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UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 3, 2015Mark RichtAthens, Georgia MARK RICHT: All right, here we go. Kentucky Wildcats, Coach Stoops really doing a fine job there, putting together some really good recruiting classes. Guys are playing extremely well. We'll talk about their offense first. They're averaging 24 points a game. They're averaging 387 yards a game, of which 142 is running the ball, and 244 is passing the ball. Actually had back-to-back 400-yard games against Auburn, Mississippi State just recently. Very balanced offense. I'll start with their quarterback, Patrick Towles, a guy that's thrown for close to 2,000 yards, nine touchdowns, has rushed for 154 yards, and actually I think he's the leading rusher for touchdowns. He's got five TDs, so they've used his ability to run the ball down there in the red zone. Very impressive guy, 6'5", 240 pounds, throws the ball beautifully. Like I said, athletic. For a man that big to be able to run like he does has been kind of fun to watch actually until the week you play them because we do watch a lot of their film. When we study other opponents' defenses along the way, we always like to see what Kentucky is doing because they do such a great job offensively, and we do some similar things that they do as far as formations and passing concepts, running concepts, all that kind of thing. Talking about their running game, Williams is out from what I'm hearing. I guess knowing that -- he really has had a fantastic year. I think he broke off a long run against us last year, but he's got close to 600 yards rushing, but it looks like he won't be playing in the ballgame. I know they've done the rest by committee between Kemp and Horton and King. I think Horton had over a 100-yard game after Williams was out of the game just recently. Still, I'm sure they'll still be able to run the football and run it well, but Williams has been a pretty dynamic player for them. As far as their receiving corps, the No. 1 receiver is Dorian Baker, No. 2. He's 6'3", 208 pounds, very good-looking kid. Got 42 catches for 441 yards and three touchdowns. Second leading receiver is Johnson, Garrett Johnson, got 35 catches for 562 yards and a couple TDs, and then Jeff Badet or Badet, I'm not exactly sure how to pronounce it, I apologize for butchering it a little bit, but No. 13, 22 catches, 325 yards, two touchdowns. Their men up front, they've got three returning starters up front in Swindle and Toth and Meyers, and they're averaging as a unit over 300 pounds. Only one guy under 300. They list him at 298, but by this time of the year he's probably over 300. That would be my guess just looking at him. Defensively they're giving up 29 points a game, 414 yards per game, 182 rushing, 232 passing. They have gotten some turnovers that have set up for points for the offense that they actually scored themselves. I know big Cory Johnson, No. 67, 6'3", 300-pound big senior D-tackle scooped up a fumble and took it 77 yards for a touchdown for the first score against Tennessee. Very impressive to see him rumbling down the field as big as he is and how good he plays. He's actually the leading tackler of their big men. They play a predominantly 3-4 look, and he's very strong inside. He's got 49 tackles, four and a half tackles for loss, two sacks, very active player, very tough player. They lost No. 90, Lewis. It sounds like they lost him maybe for the rest of the season. Really, really fine football player, big nose guard type of guy that you've got to have to run this type of 3-4 scheme, and you'd think they'd be in trouble in that regard, but then Matt Elam shows up, 6'7", 360 pounds, just he's a giant. He's a big man and very tough physical inside defender. They also up front have another D-end in No. 91, 6'4", 282 senior, doing a great job up front. And as far as the leading tackler on the team, Josh Forrest, former wide receiver turned linebacker, is their leader in tackles, 66 tackles, four and a half tackles for loss, three and a half sacks, got a pick, got a bunch of pass breakups, doing a great job in the linebacking corps. On the back end, Marcus McWilson, No. 15, six foot, 208 pounds, has 54 tackles on the perimeter, very active, rolling into the box to get that extra hat in there that usually is unblocked by scheme and he comes up and makes a lot of great tackles. Last ballgame against Tennessee he had 10 tackles, a sack, caused a fumble, also had two tackles for loss. They've got a young receiver really playing well. He leads the team in picks, Westry, Chris Westry, 6'4", 185. You don't find many corners that long, but with the type of receivers people are putting out there, it's good to have a guy that really has the length to compete in that regard. As far as their punting is concerned, they're averaging 40 yards a punt. Their longest is 52 yards, and got nine inside the 20. Their punt returner is Timmons. He's averaging 8.7 yards a return. MacGinnis is their field goal man, and he's made 11 of 13, which is one of the best in the league and probably in the country. He's got a long of 48. He's made -- every kick inside of 40 he's made every one of them. The only ones he missed were longer than 40. And then King is their kick return man. He's averaging 20.6 yards and had a long of 48. So that's the Kentucky Wildcats. Noon kickoff, as Claude said. Looking forward to the Dawg walk. Looking forward to our students. Looking forward to our fans coming out and supporting the young men, and looking forward to being home again. With that, we'll open it up. Q. How do you rationalize the season? MARK RICHT: Well, it's not over yet, number one. At this point -- we didn't make it to the Eastern Division championship. That's all I can say right now. Been up and down. But we're battling. We're battling. Q. Given the offensive failings of last weekend and the last month really, what kind of changes do you plan to initiate to fix it, and would it include coaching personnel or duties and responsibilities? MARK RICHT: No, no. We're all -- here's the deal, everybody. Y'all can pay attention to this. We're Georgia. We're a team. We work together. We're going to fight. We're going to fight together, and we'll do the things we think we need to do to get better as we go, but the Georgia people can count on us fighting our tails off and doing it in a way that everybody would be proud of the effort of our young men and everybody's efforts to get better. So that's where we're at right now. Q. When you guys recruited Sony Michel, did you envision him being a guy who could take a big workload, 20 to 30 carries a game? MARK RICHT: Well, Sony is a very talented guy, and he's been doing that kind of his whole life. I think he played high school ball in the eighth grade. He's used to being that guy to carry the load, but really, I don't think we've signed a back at Georgia that we thought would be one guy to carry the load by himself. We've really wanted to have a situation where we have two, three guys that can share the load. I think that's healthier for those guys. I think it's the way to hopefully keep them fresher throughout a game and throughout a season. I've said that many times. And I think you can look at the last few years of us signing players, it's not like we just sign this one back per class and say we're good to go. We have tried to get more than one great back in a class, tried to encourage guys to understand that it is important to have a running mate, so to speak. And I think nowadays, most kids really get that. We don't run across many guys that are like, man, I'm afraid if you sign this other back, I don't want to come. They want to come because they like how we go about our business, how we play the game of football, and they can see themselves succeeding just like the men in the past that have played that position. So we've not really had an issue with that. Q. This is the first time I guess in your 15 years where you've had some national media outlets speculate on your future. Given that kids today can see stuff through social media, have you addressed that with him? Have you asked them to get off social media? MARK RICHT: No, no. You're talking about our own players? Q. Right. MARK RICHT: Well, what I tell our players is to -- good or bad, this is policy, period, but we try -- we call it noise. We say ignore the noise, and it's -- when they're bragging about you or they're saying not-so-nice things about you, and just focus on what's being said in this room by our coaches and by each other. That's the thing you've got to really focus on. You know, I can't control what people write, and I can't control what people read, but I can control certain things, and that's what I focus on. That's what our staff is focusing on, and I think that's what our players are focusing on. But you've got young people that -- they've got to walk to campus every day, go to class, and they're around people all the time, and I think they just kind of grew up on social media all the time, so I don't think it's stay off of it quite frankly. It's kind of up to them to decide what they look at. But the biggest thing is to focus on the people that really know and understand the game, number one, know and understand this team, number two, and be mostly concerned with what it's going to take to have success moving forward. You know, what we've done to this point really doesn't define us as much as what we do from here on, and that's how you've got to handle adversity in a season and that's how you've got to handle adversity in life in my opinion. You have to decide what are you going to do now. What we're going to do now is we're going to focus on our jobs, we're going to fight like mad, and we're going to do it together. That's what we're going to do. Q. How do you think Bryce has handled the transition of being the starting punter? MARK RICHT: Well, Bryce had a good performance. That first punt was not real pretty, but it rolled for 17 yards and got a 50-yard punt, so that probably helped him. If that had bounced backwards I don't know how he would have felt after that. But I think just to get that first punt off -- I asked him, were you nervous? He said, yeah, I was nervous on the first one, but after that he settled in and actually did a really nice job. You know, part of the job of a punter at Georgia, and most places, is the direction of where the punt goes, and in practices he's done a very nice job of landing the ball where we want the ball to land to help us cover the kick. You want distance, you want height, but it's nice to have it in a certain third of the field where everybody can rally around that point instead of trying to cover the whole 53 and a third yards or whatever it is. But he's done a nice job. And I'll say this: Collin, he's been competing his tail off in practice. He's still getting reps. We always do that, and he's actually been kicking the ball pretty darned good. I don't know if we've seen the last of him, either, but he's doing well. Q. Getting back to what David brought up, when you take this job years ago, is it important to take the good with the bad? Does that kind of come with the territory? MARK RICHT: Well, it's part of the -- it's the nature of the business. It's the nature of leadership. Leaders make decisions. Decisions aren't always popular. There's rarely a decision that's made that everybody thinks is a great one. You know, even within our own building, I mean -- but somewhere along the line we've got to say, okay, we've all agreed this is what we're going to do and this is how we're going to do it. But there's definitely -- anybody who's been in a leadership position knows that there's going to be criticism. That's just all there is to it. Now, some jobs you might have a bad day at the office and maybe three people know, you know? We have a bad day at the office in our line of work and millions of people know and millions of people have an opinion, and a lot of people know football. A lot of people think they know football, you know, so there's a little bit of everything. There's actually some pretty good constructive criticism out there, but it's kind of obvious, I mean, we know it, too. But I've said for years that I've always wanted to be at a school where the people care. I've always wanted to be at a school where there's tremendous support, where people are going to get in the stands and get excited and have passion, and you can't just decide to have passion one way. People have opinions, and when things don't go well, I don't blame people for getting mad or upset or whatever. But I do want everybody in the Bulldog nation to support our players. I think that's the most important thing, support these guys. These guys, they're -- I mean, it's unbelievable the amount of workload they have when you take football and school, and it's a lot. And those guys, they need us as coaches, just to help them navigate life in general, and certainly learn how to navigate tough times. What are you going to do? And I think there's some great lessons that can be learned in football, but there's some great lessons that can be learned in life for these guys, as well, because sooner or later, like I was talking to the seniors, within weeks you're out on your own. You're pretty much an independent adult making a lot of life decisions, and you're getting married probably, probably have some kids, probably have issues at job or family or whatever it is, and it's going to be tough times, and you've got to decide how are you going to handle the tough times. Well, you know, ignore the negativity. Negativity brings people down. No one likes negativity. So ignore that. I've had the ability to listen to comments that may be directed in a negative way, but if it makes sense, I'm still open-minded to listen to the idea, even though I don't like the delivery of the idea at times. But then, you know, also begin to focus on the positive, and then focus on standing up, manning up, taking care of business, and do it hopefully in a unified manner. You know, families blow up because somebody decided it was too tough and they decided to run. You know, don't do that. Don't be that guy. Don't be that guy. So that's what we're trying to teach them. Q. Have you guys settled on your starting quarterback this week, and is it important to get some stability down the stretch here? MARK RICHT: It would be nice to get more stability at that position, but it just hasn't played out that way. We're basically competing this week at a lot of positions, especially on offense, just making sure the guys aren't too comfortable. If they're not really -- you know, I guess the bottom line is we want to get the best 11 on the field for whatever situation it calls. It's not going to be just 11 guys. We know we sub. We know we have different personnel groups and things of that nature, but the bottom line is to get the best people in the game and help them execute. Q. Have you had any conversations either with Greg or Dr. Morehead regarding what's going on in the program or the coaching staff and also about your personal situation? MARK RICHT: No. Q. And also as a follow-up question, at any point, whether it was this past week or prior to that, have you thought about taking over play-calling duties at all? MARK RICHT: No. We're going to do fine, yeah. Q. What's been the response from players since the loss on Saturday? MARK RICHT: I think our players -- I think our players appreciate how we're handling our business as coaches and how we're moving forward. I had a meeting with our leadership followed by a meeting with our team, kind of set the course of how we're going to go from here. One of the things I mentioned to the team is sometimes when adversity strikes, you don't know how to act. You're like, how am I supposed to -- you know how you feel, but how are you supposed to act, and I just wanted to help them understand how to act and how we were going to go about our business as coaches and how I was going to go about my business as head coach. So hopefully, and I think everybody took it in a real positive light and I think everybody is like, let's go. Let's go to work. We had a very good practice yesterday. Q. If the decision at quarterback ends up with Faton, would you use him the same way that it was in the Florida game or would you try to use his mobility and his dual-threat abilities a little bit more? MARK RICHT: Well, we had -- and I mentioned this on the call. Somebody asked that last night. I mean, there's a lot of read plays that -- zone read being the most popular one, and if you don't really know for sure what a zone read is, if you took two receivers and spread them out and you've got two defenders on them, that's four. Two and two is four. You've got a safety deep, that's five. That leaves six defenders. So you've got five linemen, a quarterback and a back, so you've got five linemen that are going to block, okay, six guys. So there's one guy left over. When every zone block is left, you've got your back sitting over here, and the quarterback will stick the ball in his belly and he'll watch that end man on the line and he's not being blocked, so when he's riding that ball into that blocking scheme, if that defensive end decides he's going to go come and make the play, that's when the QB pulls it out and he runs. That's a zone read as simply as I can state it. And I imagine everybody knows, but if you didn't know, that might be helpful. Then there's other blocking schemes. You might have a power play where you're reading a defender, or you might decide to block the end man on the line and read a linebacker, and if the linebacker pursues it, people pull the ball out and throw the ball. But if you're going to do QB run, a lot of QB run is predicated on what that unblocked guy does. And the other thing is what happens with unblocked guys, if our five don't block their five good enough, there's no reason to add this extra guy, if you know what I'm saying. So for the most part we were getting whipped at the point, so they didn't really need to add a sixth guy to start chasing down the back or feel the need to go do that where the quarterback could have pulled the ball and run with it a little bit now. Now, you can run QB draw and QB sweeps and things of that nature, but we had called enough plays where he could have ran the ball, but because of how the defense had played it, he didn't run it as much. But to answer your question, we would have QB run available if he's in the game. Q. Talking about leadership, have you had to deal with anything that would be characterized as disharmony or dissension within your coaching staff? MARK RICHT: Not really. You know, everything -- there's always things that happen in the heat of the battle and all that in every game. I think if you put a microphone on every -- if you've got a play caller upstairs and you're calling a game and every word was recorded, you know, there would be like people get hot about this, that or the other, but it's just typical game-day type stuff. But we've had no issue there. Q. The last time maybe you were in this position was early in 2011 and then you guys were able to respond. Are there any lessons or anything that you learned them that you can apply to this stretch? MARK RICHT: Yeah, same thing. Same thing. You know, don't worry about things you can't control. Focus on what you can control. And you know, fight like mad, trust, have faith, believe in each other. You know, keep grinding. You just never know how close you are to success. Like you say, 2011, if everybody said the sky was falling and everybody fell apart at the seams, we never could have won 10 in a row like we did that year. You just keep playing, keep believing, keep moving forward in a positive way. Q. I guess Hunter Long is probably the only backup that's gotten significant work on the offensive line. Who else it in play in terms of guys you're considering? MARK RICHT: Yeah, Sims, we're going to give Dyshon some work, and we did a good bit of competing in the open date week, but we didn't really follow through and change anything because we thought everybody competed well. We thought the starters did a good job. But there may be -- Sims might have a chance to work his way into getting some playing time. I'm not saying he'll start or anything like that. I mean, he could, but we've got a couple physical days of practice today and tomorrow that might help decide that. Q. Kind of to piggy-back off that question, you've played a ton of freshmen this year. Now that you're erased from the SEC race, are there other youngsters you'd like to see get more playing time? MARK RICHT: Well, we do -- like our young receiving corps is getting closer and closer. They're getting in there a little bit. You have to watch kind of close to see them in there sometimes, but they need to get in there some more, I believe. We've already played 22 true freshmen, so it's not like we've got to get somebody in there for the first time. I just think we've got to continue to give them opportunities, and some guys are starting. Some guys are playing a lot. Some guys, a massive amount of them are on our special teams, and they're all gaining valuable experience. But as the season goes on, regardless of what you're chasing, I think guys just develop as they go and they earn more playing time as they go. Q. There was talk in August of Keith Marshall having his explosiveness back, and obviously when he was behind Chubb and Sony it was tough to get carries, but only three carries Saturday. Is there a plan or hope to get him -- MARK RICHT: Yeah, I've seen him improve basically weekly. I think he's in a good position to get more totes. That would be my guess going into this week. Q. You were kind of talking about 2011. It seems like the last several years you guys have been in a good position and you have one or two key losses that kind of derails your SEC title hopes. Does it get frustrating to keep experiencing the -- MARK RICHT: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Are you kidding me? Yeah, very frustrating. No doubt. Q. Mike Bobo not being here this year, how much impact has that had, obviously the transition with Coach Schottenheimer, but when you look at how the offense has performed. MARK RICHT: Well, we were performing pretty good there for a minute, but we hit some pretty good defenses and some injuries, and we've had -- you know, we've had some inconsistent play overall. But I mean, there's been plenty of times where we struggled while Mike was here, too. I mean, I don't know if anybody remembers that. (Laughter.) But when you leave, everybody loves you. But I've always had a lot of faith in Mike. The whole time thing, I think you know that. It's been documented well, and I have a lot of faith in Schottie, as well. Q. Do you feel like there's sort of any kind of mandate for what you have to do the rest of the year to quiet the noise and keep moving forward? MARK RICHT: Well, I think you need to play good. I think you need to -- winning some games would help, too. 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