What Kirby Smart said about Tennessee-Georgia on Tuesday

What head coach Kirby Smart said media availability on Tuesday, continuing to preview No. 6 Georgia against No. 15 Tennessee on Saturday (3:30 p.m. Eastern Time, ABC) in the SEC opener at Neyland Stadium:

On practice has been so far this week

“It’s been good. It was a little crisp and cooler in the air, hasn’t been as hot, Guys have been spirited. It’s a big matchup, and good day, had a little over an hour of work Monday, and then about an hour and a half, two hours today, just finishing up, so they’ve been in good spirits.” 

What he’s seen from Gunner Stockton so far this week

“Well, we’ve only had two days. Very similar Monday, Tuesday that we’ve had in the weeks past. A good decision maker, protecting the ball, taking care of the ball, making good decisions, but it’s been very similar to recent weeks in terms of his work.” 

How the Tennessee offense has evolved under Josh Heupel

“Yeah, you know, it’s hard to say, because they have different kind of ways to attack you defensively. They don’t do the same thing year to year. I think he utilizes the skill sets of that offense. They’ve had different types of wideouts, different types of quarterbacks, different types of backs. They do what good coaches do, they utilize the skill sets of the good players. I think they’ve used wrinkles from other teams. They get all this tape of teams that play against you, and there’s certain plays that maybe don’t fit their offensive philosophy, but they’re good plays, and then they turn them into theirs, and do a good job mixing, like everybody does. We call it copycat, but they’ll look at plays and say, that play really works, how do we make it work for us? I think he’s done a great job of that over the years.” 

What the Tennessee rivalry means to Georgia

“You know, there’s so many rivalries because of our state. It’s an area in Georgia geographically that it’s obviously the most important primary opponent we play. You talk to somebody in South Georgia or West Georgia, it may not feel the same way, but they all have their passion and energy. It’s a historic rivalry, because it’s been so many years played over time, and it’s a lot of big games. A lot of big games during Coach Richt’s era, and Coach Donnan’s era, been a lot of big games played between Tennessee and Georgia. Not a lot more I can say than that. All those border wars are big time rivalries.” 

How Georgia’s offensive line has gotten ready for the physical challenge of SEC play

“Yeah, being physical. I mean, they’ve got a physical defensive line that comes off and hits you. We’ve been physical at practice. I think it’s important. I don’t think you can say, all right, well, let’s go out here and rest up and take it easy early game. I mean, if you want to have physicality, you’ve got to reflect it. It would be unjust for me to not have them be as physical as they need to be at times during the week, to put them out there in a situation that’s going to be extremely physical. You’ve got to have enough left in the tank, but you’ve got to test the tank and make sure that you’re calloused and tough and physical.” 

What specifically he has done in the offseason to get the team ready to play on the road

“Yeah, we don’t do a lot in the offseason to prepare for crowd noise and things like that. We do practice with it during the spring, but I do it all the time because I don’t like both sides of the ball hearing each other talk and make their calls. So I think it’s important to have crowd noise during that, and then we ramp it up as we get closer to road games. But, you know, the overall mantra and overall mental mindset and makeup of our offseason program is to play with toughness and composure and try to win more moments than the opponent because there’s going to be a lot of moments in this game, and you may lose one or two, but we’re just trying to win more moments. If we can win more moments, then we increase our chances. If we worry about past lost moments or future moments, we can’t focus on the current. So we literally just focus on that.”

What Georgia’s Earnest Greene and Juan Gaston have done this week

“Yeah, they’ve both done some individual work, done some work against some scouts and things, and they’re both moving around. I’m not sure where they’ll stand. I get to go watch the tape of what they did today here in a few minutes, but they moved around pretty good in Indy.”

How Joey Aguilar has fit in so seamlessly for Tennessee

“Yeah, it looks like he has on tape. I mean, it looks like he’s been there for a long time. He’s very similar to the quarterbacks they’ve had. He plays within that system. He’s a really good athlete. He can take off and really hurt you with the scramble. He’s made some big plays on the scramble. He plays within the system, he throws the RPO as well. He makes good decisions, accurate, very strong arm, which their offense requires. So he fits in well.”

Georgia missing Earnest Greene with his experience, if Jah Jackson is injured

“Yeah, Jahzare got banged up on I think it was the second drive. It was after the drive with the fumble, the opening drive. He got a lateral ankle. He thought he could go. And he was struggling to move around on it and it was hurting, but he pushed through because we were down some guys, and it’s been bothering him even this week. But he keeps pushing through. 

“I mean, do we miss Earnest?  Yeah, I mean, we miss Earnest if he’s not out there in the game. But he was there on our sideline leading, talking to guys and trying to help Jahzare.”

Georgia’s Joseph Jonah-Ajonye

“Yeah, a lot of want to, desire. He plays hard. He had some nice plays down there on the goal line. He’s really tough, he’s strong-handed, he’s physical, contact tough. He continues to get better within the system, I think. His play stamina is getting better where he can play more snaps.”

Georgia’s Kyron Jones, the challenge of playing safety against the Tennessee offense

“Yeah, space. I mean, the problem with Tennessee’s offense is that everybody’s one-on-one every play. I mean, they just put you out on an island and you have weaknesses. They can expose them very quickly. So it’s challenging to try to present them with issues and complications. 

“But Kyron’s been great. He’s had a good camp. He’s been in our system now for I guess three years, and any time you’ve got somebody that’s been in your system for three years they kind of know the checks and balances and they know how to make calls and how to adjust things and what to expect. He’s physical, he’s a good tackler, and he’s fast. And those three qualities make for good defensive backs.”

Georgia striking the balance of it being an important game and not making it too big
“Yeah, just live in the moment. I don’t get ahead of myself. There’s going to be big games after this one. I mean, there was last year. Welcome to the SEC where it seems like every team’s ranked and every team’s got a ranked opponent every week. I mean, it’s just a physical gauntlet, and there are no easy pathways. So I don’t get too caught up in one game. I try to look at it like every game’s a big game, and we’ll get ready for the next one when the next one’s up.”

How valuable is playable depth against an offense that likes to run tempo

“Yeah, it’s valuable when you’ve got guys who can go in the game and play and stay fresh if you don’t drop off in play. The problem is getting that many guys’ quality reps against it, so it’s hard to prepare more than 22 guys because you’re getting ones and twos.

“You try to make your defense simple enough that you can execute it and play it and have more people play. I don’t know. They complicate things sometimes with the tempo, and they try to dummy you down and limit what you do. It does, to a sense, do that to you.”

Tennessee’s starting corners being out

“Yeah, I don’t know that it does. They’ve had the same corners playing since the first game. So, they’ve got good corners. The two kids they’ve got playing are good players. I think a lot of people look into those things and read into them sometimes. When you’ve got good players that are playing and have played, it just becomes more experience. So, I don’t know how much it changes anything for us.” 

Players like Kyron Jones and Todd Robinson who transition to playing DB at Georgia

“Yeah, size, speed is how we evaluate them. They’ve got size and speed. It’s a criteria for that position. Toughness would be in there, too. I think it’s hard to get a kid that plays quarterback and moving to defensive positions if he’s just a quarterback. Todd had some physicality to him. Kyron had physicality to him for being a running back. It’s a requirement that you’ve got to be able to tackle. So, everybody thinks a good athlete quarterback can play anything. It doesn’t always equate if that’s all the kids played growing up. But most of these kids that play quarterback nowadays have played multiple positions growing up.” 

Georgia’s Dontrell Glover 

“Well, he’s practiced the best. I mean, that’s when you earn things at Georgia, is what you do in practice. He’s nowhere near where he needs to be, and he knows that. But he is strong-handed. He is tough and fiery. He is quick. He’s a quick learner. You can imagine a guy like Jared (Wilson), Dylan (Fairchild), and Tate (Ratledge) being here three and four years, some of them before they started, and that kid’s being thrown out there right now. It just tells you where he is as an intelligence and where we are in depth.” 

Georgia’s Monroe Freeling

“Yeah, confidence, understanding where his help is, development. He works really hard. He works hard on his body. He works hard on leading. He’s been a very consistent piece and continued to lead our group in the push.” 

Georgia’s Drew Bobo 

“Yeah, Drew’s been a huge bright spot for us because of his quickness, his intelligence, his awareness. I think he understands what defenses are doing very well. He’s a really good athlete. He handles people on top of him, and he handles the four down when he’s sometimes a puller. I mean, he does a really good job athletically in space, getting on people and knowing leverage and things. But he communicates well for the quarterback. He’s the leader in terms of making calls and directions up there, and he comforts those guys on the right side.” 

Georgia’s run defense

“Yeah, it’s been good. I would say it hasn’t been challenged, but I promise you it will be this time because these guys are good at it. They know what they’re doing. They know how to attack you, and they have wrinkles, and they do a really good job. You better be able to strike blocks and get off blocks and tackle people because they’re very physical.”

A difference of it being extra loud at Neyland Stadium

“Loud affects your offense. It affects your ability to communicate. You know, the communication goes down the line a lot of times, and you’ve got to talk all the way out, and there’s communication between parts of the offense that have to happen, and loud most certainly affects that. And Neyland’s one of the loudest. We played in some loud places last year, and it affected communication. So you have to be smart. When you game plan, you can’t maybe do quite as much as you can do at home. You just have to be smart about what you ask guys to communicate and say because it can be frustrating. Loud is loud. At some point it’s deafening, but they have an extremely loud environment, and we’ve got to push through it. There’s nothing you can do about that. What you can do is focus on your task during the week so that you don’t have to question what you’re doing in that environment.”