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UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 15, 2015

Mark Richt

Athens, Georgia

COACH RICHT: Okay. Good to see everybody today. It's good to be home. It's good to play between the hedges between. We are excited about playing in front of our fans. We actually Tweeted out a little something yesterday about asking our fans to wear red and to be ready for the Dog walk at 4:25 and for our students to be in place by the time pregame warmup starts, which is about an hour before the kick.

Just create the atmosphere that motivates our players and our staff and myself, but also can become a factor in the ballgame if we do it right, which we do here at Georgia. I've said it many times, no one does it better than Georgia in my opinion.

Another couple items that are interesting. We are honoring Commissioner Slive, as he did battle some prostate cancer, and it's Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. We will have a sticker on our helmet and he will be at our ballgame. We are excited about that.

I guess in regard to the prostate cancer awareness, Coach Fox and I, Coach Strickland, all three of us got together on a little promo. We show it on the video board during the game. It's pretty corny but hopefully everybody gets the word to get checked because we know early awareness of these types of things can make all the difference in the world and we just want everybody to be healthy and want everybody to be safe.

Okay, get ready for South Carolina. A team that's always well-coached by Coach Spurrier, we know that. They have got 27 players from the state of Georgia, which is pretty typical in our league. We're going to have -- just about everybody's got a bunch from our state. We have such a great state for football. Our coaches, high school coaches are really tremendous. Coach Spurrier is obviously one of the winningest coaches in the history of the league and a great coach and will provide a great challenge for us as a staff to get our guys ready as he gets his ready.

Starting on offense, they have six returning starters. I guess you would start with the quarterback. No. 10, Orth mis a guy that apparently got a scholarship going into this season, was a walk-on. But you heard Mitch got hurt and you didn't really know what happened from there really. You just got word of it.

Then you watch the film and both those quarterbacks actually played pretty good. But Orth came in, hit 13 out of 20 for about 180 yards and hit 65 percent of his passes and he looked good doing it. Athletic guy, tough guy. A guy that we'll have to contend with as far as a runner. He's got some good wheels on him and will provide a great challenge for our defense at the quarterback position.

Wilds is No. 22, the running back. Great player. Been with them awhile now. He's a senior now. He's a guy that is built a little bit like Gurley was, 6-2, 220, a powerful runner, good ball catcher out of the backfield.

Cooper, everybody knows about Pharoh Cooper. He had over 1,100 yards last year receiving, one of the best receivers in the country. Very tough kid. He's not super tall. He's close to six foot, over 200 pounds, but very tough, very physical, yards-after-catch guy, makes a tough catch. Has played the wildcat. They will use him on different running plays. Just a multi-talented guy. Scored 11 touchdowns last year and like I said, over 1,100 yards receiving, just a great player.

Another skill guy who is on the preseason Mackey watch list is their tight end, No. 89, Adams. Outstanding player, 6-6, 231. Saw him make a beautiful play last week on TV. Very, very talented guy. Big man, can run, but also an online blocker who is outstanding.

They have got three returning offensive linemen. Their center, Knott, was on the preseason Remington watch list, out standing football player. The guy that's probably the highest draft pick, maybe the highest draft pick -- one of the highest draft picks as offensive linemen is shell. He's a kid that we tried to get a couple years ago.

Anyway, he's a great football player, a guy we really tried to get at Georgia, a big kid, 6-6,328 pounds, great pass protector, run blocker, very talented guy, for sure. So we got our hands full with their offense.

They got co-coordinators now on defense, Jon Hoke and Lorenzo Ward who was there a year ago and they only have four returning starters back. Skai Moore is a guy who has really made an impact, been around awhile, making a lot of plays. He's tied for first in the nation in interceptions. Also leads a team in tackles. Very outstanding ballplayer.

T.J. Gurley, their nickel, who we call them the nickel Sam. He does run some Sam linebacker-type stuff in we are in base and if we are in three receiver sets, he is more of a true nickel. But great run support guy. Great on pressures as far as coming and blitzing the quarterback and very good cover man.

Number 1, another guy we think can cover extremely well. The leading tackler in their backfield is Isaiah Johnson, does a super job.

Gerald Dixon, Jr., 6-3, 327 pounds, along with Taylor Stallworth, two big 300-pounders inside, exactly what you need. And when you watch the film, they are wide loads, man. They are hard to move and they are very active and athletic. So they do a good job there.

On their kickoff return, Carson who is also a running back for them is averaging 21 yards a return. Cooper is the guy handling the punt returns. Elliott Fry has been there awhile, field goal guy. He's No. 2 in school history and kicking percentage. He's got four out of six this year and was a Lou Groh semifinalist a year ago, outstanding guy.

Then Sean Kelly I think is a walk on. Had been punting for them, averaging 44.1 yards a kick, had a couple over 50, had three inside the 20. I think he had a 60-yard punt for the first time in a while, so he's got a big, booming leg.

Ard is their kickoff man and he has knocked eight out of ten out of the end zone on his kicks. So he does an outstanding job. Tough trying to get the ball return if he keeps knocking it out.

With that, I'll open up to questions for everybody.

Q. Did you ever get an explanation on the call -- and the hands to face call on Floyd?
COACH RICHT: Right. I don't know how much we're supposed to talk about those conversations. I definitely know I'm not allowed to complain, so I won't.

I just think the targeting rule is one of the toughest things to officiate and one of the toughest things to coach. I thought Lorenzo was in a pretty good posture. He was wrapping up. He had his eyes up. He was doing a lot of things that we tell him to do on a foreign tackling. The problem was he was tackling the quarterback and he wasn't a throwing mode. Although he started out as a passer, began to scramble a little bit and then -- or at least started to move to the left, I think it was, his left. And he ran for 66 yards last week.

So as he -- but when he struck them, there was helmet to helmet contact, there's no doubt about that, and as the rule was written, if you go by the letter of the rule, then he did. But he didn't lung. He didn't launch at the guy. He didn't go at the top of his helmet or anything like that.

It was really a good face-up tackle but when you're tackling a quarterback who is in a throwing posture, that's when things get changed. They consider him a defenseless player, so that's what happened with him. The good news is he'll be able to play.

The other one, I think anybody that watched the game or watched the tape knew that I think there was just a mix up on who the penalty was on on the one you're talking about, hands to the face.

Q. I know you've said you want to be at Georgia as long as they will have you, but early on in your career, you said you didn't want to coach -- correct me if I'm wrong, you said you didn't want to do this as long as Bobby Bowden. Your take on Spurrier still doing this at 70? Could you imagine being an SEC coach at 70?
COACH RICHT: I don't know. I don't feel good today but most days I feel pretty good (Laughter).

I think the older you get, the more you realize you've still got some juice. Coach Spurrier still doing a great job. I don't want to even try to predict what's going to happen down the road. I want to -- I do enjoy what I do and I want to continue to be influential in the lives of these young men and also win, win ballgames for Georgia.

So how long, I don't know. I've always been real open to what I feel like the Lord's got to say to me on subjects like this, and if I feel like in my heart there's some things He wants me to do, I'll do it. I'll try to be obedient. But right now, I think I'm exactly where He wants me and I'm enjoying it.

Coach Spurrier -- I don't know, how old was coach do you between when he retired, I don't know. Was it five years ago? Because he would have been 80. I know Coach Bowden is 30 years older than me. So if it was five years ago, he went to 80. And Coach Bowden said there's only one significant event after retirement (Laughter) and he didn't really want to push to the next level of only having to wait for one more thing. But from what I hear, he's moving around pretty good doing great.

Q. Greyson in the game seemed to short-arm a couple of deep balls, back third balls, and Coach Spurrier has already talked about stopping Georgia's running game. So do you have to crowd a bunch of people to the line of scrimmage and stop them -- what's your feeling on, are you guys working some things out with Greyson and what's your feeling on his ability to be effective that way?
COACH RICHT: He's going to be fine. We're going to be able to throw and catch well. We actually threw the ball and caught it extremely well game one. Greyson was eight out of 12 game one, every single ball he threw had a purpose. Two balls he threw away, two got batted, which you can't control and the other eight were on the money. We know that Brice was two-for-two in game one.

Game two, we had some issues. Obviously we had a dropped ball early on. We had a situation where he actually -- where he was getting ready to step up and slow, he actually slipped on the turf. I think that's why the ball went down. He was off balance, so I've seen him make that throw many a times. I think it's just a matter of getting into the know of a game and into the flow of a season.

But if we go based on how we threw it and caught it yesterday, I feel really good. We were really sharp and if we continue to practice that way, my guess is we'll play a little bit better in that area.

Q. What did you pinpoint in the passing game about what you can do to be better in that regard?
COACH RICHT: First of all, be free to call whatever we think is good. Don't feel like we have to run for X amount of yards or get the ball to Chubb so many times. When I've always plays over the years, you certainly want to use your skill players the best you can and use the talent that you have, but just feel free to attack the defense in the game the way we attacked it all week in the film room. Call what we believe and let's go.

You know, there were some times, like first half, they get the ball first and then when you have a punt return for a touchdown, you lose another possession. So we didn't have that many possessions in the first half because they got it to open the game and with the punt return we lost one there, which is fine, that's just football. I love the result of the touchdown.

End of the second half, it was much better as far as number of plays, yards. If you just went by the second half alone, no one would have said a thing about how we were throwing and catching it. But I think we just got to believe in what we do and let it rip. We certainly want to have a respect for the football. We're plus four, whatever we are in turnovers and we're doing well in that area. We've really -- I think we have only thrown one ball that could have been picked and that was that little post-route, short post-route we threw last week.

And we have fumbled that a few times and gotten on it. But we do need to respect the football by securing it when we hold it and run with it, and also when we throw it. But you've still got to just play ball. There were some times, too, in the second half, where we're up by three scores, and we know the best thing for us to do is to run the clock. So we're down on the three and we're in a two-tight set and they put everybody there. There's really no chance of much success of running the football there.

Now, we could have launched a ball or thrown a little quick screen out there or whatever and maybe moved the ball down the field. But in doing so, there's a risk that there's an incomplete pass, you don't chew clock, they don't have to use a time-out. We felt like with them having to score three times, that was the way to go.

But I mean, even that's debatable, whether that's the wisest thing to do or not. But that's what we were trying to do at that moment is use as much clock as possible and force them to use time-outs.

In game one, we got a lead. No point in trying to just throw it all over the yard. So there's some things that have happened circumstantially that are why we haven't had the numbers where, you know, we are kind of used to. But I know what we have as far as skill level. I know how we protect. I know how these guys can play at QB. I have faith we'll be fine.

Q. Does having a player like Sony who can catch in the backfield and you can split him out wide challenge you and Coach Schottenheimer as coaches and tacticians to figure out ways to get the ball?
COACH RICHT: Yeah, a special player, a guy like Pharoh Cooper, got a lot of skills, figure out how to use this guy and make him more effective. Sony is a great return man, he's a great runner, pass protector, route runner, ball catcher, as a back or a receiver. He's an outstanding special teamer.

Punt return and block, he's outstanding as a blocker on that. He was the best guy we had covering kicks a year ago when the season began, or at least one of the best. It is a challenge to get him in as many situations as possible to use his abilities.

Q. You talked about how close the three-way QB battle was. Are there any plans to do the same with Faton and maybe incorporate his sort of unique skills among the three into the game plan?
COACH RICHT: Right. Right now, again I've said this before, we don't make any promises early in the week about who is going to play and all that kind of thing, because you have just been doing it so long that circumstances come up where you may change your mind.

So we try to tell everybody, just get ready for your moment and if you get called upon, take care of it. But it's one of the toughest things in football is to be a backup QB and wonder, am I ever going to get a shot; and if you do, will you really be ready. So Faton is a really intelligent guy and he really understands what we do well. I have all the faith that if he was called upon, he would play well.

Q. You guys are a pretty overwhelming favorite this week, which is a little bit surprising given Georgia's history with Spurrier; your thoughts about that. The other part of it is, do you expect to learn anything about your team this week that maybe you didn't learn the first two weeks just because of the State of the rivalry of the two schools?
COACH RICHT: We're not thinking much about the rivalry. We're not thinking much about what happened last year or in the past years as much as really trying to focus on getting better. There's just so many areas we've got to get better. We knew when that game was over against Vanderbilt, there were some things we did really well.

We had a team meeting in here. I showed three plays, offensively, things that we did extremely well throughout the season so far and three things that weren't so good. Same thing on defense and same thing on special teams, just kind of challenged the guys that when we do it right, we're pretty good. When we don't, we put ourselves at risk as a team.

So our focus is trying to improve, trying to know what to do, know how to do it and add a lot of energy to that. That's really all we can ask of our guys.

But as far as what we might learn, any time you're in games that are highly contested and are usually close games, you learn a lot about guys in crunch time.

Q. That being said, when this game does come up on the schedule, do the players have a little bit of extra juice for games like this, Florida, Auburn?
COACH RICHT: I don't know if they do or not. They know it's -- think about it. South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Georgia Tech, I mean, whoever you want to say, Missouri already. They get jacked up for all those games.

You go to Kentucky, you're in a barnburner every time just about. We know the margin for victory is slim and that's why we've got to have attention to detail in what we do and just believe in each other, trust each other to take care of business. That's the thing we focus on the most. Because if you focus on anything other -- just like if you're going to take a math test and you're thinking about, well, my last math test, I got an F. If that's all you're thinking about, what's the chance of succeeding? You've got to be thinking about, how do I do this formula, how do I do that formula. You've got to focus on your job. That's what we try to do, focus on the job.

Q. Your pass defense numbers are towards the bottom of the league. You've been up double digits in each of the games. How much is that because opponents are throwing to catch up and how much is that a concern?
COACH RICHT: Well, it's early in the year, so stats do get skewed pretty good. Like you said, when teams are behind, they start chunking it. You could have said how great we were in run category and part of it is because people -- we got ahead of people and they were slinging it. They weren't running it. They didn't stay true to maybe what their game plan was.

I just think the stats are a little skewed early on. You might use them here or there to motivate them. Last week, there's only one game, but Vanderbilt is the No. 1 rush defense in the SEC. So you might be able to trick your guys for a game and say, you know -- I say trick them, it's only one game.

Now, they are pretty salty. We broke some big run, but how many times we get one yard, two yards, minus two? A bunch. They stoned our run a bunch of times but we broke free and got those long runs and all of a sudden your yards per carry looks pretty good but they are pretty good at stopping the run.

Q. You mentioned after the game and Sunday evening as far as your kickoff coverage, you were going to look around the country at other teams. Has that been done?
COACH RICHT: We looked around a little bit and saw what people do, and quite frankly, most everybody will line up -- if they think there's an obvious on-side or at least the good possibility of an on-side kick, most everybody lines up just the way we did. Some people line up with even their deep return man even deeper.

But everybody, even on that, everybody has got a job they have got to do and if everybody would have blocked who they were supposed to block with any kind of proficiency, they didn't have to just stone them. We would have had no trouble getting on it. And then there's things like, when you see the approach of the kicker, towards the end -- right at the moment of truth, you get a pretty good feel where that ball is going to go.

So we've got to learn to anticipate better. We've got to learn to teach our return men to read that guy a little bit better and get a jump on it, so to speak. Alignment was a little bit of an issue that we didn't align just quite the way we should have. But yeah, we looked around a good bit and we feel like it was more of an execution issue.

Now, the other thing is, some teams will sub -- when we are an obvious on-side kick. We'll put certain guys in the game. If I'm going to kick, I put other guys in the game. So you have to kind of keep an eye on that, too, and try to decide.

If we are lined up for a normal deep kick and then they get that little squib kick in there, because you are vulnerable for those kicks once you lineup to catch a deep ball, your normal alignment, that's why people surprise on-side because there's some space in there to give people opportunities. You don't want that to happen, either.

Q. One thing, kind of a general question in the SEC. Do you think that the teams around the league may be need to schedule tougher -- I know you have a very tough in-conference schedule but the out of conference schedule, a lot of teams don't play a lot of power five, non-conference games and you have one with Tech every year that you have to play. Do you worry that that could hurt down the road?
COACH RICHT: No, I think everybody has a choice. The way we do it now, you have a choice. If you want three like that, go ahead and do it. If you want one, two, whatever you choose to do, I think each team in the league can make that decision for them and what's best for their program.

I think only time will tell if it becomes problematic for somebody to get into the playoffs. But we're all, you know, we're pretty confident that if you win the league, you've got a pretty good chance, not a guaranteed chance, but you've got a pretty good chance of getting in there. If you get a one-loss team and a no-loss team at the end of the year, you've got a chance for two.

I don't know how people rate schedules as far as power ratings, but the bottom line is, let's say you schedule a team that's not an FCS team or however you want to say it. Well, you can go four FBS teams, and then play those teams that you're still probably favored to win every one of them, and you could say you did this or that and then you play your regular season schedule. I mean, how does that compare to the games we play? You lose one or two, you could be done.

We play at least -- you know, we play a bunch of teams that can beat us and we can beat anybody we play, too, on any given day. I think our schedule is plenty tough enough, I do.

I think our schedule is plenty tough enough and I think our league schedules are plenty tough enough to get us where we want to go.

Q. South Carolina has had a pretty high level of quarterback play the last few years. Now that they are on their backup, how much does that change what you think they can do offensively?
COACH RICHT: I'm sorry the young man got hurt. But he did get hurt early enough in the game where the other guy got to play. Orth got in there and you got to see him throw it, whatever it was, 20 times. Got to see him execute under pressure. So you got to learn something about him.

What I learned about him is he's tough, a very accurate passer. Looked like a great competitor. He didn't look shellshocked in any way, shape or form. He looked like he was ready to play. I'm glad we got to watch a little film on him.

Q. On Greyson, I think I've heard you allude to this, but I'd like to ask you if you can expound a little bit, that as much as we talk about passing game and all that, one of the reason that is Greyson Lambert is the starter is all those other things that come to the quarterback position, I guess identifying protections, the checks and that kind of stuff.
COACH RICHT: Right.

Q. Is that where he maybe out-classes the other guys?
COACH RICHT: Not really. I thought they all did a pretty good job. I think if any one of our QBs goes in there, he'll be able to function and get us in the right play. But certainly that could have been to his demise, quite frankly, coming as late as he did. If he couldn't do that, it would have been tough on him. All of them have to be able do that and they are able.

Like I said, it was a very close race. But now that we've decided who our quarterback is, who our starter is, I know that playing that position, you don't just become super proficient overnight. I know he's played a lot of college ball but he has not played a lot of college ball for Georgia in this league and quite frankly, in this system. So there's a learning curve and things take time, and you get better as you go. Sometimes you've just got to show a little patience and guys will catch on and really play well.

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