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UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 22, 2018

Kirby Smart

Athens, Georgia

KIRBY SMART: We start back with it today. Excited to get the players back out there and get going. Probably good for them to get a little time away and a little R & R, rest and relaxation for Friday and Saturday. Then Sunday they came back. Our guys needed that break, and I know they're eager to get back to work. A lot of them have been here today and ready to go back to work on these guys.

I think Coach Mullen has done a tremendous job with this team. Obviously they've got talent all over the field. They've got a lot of fast, athletic players, probably the best overall receiving corps we've gone against top to bottom. Some talented players there. A really active defensive front. Todd is doing a good job causing negative plays in sacks. They're very athletic up front.

And they're playing really good football right now. They've gotten better -- you can see how better they've gotten with each game. They play with more confidence, and they're playing really good right now. So we're prepared for a big battle down in Jacksonville.

Q. Kirby, when you talk about that defensive front with Polite and Zuniga and Joseph and those guys, how challenging is that going to be for you guys to stop them and how will you have to mix it up as far as protections?
KIRBY SMART: I think they do a good job. They're extremely athletic. They're quick. They've caused problems for everybody they've played with their athleticism. They're hard to block. They stay active. Even when you block them, they get in on plays. They're really superlative, along with Cece Jefferson, who seems like he's been there forever. They're just active football players. They're very disruptive. I think the key to stopping those guys you gotta be able to block them. You can't put two people on all of them. You gotta try to block those guys and get hands on them and be physical at the point of attack, but they do a good job of changing stunts, moving fronts, stemming things, and really effective, especially third down.

Q. Coach, can you update us on Swift, Marshall, Cleveland and some of the other guys that have been out?
KIRBY SMART: Yeah. Swift is fine. He should be practicing today. Got a lot of rehab over the weekend. Should be good to go. Ben will still be out. Don't know when we're getting Ben back. He's doing more running. He's been more active. We'll find out more during the week. But we don't think he's going to be able to play the game. And then Dave is still out.

Q. Kind of about injuries, your offensive line play, how would you assess your offensive line play, because obviously that's a big deal going into this game. And thinking about it, have injuries, Andrew's been gimpy, Solomon's been gimpy, Ben's out, has that affected your ability up front a little bit?
KIRBY SMART: I would say it's affected continuity, but I think the guys we plugged in, I mean for a true freshman, Cade Mays has played well. I think anytime you're playing with young guys on the offensive line, it's nice to get a core group. When you look across the board there, you got a redshirt freshman, true freshman, other freshmen have played, and Andrew is not like a sophomore as much as he's played. He's played a lot of snaps, and then Lamont.

So it would be nice to have some continuity, but in this league, I don't think there's one offensive line we've played that's had five consecutive starters. It's just the way of the league. It's the same way on the offensive line, the defensive line, you gotta have the next-man-up mentality, and that's kind of the way we've approached it. And Solly's been dinged up; Andrew has been dinged up, but for the most part those guys are back healthy.

Q. Frank's and I guess the Mullen offense in general with those short passes and middle passes, you guys had limited explosive plays. How does that fit -- how do you feel about your inside linebackers, your linebackers and your nickel backs defending those short passes?
KIRBY SMART: Well, I mean I think they do a good job with vertical passes as well. They've got -- their wideouts are extremely explosive. Van Jefferson, Tyrie Cleveland, those guys are really good wideouts. They've got guys that are explosive down the field. Feleipe can throw the ball as far as he wants to. Great arm strength. If they want to throw short passes, we gotta tackle them and knock the ball off them. But explosive plays are what we're trying to avoid. They're good at making them. They've got vertical threats down the field, but we've gotta do a good job in both.

As far as our linebackers' play, we've kind of been by committee this year. There's nobody that's really stood out. Nobody's played exceptional. We've got a group of guys that rotate and play between the four of them. They continue to do that and work hard at it. I think Monty is still trying to get back to Monty from his knee. He plays hard, plays physical. He's probably lost a little bit of his step with the injury, and hopefully this recovery time has given him a chance to get back to himself.

Q. Kirby, teams are obviously defined by how they bounce back from things. The limited time you've had with them since last game, how have you seen that they've responded emotionally, and what do you hope to see from them this week that maybe you didn't see in the last game?
KIRBY SMART: I think kids are a lot more resilient than you give them credit for. It's the leaders of the program and the organization and the coaches that have to get over it. We're the ones that deal with a loss sometimes harder than the players. I think the players are resilient, they're back out to work. We had really good spirited work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday working on ourselves, just trying to get better to us. And Thursday led into some Florida stuff, and I think that was a good change of pace for them to start working on a new opponent and get ready for that. So our players have responded really well. They go out and compete each day. I would expect no less from them today. Sometimes it's hard to get them going after three days off and you gotta get the cobwebs out, but with a game like this, our guys are excited and I'm sure their guys are, too. So I'm expecting our guys to have really good practice.

Q. How similar is what you're seeing with Coach Grantham's defense at Florida this year as opposed to Mississippi State last season?
KIRBY SMART: Some similarities, some differences. I think they were a little bigger last year, I think Mississippi State in some spots. Extremely athletic. They did a good job at Mississippi State last year and he's doing a good job this year at Florida. They're aggressive, doing a good job of causing turnovers, got all kinds of fumble recoveries and all kinds of stipulates. So there's some similarities between the two and they're not completely the same. I think anytime as a defensive coordinator you got things you believe in and when you've been good at defensive coordinator in this conference, you do what you believe in, and he's done some of the same things he's done at Mississippi State.

Q. When you look at the defense film from LSU, I know you've mentioned tackling and busts. What about effort? How is that when you watch film?
KIRBY SMART: I think conditioning is a major part. I don't know that I would call it effort, lack of effort. I think being conditioned, being able to play 60, 70 snaps in a row, being able to play sustained drives, being able to play back-to-back plays, you can never be good enough at that. You're always trying to improve. It's something that we worked hard on last week is how many plays can you play in a row and be at your best.

I don't think it's a lack of effort. I think it's more of maybe a lack of conditioning and being able to play a number of snaps? A row and playing a lot of players. We've played a lot of players this year, and sometimes you can't do that in games. Sometimes when people go fast, go hurry-up, they keep the same guys in, and you've gotta be able to sustain and play longer as a player, and that's important for our defensive players.

Q. Following up on the offensive question earlier, you speak about the wide receivers. What about Florida's running backs? It's not like there's a feature back. You've gotta Perine and Scarlett who almost have even numbers of carries, yards and touchdowns?
KIRBY SMART: I think that's one of the big differences with Dan's offense. He had backs at times at Mississippi State, but he never consistently had backs. He's got a really good stable of backs, very similar to ours from kind of a three-headed monster, and they use those guys. They're all thick lowers, powerful guys, run through arm tackles, good running backs. And you look at Perine and Scarlett do a great job. First of all, they do a good job catching the ball out of the back field; and they use them as wideouts. But they're physical downhill runners, and their offensive line is really big. They've got an offensive line, guys, that have played a lot of football games in the SEC. When you look across the offensive front, those are the same guys that have been there -- a lot of them played as freshmen. So they've got a very experienced offensive line and a group of backs that are physical.

Q. Coach, if I remember correctly, at the beginning of the week last year you told your players during a meeting "if anyone here as beat Florida, stand up." And I remember the players were talking about it that Monday, telling us about it, so obviously it stuck with them that moment when you said that. This season obviously they won last year, is there a moment, is there an instant, what are you going to tell them, what's the special thing you're going to say this year to them since obviously you can't use that now?
KIRBY SMART: Well, you can use that because a lot of our guys don't have a winning record against them. But I think more important than that, they know what's at stake for this game and they know that this is going to be a physical, tough battle, two teams that are well coached and two talented teams. Most of our kids know their kids. It won't be about what we say or how we say it. It'll be about who plays well on the field and who controls the line of scrimmage will be the key to this game.

Q. Coach, this week during practice has anyone stepped up as a leader that maybe hasn't before or has anyone been a little more out spoken than they've ever been due to loss?
KIRBY SMART: I don't think so. I don't think you hit a panic button when you do that. A lot of times you get front runners and things like that. Our guys understand, they know technically what we didn't do well, and they said, okay, when you don't do something well, how do you get better at it, you go to work on. It's not waving a magic wand or some guy giving a speech in the locker room. It's really just work, and we tried to get that done last week being really physical, doing a lot of thud and a lot of tackle where our guys could get better. And that's what we gotta do. We gotta work on us, and we were able to work on a lot of that. Now it goes to working on Florida specifically who has a really good football team.

Q. Coach, on the quarterback play specifically, is there any reason that you would like to see more of JUSTIN FIELDS as the year goes on, and in this game specifically anything that he might bring to help you against this defense?
KIRBY SMART: I think it's the same message we've had all along. We want to play the guy that gives us the best opportunity to be successful, and that comes from a lot of reps in practice, a lot of work in practice. They both got a tremendous amount of work last week, and we'll continue to make that decision based on what gives us the best opportunity to be successful.

Q. Kirby, I know one of the bright spots in Baton Rouge was the way Elijah and Deandre ran the ball. Their averages were good. I'm looking at these notes where you've got four guys that averaged over five a carry this year. I know I'm just looking at one stat, but how happy are you with the running game and do you see it -- I think you said after last week they probably should have gotten more touches.
KIRBY SMART: I think anytime you look back it's hard when you're behind in a game, everybody wants to talk about that game, but at the end of the day you gotta be successful with the running game to open up play action, to open up passing game. And that's been our identity, be able to run the ball, be physical. That's the strength of our team with our offensive line certainly running and our backs. I think keeping those guys healthy and using James and Brian in as many situations as possible, who are two good players, as well helps us, so we'll continue to do that and do what gives us the best chance to be successful.

Q. Coach, Florida has had some explosive runs. What are you looking from your run defense in order to kind of be able to stop them on the run?
KIRBY SMART: You gotta build a wall, control the line of scrimmage. This game has been decided by the team, for many years, that ran the ball better, the team that controlled the line of scrimmage. And we gotta do a good job of building the wall up front. We can't have second-level players having to make a bunch of tackles, and a lot of that comes by how you hold up in pass defense, how are we able to cover them outside and how are we able to control the line of scrimmage up front with five and six guys at times. So they got a good run team, and they got good running backs, and they're physical, and Dan's always been committed to the run game.

Q. Coach, two-part question here. What has made this rivalry special for you both as a player and a coach? And secondly, how do you kind of tune out all the attention with what you said, all that's at stake and things like that?
KIRBY SMART: Well, there's a lot at stake in every game. I don't know that this game -- you can point to every game, and the next game is the most important game. So our guys understand it's the next-game mentality, because you have to have that. You can't make one game more important than the other, because it demeans it for the players, so they understand the important and the significance of this game. But for me personally, this is a great rivalry game. The pageantry is different than other games because nobody's ever at home. They're always in a joint place, at a neutral site, and it's a great venue to have a game. It's great facilities, with the Jaguars facilities. So it's a little different from that perspective, and I think each team handling that the right way is important, but at the end of the day it'll be decided by the guys in between the lines.

Q. Where did you feel like your team made the most strides during the bye week?
KIRBY SMART: I don't know if we'll know that. I mean we worked hard at stopping the run up front, controlling the line of scrimmage, tackling, a lot of pass pro offensively. We tried to work really hard on special teams, directional kicking, a lot of things that we gotta improve on. Those are all really critical. But I don't know if you honestly know that until you get out there and play another game, because you can only see so much many practice. I certainly hope the work we put in pays dividends in the areas that we focused on.

Q. Back on the rivalry, what do you remember was the best advice you ever got going into this for the first time, and do you still share it with the Justins and the Tysons and the Jakes that are going to experience it for the first time?
KIRBY SMART: I don't know that I ever received any -- we had some tough games against them. We won one game in this battle, and we didn't have a great record against these guys during those years, and I don't know that I really received any advice that would stick out as meaningful to these kids. It's such a different day and time.

I think the most important thing for these guys is to focus on playing well, not the pageantry, not the surroundings, all that. It doesn't matter. You gotta get back to playing well, and what helps me play well is my focus, my concentration, how do I practice, because usually our guys that practice well play well, and that carries over.

Q. In regards to Tyson Campbell coming off the game where he didn't have the best of games for him personally, what's going to be the focus and key for him this week in practice to get better?
KIRBY SMART: I think playing good people, competing, understanding what defense we're in, knowing the adjustments that have to be made based on split locations, different things they do. He's just gotta lock in and really focus on that. I think that's important for him to get some confidence and play, and he's had some really good competitive work for three days. And he's growing up. You play in this league, there's no week off, and you play corner in this league, you better be ready to play each and every week. So it's a challenge for him and they got good wideouts.

Q. When you talk about pass pro third and long, is it one-on-one matchups? Is it holding on to the ball too long? What are you guys diagnosing there?
KIRBY SMART: You don't want to be in third and long, first of all. Last time I checked nobody wins third and long at a high rate. If they do, they're special.

Big deal for us is being able to make good decisions, put the quarterback in a good situation. Sometimes the best play on third and long is an eight-yard gain that allows eight yards for the punter. So those are things that we continue to work on, try to develop at. It's like 3rd and 1 and 4th and 1, if you're in those on defense, you're not going to have a real good third-down rate; and if you're in third and long a lot, it's not like there's a scheme that says this is a great third and long play. There's not great plays for third and long. There's wins and losses on third and long, sometimes a win may not be a conversion, but it could be not a sack or not a fumble or something like that. But we continue to work on that, and we got explosive players on offense that we gotta try to find ways to get the ball and let them break some tackles.

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