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UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 29, 2018

Kirby Smart

Athens, Georgia

KIRBY SMART: Thanks, Claude. That's a special recognition for one of our student-athletes, which I think is incredible. NCAA Woman Athlete of the Year is special.

We're excited about this game. Obviously is a lot is at stake. I think our kids and players understand that. I got a lot of respect for Mark and the job he's done. I think it's really remarkable, and it shows the patience of an athletic department to stick with a guy who I think is one of the best coaches in all of college football. He's now put his roster together. He's got a senior class that's really incredible across the SEC.

When you talk to the other coaches, which we all talk to each other week to week, everybody talks about Kentucky's group of seniors. They've got either 12 or 13 starters, however you want to look at it, which is the most starters of any team in the SEC. Their whole defense, I think it's seven or eight defensive players, seems like they've been playing for four years. You look back at the tape two years ago when we were up there playing, all those guys are still there. They're really good football players. Their back end and linebackers, their defensive coordinator, Coach House, is doing an incredible job.

But they've got a really good football program, a very physical football program, one that in the last two years each time we played them our players said, "That was one of the most physical games we had to play, Coach." They are tough and they are physical.

So they do a tremendous job, and we've got a lot of improving to do to be able to complement and to match up with these guys because they have a really good football team. And we're excited for the opportunity to go up there and play.

Q. Kirby, I guess specifically with all the seniors that they have on defense compared to a couple of years ago, what are they doing so well defensively to where they haven't even allowed 20 points in a game this year?
KIRBY SMART: They play complementary defense. They're on the same page at all times. You don't see busts. They understand where each guy is. They leverage the ball well. They tackle well. They're extremely long in the secondary. They've got 6'2, 6'3 corners that are good tacklers. That got good safeties. They got big men up front, which is built for the kind of defense they play, and they've obviously got one of the best pass rushers in the country.

So they do a tremendous job of playing team defense. They're very organized, disciplined. They know the game plan; they know what they're going to take away and they do it. It's a credit to what they've built, because when you build on the long-term and you have this many seniors in a group, any defense I've coached or any team that I've been involved in coaching that has this many seniors is usually pretty successful, because they've played in our conference. Everybody wants to talk, how many stars do they have, how many great recruits do they have. How many games have these guys played? Pretty successful when you play that many games.

Q. Coach, talking about Kentucky's defense, looking back at the Florida game and really on the season, your short yardage situations on offense. Obviously that didn't go well against Florida, much respect to their defense. What's your takeaway on that? Is this a physical issue or kind of a play-calling issue when you revisit that?
KIRBY SMART: Well, the first thing I would say is we hadn't been real good on short yardage defense either. When you look at it, 3rd and 1s haven't been our flavor on either side of the ball and haven't been as successful as we would like to be.

I think it comes with a combination of things. Sometimes it may be putting too much on one player, asking them to do too much. Some of it is execution. At times we've had some really good play calls that we didn't execute, and then other times it's on play design and play call that we didn't do a good job as coaches. I think a combination of those things you gotta improve on. Third and short is what you should want to be in from an offensive perspective. Not defensively, but we gotta do a better job executing in those. And some games we've gone in with a game plan that we've converted all those. Then other games we haven't, and we didn't do a good job of that against Florida, and we gotta improve it.

Q. Kirby, I saw a video of your unique celebration in the locker room. What do you have in store if you can win the SEC East?
KIRBY SMART: I don't know. Go by the moment. I wouldn't say that was unique. That was just your first time getting to see the inside. That's not unique to me in the locker room with the players. I certainly enjoy and treasure the opportunity to celebrate with our guys, and they needed that, and I need it. So players enjoyed it, and on to the next one.

Q. Coach, to follow up on that, how can you use the fact that this is kind of a the-winner-takes-the-division. How can you use that as kind of a motivating factor this week?
KIRBY SMART: I don't know that you have to use it. Players get it. They know what's at stake. I don't know that you have to build that up. This game is exactly what it is. It's an opportunity to earn the right to win your division. And they got a great program, we got a program. It's at their place. It's going to be a great atmosphere.

I don't know. We really build this program on being neutral and understanding that every game is just as important as the other, because if the other games weren't important, we wouldn't be in this position in this game. And they just get bigger and bigger from here. So that's the way we look at it.

Q. Coach, faced two good players in Zuniga and Polite. How did Josh Allen player to those talents?
KIRBY SMART: He's faster. He's bigger. He can strike, play the run. He can drop, play and coverage. They move him around. They do a great job using him. He's the total package. He's not one-dimensional. He can do a lot of things. He's very disruptive. You gotta know where he is at all times. He's what you want when you design a three-four defense. He's your prototype guy, and he has been disruptive to everyone in this conference, and everybody you talk to talk about how good a player he is.

Q. Kirby, obviously your run defense looms large this game, but also down the stretch. How much upside is there to improve with your run defense? Obviously Jordan Davis, Malik Herring playing more. Do you look at any changes behind them and linebacker? Where can you get better? How much can you get better?
KIRBY SMART: You know, it's tough in the midst of a season to just magically get better. We try to do it through fundamentals, technique, individual block destruction, demeanor, attitude. But you can't go out and replace players. We got what we got. We'd love to have some more depth at those positions, but we don't. And we've gotta do a better of job of helping the guys we got to be successful, whether that be by scheme or that be by effort or fundamentals. And at the end of the day you gotta block protect and you gotta tackle. It's hard to say, well, we're going to just change all that in one week and get better.

We're just going to keep working at it. That's all we know how to do, and there are no magical defenses that we can call that say, this defense stops every run. It's not. You gotta physically whip a man in front of you, get off a block and go make the tackle, of which they do a really good job of blocking you, and they got one of the premier guys in the country toting the ball, who's probably the best I've ever seen with his vision. I mean he never misses a hole. He sets his blockers up, and he does not want to be tackled. You gotta go in with a willingness to be more physical than him. I mean to answer your question, it's not going to be easy. We gotta do a good job of playing with a little better demeanor.

Q. On the injury front, any update on David Marshall and also Kendall Baker, Cade Mays. You said there are a few guys that got nicked up. Where are you guys at on that front?
KIRBY SMART: Yeah, I think we're pretty clean across the board on the offensive line. All those guys are fine. They'll be practicing. Kendall will be back. Solomon is fine. Andrew is fine. He continues with that ankle, but he went back and played. He'll be out there today. Ben is going to get some work this week. We don't know if he'll be cleared yet or not. We don't know if he'll play yet or not, but he's going to try to go out and do some practice stuff. David, I don't know yet still. I think that's everybody.

Q. Kirby, how concerning is it when you play a team that just won't go away? I mean Kentucky's been like left for dead a couple of times this year and they just keep finding ways to come back, obviously a very resilient type of team.
KIRBY SMART: Very senior-laden team. They believe. They've got a good coaching staff. They've got a good group of young men that fight. I mean when you have a defense that plays like they do, they're in every game. And their offense matches it perfect because they grind you to a nub. They're just extremely physical. They play a lot of offensive linemen. They got a quarterback that can run as good as most receivers in our conference. They're hard to defend. And they're very talented when you look at it across the board, and you see why they've been successful.

Q. Kirby, you mentioned having a quarterback that can run, maybe as talented a runner at that position as you all have played this year. With him in addition to Snell, just how much does that complicate things in improving your run defense?
KIRBY SMART: It makes you have to tackle people. You gotta tackle people in space. You gotta be good tacklers. You gotta get a lot of people to the ball. And you've gotta strike and get off blocks, because you don't unblock people. You don't just all of a sudden say, well, we're going to call this and he's not going to be blocked. Everybody's going to have a blocker on them. Somebody's gotta get off a block. And this is not for the faint of heart. This is not going to be for the lack of physicality. This is going to be for people that want to hit people and people that want to strike people because that's the kind of team they got.

Q. Kirby, I was wondering as far as the Florida game, is there anything specifically that you maybe learned about this group that maybe you didn't know going in?
KIRBY SMART: You know, I don't feel that way. I feel like that we see so much of these guys in practice that we give them adverse situations, which we had in the game. We give them ups and downs. There's momentum swings in every game, and there are momentum swings in that. I always thought our guys would respond and fight. I was proud of the way they kept fighting, because we had some situations that we didn't get what we needed to get out of, whether it was the goal line situation, whether it was the opening drive of the second half, defense, whatever it was, they responded well and they kept fighting and kept grinding. That's the kind of group this is. They'll fight you and they'll fight hard. We just gotta fight smarter.

Q. How encouraging was it to get some explosive runs from Deandre Saturday? And do you guys keep track of yardage after contact, any numbers stand out there?
KIRBY SMART: Yeah, we do. I don't know exactly what they are, but Dell gives them a report each week, calls them Dawg yards, and that's a big deal to us is yardage after contact. And Holyfield and Swift have both done a good job of that and will continue to. I was proud of Swift. He had some runs, some explosive runs and opened some things up and seems to be getting back on track again.

Q. Kirby, on the offensive line, how much has the playing time they've been able to get benefited guys like Cade Mays and Tre Hill to the point where you feel they're ready to come in and not miss a beat down the stretch in games like this?
KIRBY SMART: Yeah, I think it's really helped all the time they've got leading up to this. We had to plug guys in plug-and-play it seems like every game the offensive line is a little bit of a merry-go-round. But it's that way every day in practice. You guys don't get to see the practice, but they just do that all the time.

For you all it may be, oh, that guy's at that position; for us, we have a period where he does this position, that position. We just kind of share time so that they're comfortable going into the heat of the battle. And I think Sam does a really good job of putting guys in spots in practice where they have to block really good players defensively so when they get in the game they're not overwhelmed by having to match up on a really good pass rusher.

Q. Kirby, I know you said a few times that being better in the second half is a lot of times not necessarily because of an adjustment but maybe just because the players are just moving on to the next play, and they were saying that after the game as well. How big of a core principle is that for the program to just put what happened in the past behind you and just keep moving forward? How important is that to what you guys do?
KIRBY SMART: It's important to life. Our guys are trying to learn, I mean, classes. They get a bad grade, they gotta put it behind him. Life, you guys have dealt with it. We deal with it as coaches all the time. You get setbacks. You get setbacks maybe with your family. You have to deal with that kind of thing, and that's what's great about our sport is that we're going to have to deal with things that happen that we don't like or we don't do well, and it's not really what happened. It's how you respond. And we tell our guys that all the time. You gotta respond the right way. And we gotta respond the right way this week because we didn't play our best game last week, and we're going to play a really good football team this week. So we've gotta execute and do better.

Q. Kirby, were the short yardage issues a bigger concern than having to settle for several field goals in the red zone against Florida?
KIRBY SMART: I don't understand your question. Were the short yardage situations a bigger concern?

Q. Yeah. Were you more concerned with not being able to convert those than having to settle for field goals when you got in the red zone on a few drives?
KIRBY SMART: Oh, well, some of the field goals were because we didn't convert short yardages. We had to kick field goals because we didn't convert short yardages. I think the biggest thing that stuck out, and I'm through with that game, but that we did convert third downs to get us there, and three of the touchdowns I think were on third downs. So those were huge conversions, but they were long yardages.

We worked really hard on third and long a couple weeks ago and we got a little better at it. You know what I mean? Now we're not converting on third and short, so we just gotta do a good job of working on it all and gotta have a good plan and help our players.

Q. Even after a win there was still kind of some questioning of Jim Chaney and the play calling, it seemed like. I guess how would you respond to that and maybe defend?
KIRBY SMART: I don't respond to it. It's people's choice, people's decision. That stuff doesn't bother us as coaches. We live in that world. So it's part of being who we are. You're going to be open to criticism everything you do, just like I am, just like Mel is. It's part of life. I don't really need to respond to criticism of our coaches.

Q. On Saturday after the game when we spoke with Jake Fromm, it seemed like that was the most confident I've seen him all season, and it's probably because of his performance, but how big was it for him to go out there and have a performance like that? What could that do for you guys moving forward for the rest of the season?
KIRBY SMART: We like to build momentum, but momentum is based on your behavior. It's not based on something that happened. The next event will be determined by our behavior, not by something that happened in the past. And I think Jake acknowledges that. He'll continue to work hard, get better, try to build momentum off of what he did and how he played. And I think he'll be the first to admit that he still could have played better, and we're always looking to get better as a team, and you hope that he uses that to build on, and hopefully that confidence builds up for him.

Q. How much did the foot injury setback how you envisioned using Tyrique McGhee this year and his role in the defense now for him, how big is it?
KIRBY SMART: The foot injury probably cut back his reps and his volume. We had to be smart because we can't give him -- we cut down his yardages in practice. We looked last year at what he did and what he did this year, we cut down some of that, but it probably hasn't cut down his playing time because he's a good nickle star, good role player there and does a good job. But he probably wouldn't be playing at corner. He probably wouldn't be playing at safety. But he's at the position he plays. He just doesn't take as many reps in practice.

Q. You talked about J. J. Holloman, the job he's done after the game the other day. With him has it been something that's been a gradual improvement or did the light come on? What has it been with him that's led him to being successful?
KIRBY SMART: Everything has been gradual improvement. He had some good games early in the year, if you all remember. He had some really good games, and I think everybody just thinks that if you have a good game here, then you're definitely going to have a good game here. A lot of things are dictated by when we call the play, what is the coverage, what is the defense doing, what hash is it on, things that people don't think about. That determines maybe who gets the ball, and it's not like you can just go out there and say, we're throwing J.J. the ball, he's hot; we're throwing Riley the ball, he's hot. It's dictated by what coverage they play, what defense they play, what hash we're on. There's so many multiples that you can't control where the ball may end up.

What J.J. has done is just grind it. And J.J. is the epitome of if you work hard, good things will happen to you. So he blocks consistently, because he controls his blocking. He doesn't control where the ball is thrown, but he controls his blocking. He controls how he practices, because you control that. So the things that you can control you try to control, and J.J. does a great job of that.

Q. Coach, before the season you talked about a number of guys that worked in the Wild Cat. Do you guys still work that every week? Is that still part of the offensive package?
KIRBY SMART: We'll say that's classified.

Q. Going back to kicking and the confidence you have in Rodrigo, seemed like this game two years ago at Kentucky was kind of the one. Kind of a two-parter. Was that the game that really gave you the confidence in him, and I saw you tried his specs on. How bad is his eyesight?
KIRBY SMART: I don't understand eyesight, but I don't see how those could help anybody see. I don't really understand. I've never really tried anybody's glasses on. I guess the harder it is for me to see with them on, then maybe the worse off and he needs them. But I know one thing, he sees that ball on the ground and he gets his toe on the leather real well. So they must work for him. But he did a great job in that game two years ago, and I think that certainly gave him the confidence, gave us the confidence in him that he was a pressure player and enjoyed the moment and did a good job of that.

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