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UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 18, 2017

Kirby Smart

Athens, Georgia

KIRBY SMART: Welcome, guys. Looking forward to a great opportunity to play a really well-coached, good football team both sides of the ball. Very explosive. Got a lot of respect for Coach Mullen and their program, having gone against them for a long time my previous stop.

I think they're a very physical team. They always are. Very hands-on on special teams. I've always had respect for his special teams units. He seems to always find really good quarterbacks, especially dual-threat guys. He's known for developing those type of guys. He's done a good job with their overall program.

Defensively right now they're playing as good as anybody in the conference. Playing really hard on defense. Playing really physical. So they've got a very good team.

But we're excited for the matchup. We obviously need to make the home atmosphere special, make it tough for them to play in. Encouraging all the Dog Nation to be there, which I know they will, be loud and proud.

We'll open it up for questions.

Q. I want to get your thoughts on Nick Fitzgerald. Obviously he's a big part of what they do. Did you have any interaction with him when he was being recruited?
KIRBY SMART: No, I did not. Didn't know much about Nick. He was kind of under the radar. Just goes again to show what Dan has been able to do with quarterbacks. He saw something in the kid. He's unbelievably competitive, physical, big. I mean, he did it with Dak Prescott. Dak was not a highly recruited guy. A guy with good size, dimensions, has the ability to throw the ball, but can run.

Nick played in a little bit different offense at high school. He's developed as a quarterback. To see him this year compared to all the games we watched last year in the off-season, he's one of the most vastly improved players because he's not one-dimensional any more. He was really a runner last year. That's not the case. I saw that same growth with Dak Prescott during his time at Mississippi State.

Very talented player. I didn't know much about him in high school. I didn't go that far east in Georgia much. They got a good one out of him.

Q. How well do you know Todd Grantham? What has he been able to do this year to turn around that defense so quickly?
KIRBY SMART: I've known Todd for a long time. He used to come and talk ball with us when I was at LSU on Nick's staff. We would share ideas, pressures when he was in the NFL. Communicated with him when we played like opponents when he was here. Tried to help each other back and forth.

I think Todd does a tremendous job. He's very smart, very knowledgeable, knows how to attack protections. He's a guy that's constantly working on getting better. He's got these guys believing and playing really hard, really physical. Got some good players. Got some big guys up front. They're playing hard.

He's got some fast guys. They just seem like they have a lot of guys they play. They use 'em well. They use 'em to their strengths. They moved Jeffrey Simmons around. Got good players, good guys in the secondary. He is who got these guys believing in each other and they're playing really hard.

Q. Fitzgerald, do you find it remarkable that a guy can be that lightly recruited, be able to do what he's done in this last year and a half?
KIRBY SMART: Not really. He played in a system that didn't really show off some of his skill set. When you take a guy that's running option, those kind of things in high school, sometimes you take that with the idea that this guy is going to grow into something.

I've seen quarterbacks like that turn into great tight ends. That wasn't the case with him. Dan took him and developed him and worked really hard with him. He's got a lot of family members. He's kin to Charles Pledger, who played here with me. He's been telling me about the guy ever since he got over there. He's done nothing but get better every time.

Q. What you were able to do against Wimbush and Notre Dame, how much carryover do you think that might be in terms of another runningback? With your run defense, three weeks in, what do you think of it?
KIRBY SMART: Well, I think Wimbush and Nick are very different, very different type guys. Nick is a unique quarterback with his length, ability to see over. He's a lot faster than you think, deceptively. He doesn't look as if, when you talk to people that played him, he's running real fast, but he is. I think that's different.

Wimbush had a little bit more quick twitch. This kid is long and fast. When you get loose on him, you see him running away from SEC defenses. You didn't see that with Wimbush. They didn't play SEC defenses.

This guy has gone up against the kind of defenses we've had repeatedly. He's faced that a bunch. He's a good player. We're excited for the opportunity to compete against him.

Q. The interior offensive line, how do you grade those guys so far? Are you thinking of still tweaking or do you like who you have there right now?
KIRBY SMART: I think you're always tweaking. I think you're always looking for the best players. We have who we have. We try to get what we have better. I think that's an area that obviously we can improve on. Each guy that's played has done some good things. Kendall Baker has shown some good things. Had some mishaps. Same with Pat Allen. Solomon is getting more steady in there. He has to continue to improve. But he gives us something that we don't have.

But we only have kind of so many options. You got to use the options you got best. We'll continue looking at guys across the board. Some guys may get some looks at guard.

Q. When did you and Mel first connect with J.R. Reed? When did he begin to emerge in August as starter on defense?
KIRBY SMART: Found out about J.R. really through the recruitment of Deangelo Gibbs. He's a relative of Deangelo. Good friends, grew up together. Deangelo kept bringing his name up, his family did. His father Jake being from right down the road.

As far as him becoming a starter, he kind of emerged in the spring because it wasn't really August with him. We saw him a year. He was on the scout team last year. We didn't know while he was on the scout team what caliber of player he was going to be. You just look at a card. You don't actually run our defense, you run the other team's defense. We saw athleticism, but didn't know whether he was going to be a starter or not. We knew at the end of the spring that he was going to be a starter.

Impressive both mentally and physically. He practices really hard. That gives him a competitive advantage. He's been a good pickup. He's been a savior in some sorts because of the thin secondary we've had.

Q. You mix it under center, shotgun. How vital is it to show different kinds of looks against these defenses to keep them on their heels?
KIRBY SMART: I think it's important. I think it's probably overrated a little as far as shotgun, offense, I offense. I mean, at the end of the day, you got to run the ball, you got to stop the run. It's how you do it most efficiently. Some of that is based on your personnel, what your guys do good.

I think defensively the way teams look at is, when you're in the shotgun, it's not like it's a secret. When you're in the I, it's not like it's a secret. They can look at those things, see it, try to get tendencies off it.

I think every coach in America is trying to break his tendencies. I think it's a little overrated as far as what are you: I, the shotgun. I don't know many teams that don't go under center, don't go under shotgun.

Q. The progress of (indiscernible)? How you would rate Jake Fromm thus far?
KIRBY SMART: Jacob is recovering well. Hope to get him out there today to do some things. He's running, moving around. We'll get to see how he goes. I haven't got to see him in three days. We'll find out more today where he's at.

As far as Jake Fromm, I think he continues to improve. He's got some areas he's got to improve in. He's making better decisions more consistently, which for us, the quarterback position is a decision-making position. We're not asking the guy to go out there and scramble around and make runs. We got to get him to make good decisions. As long as he does that, we can play winning football. He's improved in that area, but has some growth to go.

Q. Is Jacob taking some reps this week?
KIRBY SMART: We'll wait and see. We're going to find out today, see how he does.

Q. You talked about how Lorenzo is maybe too nice to be savage after the game on Saturday. Is there a particular challenge, maybe a key to get a guy like that to turn on that aggression in a game the way he's been able to?
KIRBY SMART: Let me say this. He turns on the aggression in the game, but that doesn't make you a savage. He plays aggressively in the game. That's the way you should play. The guy plays with relentless effort, which we talk about all the time. An uncanny ability not to be denied. He's not going to let an offensive tackle, runningback, stop him.

As far as how you cut that loose in somebody, I think everybody's different. Some guys are motivated through fear. Some guys are motivated by self-motivation. Some guys, they want to be yelled at to get them going.

Lorenzo is a self-starter. He plays hard without encouragement. He plays hard because that's who he is.

Q. How do you feel about the performance of the tight ends thus far? Some people expected they would get more opportunities to catch the ball.
KIRBY SMART: Yeah, I always redirect all that to what is the performance of those guys. Are they blocking well? Are they doing the things they got to do? Are they able to open up play-action?

At the end of the day, you kind of get how you practice. Guys practice the right way, they play physical, they block, then they usually get rewarded because our run game's better, the play-action game is better. If they don't do those things, we usually don't have a lot of success.

We have some improvement in that area, and we've got to play better in that area.

Q. Going into conference play now, how much do things sort of get ratcheted up internally? I don't know if you've been holding anything back. Also as you go into SEC play, do you have a sense after three games where your team is at in terms of development?
KIRBY SMART: Yeah, I don't really know when you say 'ratcheted' up. Every week is the same level intensity for me. We don't take opponents lightly. It's not like we say, Okay, guys, SEC this week, let's go practice harder, practice longer. We have a plan, we have a process we do each week. We follow that process each week. I don't think it's let's jack it up, crank it up. That wouldn't be fair to the opponents we just played.

But as far as where we are, I think playing a team like this this week will tell us a lot. It's hard to say. I'm not going to sit here and say we've arrived, because I don't think that's the case. I think we've improved. I think we have to continue to improve to beat the teams we have on our schedule.

Q. Long-term view. Do you think the younger runningbacks, especially after getting to see them play, have proved or shown things are going to be okay at that position?
KIRBY SMART: Yeah, I don't know they've been given an opportunity to prove. They got to run the ball against Samford. I don't know how many carries it was.

I think you earn that by the way you practice against our defense who is pretty good at stopping the run. You earn that how you protect the ball against our defense in practice. They get to go against them each day. They earn that going against blitz pickups against our guys each day. They continue to develop in that category. So it's important for them.

Just because they went out against Samford and played well, I think that's great, certainly makes me feel better about them going out and doing it in a game, but they still got something to prove to everybody.

I think what those guys have done is take on a role in our special teams. Nobody gives Holyfield credit, but he's the guy blocking on kickoff returns, Brian Herrein covers kicks, D'Andre Swift covers punts and kicks. Those guys are very valuable in what they do.

Q. You mentioned a thin secondary. What have you guys been missing not having Malkom Parrish out there?
KIRBY SMART: Depth. Simple. We just don't have a lot of depth. Think that's important to have in the secondary where you play sometimes upwards of 80, 90 snaps. You got five and six guys on the field. When you don't have extra guys to sub and play, it makes you very thin.

Q. What is the availability with Chigbu and Roundtree, what they're dealing with?
KIRBY SMART: Chigbu should be good to go. We expect him out there today. We'll find out more. Rashad has been going through some concussion things that we've had to handle protocol with. Hopefully we get Rashad back soon. Chigbu will be out there today.

Q. There seems to be a real improvement as far as everyone being in sync, even as far as on the sidelines, being in the game. Is that a product of something y'all have kind of instilled coaching-wise? How much of your leadership is chipping in on that?
KIRBY SMART: I don't know what you're referencing. 'In sync', you mean not getting penalties, timeouts?

Q. From a sideline standpoint, it seems like everyone is into the game, into what their various assignments are more so than I've ever seen.
KIRBY SMART: Yeah, to me we're doing everything we did last year. Maybe we're doing it more efficiently. I certainly think everybody's into the game every game. They better be. If they're not, they shouldn't be on the sideline.

I think organization is important. I think making sure you understand the situations in the game that come up. I mean, people substitute on offense, substitute on defense. You're always trying to stay on top of that and in tune with it.

But I don't know that it's much different.

Q. Malkom Parrish, will he be available this week?
KIRBY SMART: We hope to see today. Again, we're going off last time I saw him do anything was really Thursday. Today we're going to be able to do more with the guy. We hope to be able to get him back this week. I can't tell you anything until after practice today.

Q. In terms of your special teams units, would you say three weeks in that you're pleased with how the coverage units are? How is a guy like Jayson Stanley played a role in this on coverage so far?
KIRBY SMART: Yeah, I don't think people give Jayson Stanley enough credit. If you go back and watch the tape, the guy has been dominant in coverage, like kickoff and punt.

Now, fortunately with the ability of our specialists to kick it higher, deeper, longer, hang time, he's getting to show those skill sets. They're also making it where we don't know what the coverage unit does because they haven't had to cover. They're covering, but the balls aren't coming out. I like that just as much. Rod has done a tremendous job.

I can't say kickoff coverage we're a lot better than last year because Rod has kicked the ball out of the end zone. That's a great problem to have. You get to find out more when one comes out. Then punt coverage, done a good job of bombing it.

Jayson has been all over it. We've had several fair catches. Those coverage units, we've worked hard on them. I think they're improved, but they don't get tested as much as they used to.

Thanks, guys.

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