Kirby Smart on redzone issues: It's fun for Jack Podlesny, not great for us

Jack Podlesny came into the season expected to kick a lot – of PATs. Instead, No. 1 Georgia‘s red zone woes has put his leg to work with eight made field goal attempts through four weeks this season.

With an overall 96.2 percent (25-26) success at scoring on red zone attempts, only 17 of those have come via touchdown. For head coach Kirby Smart, the only good thing about that number is that his Bulldogs have scored 12 times (three per game) on the ground in the red zone thus far.

“It goes back to the run game,” Smart said. “When the field tightens up and shrinks, that’s where the run game is more glaring because the boxes are tighter. There are less people in parts of the field, and they are in your front yard. You have to block them and run through them.

“Some of them are just misses. … We have to do a better job. We’ve looked at it really hard. First down run percentage, second down run percentage. Third down conversions in the red area are critical because they get you a new set of downs. We’ve been there a lot, but we haven’t converted as much as we need to. If it all had to boil down to one thing, I would say accuracy in the passing game, and then being effective at running the ball at the heavy boxes.”

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The senior kicker, who has named the co-SEC Special Teams Player of the Week after making three field goals and four PATs against Kent State, has made eight of his nine field goals this season. His season-long is 42 yards, which came during the win against South Carolina.

“He’s been so consistent. We hate that we have had to kick as many as we’ve had. That’s been the Achilles heel of our offense,” Smart said. “We may not punt, but we kick a lot of field goals. It’s fun for Pod, but it’s not fun for the rest of us.”

One of the areas that Smart targeted over the offseason is field goal kicking, and while it’s not ideal, Georgia has improved in that aspect. While the reliability and the consistency has been great, the hope is that the Bulldogs won’t have to rely on him all the time because they’ll be scoring touchdowns.