I was a GA at Florida State, and we went to Notre Dame and played. And to see Touchdown Jesus and see all that, it was really something that marked my young career. It was like, wow, I got to go coach and go against Notre Dame at Notre Dame. And then obviously, when I got the head coaching job at Georgia, we had the home and away, and that was a really neat event to go there and be able to coach in that stadium and be the head coach and coach in that stadium. It was just very unique for me. And then the great games that we had against them were really special. Both of those games were extremely physical fourth quarter battles. Just two really good programs. The games could have gone either way. And then here we are now getting ready to play them, and Marcus has done such a great job to put them back on the map.”
Q. Marcus, you’ve played for a national championship as a player twice, and one of those times was in this city. And I wonder what you remember about playing LSU in their backyard. You had 14 tackles that game. But walking back into the Dome, any flashbacks just being in the city? What was that night like for you? Because your AD said you guys share an obsession about winning a national championship, and you were so close.
COACH FREEMAN: “Yeah. All right, a couple answers for those points you just made. Number one, what I remember most about that LSU game is it was the second year in a row that we lost the national championship, and that sticks with you a lot longer than however many tackles you made or the individual glory that people talk about. It’s that we didn’t achieve the team glory that we aspired to have. I remember I saw Jacob Hester yesterday, I remember him scoring a couple touchdowns on us, and I remember LSU had a heck of a defense, heck of a D-line. I love the opportunity to come down here and be a part of the city of New Orleans. I think it’s a great city. We were back here in 2010 when I was a GA at Ohio State, and we played Arkansas, and we were able to win that game. This is an amazing bowl game, a great city, and they do it right, and it’s great to be a part of this experience. Somebody said that to me last week. Yeah, everybody has a championship with winning the national championship, but my obsession is to get this program to reach our full potential, and if we reach our full potential, if the result of that is earning the national championship, great. But we don’t walk into the office every day and say “Let’s win a national championship.” We walk in the office and say, “What do we got to do today to elevate and get better and reach our full potential?” Because at the end of the day, that’s all we control. We control how close this program can get to reaching its full potential, and we’ll see what the result of reaching our full potential truly is.”
