Georgia set on moving on: 'We're on to the next'

Georgia has packed the Alabama game up and thrown it into the Oconee River. The lessons are still in the building. The seeds for conversations about how things change have been sewn over the weekend.

There was hurt. The players in Athens care. They also showed up on Sunday, looking to figure out what went wrong on Saturday night.

“Our guys are fired up,” head coach Kirby Smart told reporters. We got work done yesterday, and a bunch of them came in. And I think when you see our guys, you realize how invested they are when they’re hurt. It’s good when guys hurt because you hurt relative to how invested you are in something. I know our guys will have good energy today.

The message was simple as Smart, Jordan Hall and London Humphreys stepped in to meet with the assembled media on Monday.

They are ready to be rid of the taste of Saturday’s 24-21 loss to Alabama.

“I would want to play right now if I could,” Hall told reporters. “We’ve got eight more games to go. The season didn’t start and the season did not end with Alabama. That’s one thing we’ve got to get through our heads. I feel like all the guys matter if you’re stuck on a loss or not, I mean, we’ve got Kentucky in four or five days. So everything that happened in the past has been in the past for a reason… We had an opportunity to do it on Saturday. We didn’t get that done. So now it’s on to the next.”

The elephants in the room for Georgia ahead of Kentucky

Georgia could not convert or stop Alabama from converting on third down on Saturday night. The Bulldogs are also becoming susceptible to slow starts.

The two could be connected. Georgia had the ball for 24 minutes while Alabama had it for 35 minutes.

Smart wants fast starts from both units moving forward because slow starts with both have compounded and resulted in 21-7 holes in Knoxville and a 14-0 hole against Alabama on Saturday.

“It impacts the first five minutes of it,” Smart said. “The next five minutes are based on those five minutes, and then the next five minutes are based on those five minutes. Do you want to start fast? Absolutely. Do you want to start with three and out on defense? Hell, yeah. Do you want to start with three and out on offense? Hell, no, but, like, it is what it is.”

How can Georgia fix it? The process is where it starts. It also comes with Georgia being who they are.

“Maybe we can change something up, maybe we do something different,” Smart said. “I mean, but at the end of the day, I’m very confident in who we are. The week before an offense, we drove down and scored. The two weeks prior on defense, it was bang, bang, bang, out, out, out. We didn’t play 50 snaps. The opponents weren’t great, but we still we’ve done it both ways, so I don’t get caught up in that. I get caught up in process over results.”

Looking in the mirror

The players also plan on taking full advantage of their time on the field this week.

“We’ve got to get better at it,” Hall said. “I don’t really know why it’s happening, truth be told. It happened. Our goal throughout this week is to make sure it doesn’t happen. Just going through practice and trying to come out with a little bit more energy. Just coming off the ball, striking people, making plays on the ball, what’s in the air… It’s about third down. We’ve got to get off the field on third down. That’s the biggest thing that we’ve got to do, take it away from Saturday. People want to point the finger at different things, but I take accountability for what I had a part in, which is not getting off the field on third down. And that’s something we’re going to own. It happened.”

Georgia hosts Kentucky on Saturday at noon.

Challenges of Kentucky

Kentucky comes into Saturday’s game 2-2. They have wins over Toledo and Eastern Michigan. The Wildcats lost to Ole Miss and South Carolina in their first two games in SEC play.

Smart has praised Kentucky’s physicality. There are a lot of philosophical similarities between the programs. Both teams run the football.

Smart again echoed respect for Mark Stoops and the Wildcats.

“It’s always the most physical game when we play these guys,” Smart said. “I think, philosophically, they believe in running the ball. We believe in running the ball. Those two things hit head-to-head when we play them. We’ve had head-to-head battles many times with these guys. Coach Stoops’ teams are always physical, so we know it’ll be physical.”