SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYS

July 28, 2005

Mark Richt

COACH MARK RICHT: Blake Barnes right now is our No. 3 quarterback. He is competing with Joe Tereshinski for No. 2. He is learning what to do. He knows how to compete. He knows enough to play. For whatever reason, he had to play for us, through injury or just by working himself into a position where he deserved to play. I think he is capable of playing very well for us. But right now, we feel that Joe Tereshinski is just a little bit ahead, but a fairly close competition at No. 2, and I believe there is a pretty good separation between those two and Shockley right now. But I think they are both capable of taking over for us and helping us win.

COACH MARK RICHT: Right. Our offense will always change some. We always look at our personnel and try to decide what to do to utilize the five best skilled players on the team. Actually, we're going to meet today as a staff, we've been meeting all week. We will talk about offensive football today. We will try to rate the top 20 skilled guys, or every skill guy that we have that is rated offensively, and try to the first five or six and say what personnel grouping do we need to be in to get these guys into game No. 1, and what do we have to do to get the ball. So the offense is always evolving in that regard. With Shockley, he becomes a weapon himself with his ability to run on above and beyond the basics which you got to be an accurate passer, you have got to be a good decision-maker, you have got to be able to handle the pressure of the job and you have got to be a leader. He is all those things, plus the bonus of the ability to run. It's exciting for us. We're not going to be a running quarterback system. We will have some things that accentuate his abilities to do that, but I would say 90 percent of what we have always done, we'll do.

COACH MARK RICHT: Well, basically what we do every year is you got to find who you are losing, find out who's in position to take over. With David Pollack, we still a Wil Thompson thankfully. Quentin Moses has really done a fine job for us. He has got a bunch of sacks. He's been flying under the radar because of Pollack. Charles Johnson is a young, very great talented football player. So we have got some guys that plays great games for us, moved from inside to out. Get playing time there. The linebacker situation is not quite as set in our mind as far as who is going to step up and do it. But Tony Taylor is going to take that spot in the middle. He was on the verge of becoming one of those kind of guys, when he tore his ACL last year's Spring game, and now we feel like he is physical enough and understands the system well enough to be the linebacker. Of course, at safety, we still got Greg Blue as one of the best safeties around in my opinion, but, when you substitute Tra Battle for Thomas Davis, there is a big difference in just physical stature. But so we will have to find young guys to take their place. But you always got to look at who are the play makers on defense, too, and how can we get into the position to get mismatches and take advantage of their ability, so we will be doing that.

COACH MARK RICHT: Well, normally, we will scout the first two teams very much in depth. We'll actually game plan the first two games of the year. After game 2 -- I mean if you game plan game 3, you might find you wasted a lot time this summer depending on what people will do. We will have to have a great plan for the first two games. Naturally, we will be working on South Carolina anyway. In particular with Coach Spurrier, we studied what he has always done at Florida. We will also study the things that he did at Washington. I mean it's been a lot more work in the off-season. Because of that and because of Coach Meyer who we will be playing, there has just be a lot of -- probably a little more film study than we have done in the past.

COACH MARK RICHT: Boise State, when we brought them on the schedule, most of our fans were like, "Who is Boise State? Are they a Division I team?" All those kinds of questions. We knew they were a very outstanding football team. Then they won 23 games in a row after that. Finally, lost to Louisville the last game of the year. But I think it is going to force our players to be even more excited about the first game, and force them to be even more prepared, and even as coaches. There will be no chance of any complacency. Where people are placing us in the ranks goes right now, as far as people's opinion of us, I don't think we're going to be a complacent football team. I think that the greatest danger to success is complacency, and usually you become complacent when everyone tells you how great you are. We haven't had a lot of people say how great we are. They say we're pretty good, but maybe not great.

COACH MARK RICHT: That could be true. I am not exactly sure. You are talking about true freshman?

COACH MARK RICHT: You might be right.

COACH MARK RICHT: Not necessarily. You know, like the next class, we have, a lot of guys. Let's say this whole class registers, let's stay the next class we bring in 27, 28 guys, count some guys back and forward like you can do, and say that ten of those guys plays as true freshmen, then that class, when they become seniors, is now 23 seniors possibly. So that doesn't necessarily mean that at all. And what happened this year is we only had six senior scholarship players on our football team. And then two juniors left, so there is only eight guys that left the program. We couldn't have a big class by virtue of the numbers that he had going into recruiting.

COACH MARK RICHT: Well, I like Coach Spurrier. I've gotten a chance to get to know him on a personal level really through the Heisman Trophy events. Casey Wells was runner-up, Charlie Ward won it. I got to go hang out with Heisman Trophy winners, past winners, and he was always there. And we got to know each other pretty good at that time and I like the guy, and I'm glad he is back in the league.

COACH MARK RICHT: To be honest with you, we had, we had a plan for two quote, unquote tailbacks in the back field going into last season. And when Fred tore his ACL the very first in practice in shorts, that kind of put a damper on everything because now, all of a sudden, Danny Ware is probably going to have been the starter. We are cross-training him a little bit and cross-training Lumpkin a little bit to be the H or halfback in the F, fullback, not necessarily, a traditional fullback in the I, but those kids are getting cross-trained for that. When that injury happened, we kind of threw all of that out. So we have taken some of the ideas that he had that we preparing last year and we did study Auburn. We studied Southern Cal and how they have been able to use their backs. But the bottom line is you really only get two backs in the back field or one flank side or whatever. Only would guy can touch the ball per play. So the goal is to get the ball in your play makers hands as many times as possibly can and you got to determine that by how they compete in these 29 days of practice before we get started.

COACH MARK RICHT: It would be nice to be able to continue the momentum that we have right now. We finished 3rd and 6th and 6th in the coaches pole and the last three years. We have won over ten games in the last year years. You want to keep types of streaks going. It is exciting for your program if you can do that. It would be nice to continue that type of a streak, but I mean, other than that, I think that Georgia football is very, very healthy. And one season of sub-par play in the minds of Georgia people I don't think is going to be devastating. But we plan on competing for the league championship and competing for the Eastern Division, just as always. And I think we have got a good chance to be right in the middle of it.

COACH MARK RICHT: I am not that concerned. I mean you want to hit a higher percentage of guys that are going to qualify for you. You know, signing day, I don't think there is coach in this league or the country that doesn't sign maybe one or two or even three guys that they know will end up in prep school, and they know that you will probably come back and get them the next year, that's you was your hopeful for. If you don't sign some guys like that, then they may sign with somebody else and end up on their team next year. We have great success with guys that have gone the prep school route. As I said before, we really only had eight scholarship players leave the program. We lost a few other guys for other reasons, but, you know, there was a couple of guys that we thought wouldn't make it. When you sign guys and they are very close to qualifying, you are going to -- you will sign those guys. If you believe they have the right character, you believe they have the ability, because, again, you still have maybe two or three tests outs there. You have the whole another semester to improve their grade point average, so you are going to do that. And you hope a higher percentage hits, but we knew this class was going to be very small to begin with. And as we sign some of these young men, we knew that they were going to end up going to a certain route. We were pretty certain that they were, and so it didn't bother me as much as some people might think.

COACH MARK RICHT: They're not out of control.

COACH MARK RICHT: I mean I hate it. I hate it when a guy misbehaves you know. I hate when my own child misbehaves, but, you know, the bottom line is, you know, we're are dealing with kids and we're dealing with human beings, and they are going to make mistakes, that's inevitable. To think your players or your children or your students as a whole across this country are not going to misbehave ever, then I think we're really thinking wrong. I think what's important is how are you are going to handle those situations. And my goal as a coach and as an educator is to help these guys understand what they did was wrong educate them, discipline them, love them, and then hopefully get them in position where they learn from these situations and become a very person for it. Not many people learn by what somebody tells them, or by observing someone else. Most people make mistakes on their own and learn from them, but you don't want to a lot of it to happen. And I hate it when it does happen. But I feel that we have done outstanding job of handling the discipline problems. But to think that those things will never happen, especially in this day and age with the Internet, the talk show, the radio talk shows, the newspaper competing for attention because everybody wants everybody to read their paper or listen to their station, or whatever it maybe, you know, plus these guys -- I know at Georgia might be the highest profile human beings in the state of Georgia. Everybody wants to know what they're doing every second of the day. So I wish those things wouldn't happen, but we very much have control what's going on. Our players learn from things that happen. You know, some guys, if they get to a point, in my opinion, where they've gone too far, then they're just not on the team anymore. But to say the first time a guy makes a mistake he needs to be kicked off your football team is like saying you need to throw your kid out of the family, you know, when he makes a foolish mistake.

COACH MARK RICHT: Well, Jamar, I think that is pretty well documented. I don't think we need to go through all that. But Jamar Chaney signed with us. He did not get admitted. Now he is going to Mississippi State. I called Coach Croom. I called a lot of people on his behalf. I like him. He signed with Georgia. I have an obligation to him to help him find a place where he could continue his dream to play football and get his degree. So I think very highly of this young man, and I wanted to help him find a place where he can go and I think that Coach Croom and Mississippi State were able to allow him to do that.

COACH MARK RICHT: Well, again, for me personally, coaching is about the young men, when I first started coaching, I loved the strategy of the game, I loved just the competition, and I still do. But the older I get, the more I realize that this is a very important -- the development of your players as people is very, very important. And the relationships that you have with your players is very important. I have been blessed to be on National Championship teams. I was trophy winners. SEC championship, we were blessed a couple of years ago. A lot of things that coaches I think, when they start coaching, I think is the ultimate. You know, I have had a chance to be a part of it. And because of that, I have realized that it really doesn't change your life all that much. Everybody expects you to do it the next year anyway. So what's really important, why do I coach, I coach because I love these players and I want them to succeed in life, and I hope that I can make a positive impact on their lives to where they can become a very good husband, a very good father, a very good employee, a very good citizen, but it's a learning process. I mean they don't show up perfect, and they don't leave perfect, but I hope they're a better man when they leave our program then they come.

COACH MARK RICHT: Yeah. There are so many demands for us. I mean it is -- I would say maybe 25 percent of what I do is really just coaching football. When you talk about strategy and those types of things, and that's an awful lot different. You know, as a quarterbacks' coach and a coordinator, that's about -- you know, that ratio is more like 90 percent of what you do is coaching football, and on does change quite a bit once you become a head coach.

COACH MARK RICHT: Good morning.

COACH MARK RICHT: Well, you know, at Florida State, we spread it, threw it around. Coach Spurrier did a awesome job in this league of making everybody be aware that you can throw the ball and win league titles. And now Coach Spurrier still had good balance. But I think that defensive coaches in college, they understand how to defend the pass as good or better than they have ever have. I think that the running game is coming back a little bit more maybe, and I think the quarterbacks that had the ability to run are putting more pressure on defenses that do a good job of defending those other things. So that's one dimension that I believe is getting stronger and stronger. And if the quarterback is not a guy who can at least cross the line of scrimmage and make some first downs at certain time, he has got to be surrounded by some very good people and he is got to be great at delivering the ball to the play makers around him. But not everybody is all that strong every year. I think that is one of things that are changing.

COACH MARK RICHT: Well, I would have to say we have got to be in the top ten in the country on being proactive on these kind of things. And, you know, was it along summer? I don't know. It wasn't as relaxing of a summer I would like it to be personally, but that's part of the game, part of the business. And, you know, I accept that, and I am glad to be right in the middle of it.

COACH MARK RICHT: Well, those guys are probably, as a duo, maybe two of the most well-known guys in Georgia's long history of football. I don't know whether that's true or not. But certainly they're very well-known and they were very productive. One was on each side of the ball. All of a sudden you lose them, and you try to replace, but I remember, after our first season in Georgia, we lost three defensive ends that were seniors in Charles Grant, who went to the NFL as a junior, and we really had no defensive ends left in the program. No idea what we were going to do. So we said well let's stick Pollack out there, you know, a little noseguard three technique. At least we know he will play hard and see what happens. All of a sudden he took off and was player of the year in the league. And gosh, when Kent got hurt, Greg sprained his ankle or knee, we had some safety issues and we were in the locker room shaking our heads what in the world are we going to do. We decided to take Thomas Davis from linebacker and throw him back there at safety to see what happened. He became one the best players in America. Hopefully, some guys waiting in the wings that will pick up the slack.

COACH MARK RICHT: It's going to help D.J. Gosh, three years ago, we had just lost six senior starters. We had no juniors in the program. We will no sophomore linemen in the program, and then Max, and Russ, and then all these guys had to play. I mean they weren't ready to play. We got sacked 47 times. By the grace of God, we still won 11 games. It was just unbelievable that we could win as many games as we did. Of course, defense helped a lot. Now, these same guys are grown-up. They are bigger, they're stronger, more experienced, more confident. You know they're going to play better than they did the last two years. And D.J. will benefit from that. He'll benefit from a tight end like Leonard Pope. He will benefit from some backs that will get it done, hopefully at the wide receiver position. And that is such a crucial key for us. Some guys are going to have to step up and make plays. I believe that we are going to see single coverage earlier in the year. If it was me, I am going to play those guys in single coverage to see if they can make plays. If they can't, I am going to out number your running game. I am double your tight end. I am going do that to the quarterback run. That's why I think most people are going to be thinking, going into the year, unless some receivers on the edge make some plays.

COACH MARK RICHT: Well, I think he could hit the ground running. I think if he has success in the first game it will really just give him more confidence that he has. I think he is confident in his ability. He knows he can play the game. He doesn't know if will play the game like he wants to play. You just don't ever know that. But I don't know exactly how he will started. But we're very confident that once he settles down into his normal game, I think we're all going to be very pleased. And if he happens to jump on quick and gain a lot of confidence early, it can really be fun.

COACH MARK RICHT: I don't know. I really believe SEC fans are really pretty educated. I think they know. I don't think expect their team to win the SEC every year. I think understand what a difficult conference it is to become dominant. And I think they want a team that is going to fight like mad for 60 minutes and win certainly more than their share of games and hopefully be in the hunt to win it and win it every couple of years or three years or whatever it is. If you won it every three years, any group of SEC fans in the nation would be thrilled to death. If you won it every once every four years, they still would be pretty happy. I don't think so. I think Georgia people have always expected great play and we raised the bar some, that's good.

COACH MARK RICHT: Well, I think -- I know this when your second team players play, you create depth, you rest your starters, which can keep them more healthy. You create good morale. And I think that's -- I think every coach believes that. It's just that the quarterback position is such a high profile position and it's so talked about. People just don't understand why you might want to do that for the quarterback position. But, you know, if your starter gets hurt at any position, you would like to have the second team guys with experience. You would like for him to have some good morale. I mean if you don't play your second team until game 6, he hasn't seen the film, by then, he is probably bent out of a shape and he probably is not having the attitude you want. Certainly, not ready to take on that responsibility without any experience whatsoever. So it's just -- that's just been my philosophy really in all the years that I have coached. I always tried to get our second team quarterback in the game. Just people seem to think it is bigger deal than it is to me.

COACH MARK RICHT: They're not as maybe unique as some people might think. They're very much into running the football. They'll get into some two tight ends. They will get into multiple looks, but they'll going run the zone play down your throat. They're going to fake it and they're going to throw it. They're going to run that ball, flash and fake and throw it. They do some things with the spread set and all that, but they're very much committed to running that football, and running in very traditional and physical way, and they just do it better than most people.

COACH MARK RICHT: I am also more concerned about leadership. But one thing we have this year that we didn't have last year is we have strength in numbers. You know, Timmy Jennings, DeMar Minter, Greg Blue, Will Thompson, Gerald Anderson, Kedric Golston. On defense, you have got Max Jean-Gilles, you have got Russ Tanner, you've got Dennis Roland, you've got D.J. Shockley. You have got some guys that have been very productive and that are seniors that are very much in tune to what we expect as coaches. They have standards that they want they're teammates to rise to. And just strength in numbers and quality is going to be very good I mean for us, I believe, at the senior group we have right now. Will we will be as productive, I don't know. But I think the more unified you are, and the better leadership you have, the more productive you are going to be.

COACH MARK RICHT: Talk about just anybody in general?

COACH MARK RICHT: I think our strength coach Van Halanger. Dave is one the best motivators I have ever seen. For a guy to get them to do what they do and usually do it with a smile on their face and enjoy it is just unbelievable for me. He gets them in tremendous shape, but he is a team builder. He does it in such a way that they enjoy doing it for him, and that's a gift. I think he is one of the best motivators I have been around.

COACH MARK RICHT: I think the main thing was to -- it was very important for him to understand how the NFL viewed him. That's very difficult to find out. But there are certain scouts and there are certain systems in place to try to educate the player, where they project him. They don't -- excuse me. They don't etch it in stone, but Max felt like there was a good chance that he would be drafted. And I hate to speak for him, but I think that had a big decision or a big factor in the decision making process. Max believes one the best linemen in the country as do I, and I think that where he might have gone last year was not quite as exciting to him as he would like it to be. Of course, he likes Georgia and enjoys a chance to become a senior leader too I know as been a big factor.

COACH MARK RICHT: To be honest with you, I am not sure who they are yet either until they do it, you know, on a consistent basis in the games. But we have seen enough guys in practice to do great things that gives us confidence that somebody will step up and make plays. I have seen A.J. Bryant make great plays. I have seen Sean Bailey. I have seen Kenneth Harris have a great Spring game. I have seen Demiko Goodman do things that you say my gosh, if you can do that on a consistent basis, we have got something. T.J. Gartrell. Really all those guys. Mario Raley has done great things. So who is going to do it on a consistent basis, I don't know yet. Who is going to be standing at the end of these 29 practices and become our starters, the first guys to prove that can do it, you know, in a real ball game, I am not certain. But I would say Bailey and the Bryan McClendon are the top two guys that are most game ready today. If we started today, it would be those two guys and Leonard Pope. And if we were a three receiver set, I would say McClendon would be at the Y, the middle receiver, the slot receiver. Of course, Bailey, and I couldn't tell you who the third guy would be right now.

COACH MARK RICHT: It's a great offense. It really is. They do a super job of spreading the field, but still running the ball extremely well from the gun, you know. I have been running the shotgun offense for years. We have run the ball relatively well, but we don't run it like they run it. I think to be able to spread the field and be in the gun -- you have your advantages of being in the gun and run the ball from the gun is really, really good, and it's going to be a challenge for our league to slow it down. We will see what happens. I am very impressed with it. And it's not most complicated thing in the world either. It's really a pretty -- it's just fundamentally sound and stretches defenses a bit farther than they would like to go.

COACH MARK RICHT: Well, we're going to -- in camp, we practice our No. 1 unit, our No. 2 unit and we practice our No. 3 unit. When we go to pass, we're rapid fire. One's, two's, three's, and it's just bang, bang, bang. Those guys get a lot of reps there. They get reps on a one on one situation and even when we scrimmage to begin with, we will try to rep 1, 2, and 3 units. All those guys are going to get plenty of opportunities to prove they should be the guy. Now, when we get closer to the game, we'll hone it down to our one's and two's and mostly one's, and we will see where they're at that point. They'll all get an opportunity to prove that they're ready, including Mohamed Massaquoi, Michael Moore, who are two freshman that we're very excited about.

COACH MARK RICHT: Leonard, he is just -- he is like your Gerald Andersons, and your Max Jean-Gilles, guys that just love to play, love to practice. Got the special ability that maybe other people don't have, but they don't think so highly of themselves that don't feel they're part of the team. And he is just -- he is 6-7, 260. I don't how fast he can run, but he can run as good as anybody I have seen that big. And he is just a big presence, and now he is got some confidence, so hopefully he won't become complacent with success, and hopefully he'll stay healthy. I think he is going to create some problems. I mean it's tough to cover that guy that big. The ball is placed in a good spot, it's going to be extremely difficult to break it up. So hopefully he will continue on where he left on. I enjoyed being with everybody. Have a good day.