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ICNYMI: Kirby Smart’s Texas Media Day Presser – October 14, 2024

“I’m going to reiterate, guys. We did this last year, and our players absolutely love it. I appreciate Coach Richt for asking us to do it and join in in our off week. But our players love to bowl more than anything we got several guys that bowl weekly. I got to go last year. I got to be there. I bowled one time one time and it was a strike. I am not bowling again. I’ve never bowled a game completely in my life, and I’m not going to bowl this year. But I will be there and support. I don’t want to mess up my record on that deal. Our players did love it now, and it’s a great cause. I didn’t realize the turnout we were going to have. It was huge and obviously for a great cause. There’ll be a bunch of great guys, but former Dogs. So many guys that play for Coach Richt will be there, and I thought last year was awesome and the fact that it’s live you know tune into it watch it, support it, donate and give. That’s huge because I know these guys will break – they’re going to eclipse a million dollars this year with the two years together. It goes to a great cause. We’ve got several players on our team that actually have Crohn’s disease, and so I’ve seen the effect of that and anything we can do with research to help that. Obviously, the Isakson research – they do an incredible job, so a lot of respect for him. Moving on to Texas, for us, obviously a huge matchup. It’s gonna be a top-ten two teams in the country. A lot of respect for Sark [Steve Sarkisian]. I’ve gotten to know Sark really well over the last couple years. We take a trip every year together and really enjoy getting to know him and have a lot of respect for the job he does. The most complete team that we’ve seen or faced this year and probably in multiple years when you look at what they’re doing defensively, offensively and special teams. They are clearly one of the best teams in the country with what they do. Got a great quarterback, great defense, great scheme. Should be a great matchup, and this is really what you come to Georgia to play in these moments. Once again, on the road. I’m going to a place that I’ve never been. I assume none of our players have ever been there either for a game, so it should be exciting great TV. Looking for an opportunity for us to get better because that’s the most important thing is. Can we show some kind of consistent improvement and play more consistent as a team. That’s our goal, so with that I’ll open it up.”

On preparing to face Coach Steve Sarkisian…

“They’re balanced. They do a great job of putting you in conflict in terms of run-pass, play-action, turn your back to the ball. They can take shots. They got really good wideouts to take shots. I think they lost a couple backs maybe a preseason camp, and I thought, ‘Well, they’re not going to have it, ‘Well, these two backs they have are really good.’ I’m watching them against Mississippi State who we had seen them against last week while we’re watching Mississippi State. I was really impressed. Then against Oklahoma, they even got better. So there’s not like these weaknesses. They’re big physical up front on defense, and on offense, they’re built around the offensive and defensive lines. Then when you look at his record, and you say, ‘Look at his record while he’s been there every year.’ It’s improved. Well, the trenches improved every year, and they’re for real in the trenches. They’ve got really good players, and they’re built like an SEC team. It’s hard to prepare for him because he knows what he’s doing offensively. He’s really different in terms of what he makes you adjust to.”

On assessing the pass rushers…

“I don’t know if you’re referencing to something. I don’t know because I don’t know stats. I don’t look at it. I look at it game to game. I think when we rush four guys, we do a really good job of getting home. We mix it coverage and pressure. Going back to Auburn, we ran some five- and six-man pressures. Somebody, one of those announcers before the game last week, said that we were the highest five-, six-man pressure rate we’ve ever had since I’ve been here. I don’t know the true calculations of that. Sometimes people chalking those up don’t know a guy rushing from a guy standing at the line that has the back. I don’t know if that’s accurate, but we didn’t do that necessarily last week because of the style of play they have. We dictate off the offense what they do, and I’m pleased with our rushers. Our best rushers have been rushing well when they’re out there. I hope that we can affect the quarterback in some kind of way to impact the game regardless of which week that is.”

On Branson Robinson…

“Branson has a MCL. I don’t know how many weeks it’ll be, but he will not be available this week. Forecasting it out is impossible because the MCL is one of the ones that has to heal itself, so we’ve had MCLs in the past. Anything from you know two weeks to three weeks. I don’t know what it’s going to be, but he’s going to be okay. It’s just a matter of getting back him back. It was not the same leg injury that he previously had. It was different.”

On Michael Van Buren…

“I have and I’m glad you brought that up because after y’all said that in the In the press conference, I went back and watched it. Didn’t even realize that I had run into him. I reached out to Lebby that night and talked to him. He said the kid was great. Yesterday, I talked to Mike [Van Buren Jr.] and told him I had no intentions or ill will towards him at all. If you ever been on the sideline in a game, it’s pandemonium. It’s really pandemonium when you’re trying to change personnel, and you only got three to four seconds to do it. We were bad off in a bad personnel grouping against empty that we actually had messed up the week before. I was trying to get to Schumann to get that changed, but I reached out to the kid. He was great. He’s a really good player. He’s going to be a good player in this league, and he played better as the game went on against us.”

On preparing for Quinn Ewers and Arch Manning…

“It doesn’t change how we were prepare. If they’re different style quarterbacks, but they’re not really different style quarterbacks. They’re both really good. I’ll say this. You watch the games that Arch [Manning] has played, he played really well. He did some really good things. I mean look at his numbers. He played and he comes out first couple plays against Mississippi State, ripping it and firing it in his first SEC play, and he played really good. Quinn’s [Ewers] a great player, and they got a great quarterback situation because they’ve got two guys that both are capable of winning and playing well.”

On Texas’ defense…

“Size, speed. Two best front guys. Every defense starts with train wreckers, big guys, physical guys at the point of attack that are hard to move. They got him. They’ve got guys on the edge that are elite rushers. They got an elite player out of the portal. They went and got DB from Clemson who’s playing really good. They patched up some holes they had, and they’re the complete package on defense. They’re really consistent. They don’t give up explosives. They’re really good in the red area. They hard to run the ball on. The consistency you watch them play with it reminds me of some of our best teams here. I’m like ,’Man, they’re good on D. They’re good on O. They’re good on special teams, and they’re playing at a high level.”

On composure on the sideline…

“Depends on what happened. Realistically, that’s something that Jackson Meeks and I talked about last year. We had a fumble or something on punt return, and I was upset with Ladd [McConkey]. Jackson came over and said, ‘Composure card, coach, composure card.’ Sometimes there’s an intentional look. You’ve got to be intense. You got to know what you’ve got to do. That’s important. Our players talk about that all the time. I think we had several penalties in that game that had a chance to lose composure, or they had a chance to lose composure that were teaching moments, too. Whether that’s Damon [Wilson II], or Chaz’s [Chambliss], or London [Humphreys] had a play where he had a drop and came over. I think those are great teaching moments for players. I try to do a good job helping them with that.”

On the challenges Texas’ offense presents…

“It’s different because the deep shots – we’re talking about two distinctly different offenses. When you watch the tape, when we played correctly and use the right technique, we played well. We did not win every ball. Joenel Aguero is a great example. He covered the guy exactly like he was supposed to, and the guy made a great throw and a great catch. We’re going to take that. We’re going to say, ‘You know what, we’re not going to win every battle.’ We’re not going to win every 50-50 ball, but we’re going to try to win more than we lose. When you don’t cover someone period, as a coach you’re going, ‘What is wrong here?’ We didn’t cover the guy. We had bad eyes. We looked in the backfield. Things that you harp on every day. They happen. That’s what offenses do. They try to give you eye candy and try to get you looking at the wrong thing. We have to remove those, right? Texas presents something completely different because they’ll have you sitting in the line of scrimmage because you think it’s a run, and they run right by you. They’ll have you looking at a motion, and you don’t see the guy running down the field passing. They’ve got great speed on the perimeter and great size. They present maybe a different challenge than Mississippi State, but a challenge.”

On building the number of players to play winning football…

“I wouldn’t say that’s a challenge or issue for this team. I think it’s a challenging issue for every team. Not relative to us, right? I don’t think anybody, when I talk to my coaching peers and we share messages, I think everybody lacks the depth maybe they had the year before. Maybe one year you’re like, ‘I got a few more linemen than I had last year.’ On the whole, there’s not great depth, right? Our issues have really been inconsistency not depth, and we’ve had some injuries in some spots. We’ve got four or five starters out depending on how you count a couple guys from injuries. Inconsistency, I would say yes. Portal or depth? No, not yet. I would like to have more guys that can play winning football. I would like to have played more players by now, but we’re looking at our snap counts, and they’re higher than they’ve been years before for the starters. Why is that? We’ve been in tighter, tougher games.”

On determining the success of pass defense…

“For us we usually do yards per attempt including everything in that You know to see yards per attempt and it’s not as good as it’s been in years past We’ve had a couple like really good three/four years, and I think that losing Tykee (Smith), Kamari (Lassiter), (Javon) Bullard has an effect on that because you’ve got three players that are really good and got drafted You always have to have people stockpiled behind it. We probably haven’t played as well at that position and we have younger players, but for us the metric is like you have three or four incompletions and you give up a 10-yarder, well, you’re okay there because you’ve got 10 divided by four. But when you come up a 75-yarder and a 77-yarder, that’s not good. Historically around here we haven’t given up massive explosives.”

On Bill Norton…

“What a great kid man, this guy worked his tail off here and worked really hard. I forget which year it was, it had to have been three or four years ago when one of his key roles was with special teams, he played on our field goal protection unit and was the best at doing it. He was a backup defensive tackle and played some snaps. That was his role then and I want to say maybe in the Ohio State game or one of the games we lost somebody, and he had to go in, take over and play a role at that and he did it with great pride. He was always positive and enjoyed practice and was fun to be around, funny guy. Now he’s been I guess two places, and he’s playing for them and he’s doing a really good job. He subs in and rolls in it’s one of their backup DTs.”

On Gunnar Helm…

“First of all, he’s a tremendous blocker he’s not a one-way tight end, he’s got great size. This guy’s huge on film, but he’s a great pass catcher and the scheme that Sark (Steve Sarkisian), has they do a great job. It’s not like they just say, ‘hey go out here and go one-on-one to get open.’ They’re sprinting out throwing back there. They’re play-action boot naked and they’ll throw a screen off of it. Everything that you don’t honor because you’re thinking about another play. They have a play off of it that makes you honor him and he’s a tremendous blocker. I think the quarterbacks are really comfortable with him, so when you get zone elements, holes, and zones, they trust him to go to be at that spot and catch the ball. I wasn’t aware of him going into the week because I had not really heard of him and now watching tape This guy’s really good player, and he had a big game last week.”

On Mykel Williams moving through injury…

“You don’t see much out of him until the game I think he had six or eight snaps against Auburn and ten or eleven snaps last game against Mississippi State. So, he looked better to me during the week this past week. So, with what we were able to do during the Auburn game with him was to get him better for Mississippi State and now we’ve got another week under our belt, and we’re hoping that he’s healthy, full, and ready to go. But again, I don’t know that until we get out there, but I don’t get a great evaluation during the week because he’s only been able to do some of the work.”

On how Steve Sarkisian has evolved as a coach…

“I don’t know that he’s changed as a play calling designer. His elite ability is to get players the ball, that’s what he’s elite at because he’s had really good wideouts before. They were really good he’s had really good backs and he found ways to get them the ball. He’s had good tight ends like he has now and he’s finding them ways getting the ball. His offense is complicated because it has motion shifts and a lot of window dressing. But he gets back to the plays that he’s going to run and he’s able to be versatile enough to say, ‘Okay, I got this guy, I have to get this guy the ball.’ Some of the plays are like ours now where they’re not built for one player, they’re built for what does the defense do? I’m going to get it to my weapons and there’s probably more similarities between the two offenses than some of these offenses we faced.”

On Quinn Ewers’ completion percentage…

“His awareness, like he there’s nothing that he sees he hasn’t seen, as a quarterback you get confidence by playing the position. You’re not going to have some guy that just doesn’t play and go out there and play great. He’s played a lot of football; he’s a really good athlete and he’s been in (Steve) Sarkisian’s system. I think the comparisons between him and Carson (Beck) are so similar in terms of the kind of quarterbacks they are, they’re both better athletes than people think, they both have awareness of coverage and they’re really good in the pocket. This guy’s taking off and hurting people running when he needs to, but he also can stand in the pocket and make all the throws and change the protection. So, I’ve been really impressed with him, but that was the case last year when I saw him play.”

On what he wants to see from the team as the season progresses…

“I want them to play their best game against Texas. Simply stated, we have not played our best game, we have not put a complete game together and that’s what every coaches goal is, which is to play your best game moving forward. That’s what’s going to be needed to go on the road at Texas and play. We have to play better and that’s the only goal I’m thinking about right now is how we play this week.”

ICYMI: Trevor Etienne and Dan Jackson Interviews – October 14, 2024

On playing a complete game as an offense…

“We definitely want to get better each week, and that’s something we strive to do as a team.  But I feel like no, we haven’t played a great game of football offensively yet, and that’s just something we have keep working at and get better at throughout the season.”

On areas of improvement…

“I’d say just doing a lot more of the small things right: eliminating turnovers, executing, just going out there and starting faster, attacking early, just the small things really.”

On lessons from Alabama used to prepare for Texas…

“Like I said, just starting faster and eliminating the turnovers. Playing on the road in this league is hard. It’s hard to get a win. Going out there and winning moment by moment and trying to control the game early is something we definitely want to focus on.”

On improving against explosive plays to prepare for Texas…

“We talk about it every week. Being able to win your 50-50 balls, your 50-50 match ups, that’s something we’re going to go out to practice and work on today, a lot, and something we stress every day. We talk about it every week. The number one way to eliminate explosive plays is your effort and your technique, obviously. The overall effort and running to the ball, that’s how you eliminate explosives.”

On working from being a walk-on to a consistent player…

“I think, in terms of me, I’ve always had that confidence and belief in myself, but I’ve had a lot of help and support through family and friends and coaches along the way who’ve encouraged me and given me that confidence too, when I might’ve lacked it. It’s easier for me when I’m playing against guys who are very similar and give it their all every day at practice and having confidence in them. It helps me when I know where my help is on the field and just the great coaching staff that we have here, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

On his analysis of Texas’ offense…

“It’s another great SEC opponent. They have a very explosive offense. Great skill players, great running back, great quarterback, but thankfully so do we and we see that every week in practice. It’s like every other week, the work that we’ve put in on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, is going to give us the confidence to go out there and do what we need to do.”

ICYMI: Mark Richt’s Special Announcement

“Coach [Smart], thank you for allowing us to have just a minute to talk and congratulations to your successful so far this season and all that good stuff. And also coach, thank you for allowing your players to get involved in this event because without them it would not be as successful as it has been but thank you.

I just want to first introduce my granddaughter as coach said my beautiful granddaughter Jaden, and you’ll hear more about her in just a second. She couldn’t help it but be beautiful with her mother Anna, and Anna’s mother Valerie and my wife Katharyn; she got she got the beauty gene.

But anyway, I wanted to announce the second annual Chick-fil-A Dawg Bowl 2024 and we have the moniker of ‘taking a bite out of Parkinson’s and Crohn’s.’ We are fighting those two diseases and of course I’ve got Parkinson’s and Jadyn actually has Crohn’s disease. You’d never know, but she is struggling with that as well. So we’re just trying to take a bite out of those two diseases. As it turns out, the Isakson Center for Neurological Disease takes a bite out of Parkinson’s for sure. But there there’s a connection with the gut biology in the brain which also helps learn things about Crohn’s disease, so that’s how those two are tied together.

We’re so thankful for that. By the way, Elizabeth Isakson is here. She’s the granddaughter of Johnny Isakson, who unfortunately has passed, and he had Parkinson’s as well. So anyway, we’re having a bowling event and it’s going to be on October 23rd at the bowling alley there at Showtime Bowling Alley. About 6 p.m., DawgNation is going to start streaming it live. They have a YouTube page, and they have DawgNation.com if people want to see it.  It’s a private event so you can’t just come in you get thrown out. But anyway, the plan is to have it to where the fan base can see it, and there also is going to be a giving link for the fan base.

We’ve already raised over $600,000 to this point; we’re trying to break a new record last year we broke 750,000 and we’re shooting for 800,000 this year. We’re hoping the fan base, and anybody interested would give, and the giving link is richtsdawgbowl.com. It was the same thing as last year. Last but not least, I wanted the two Annas (Ana Escamilla & Anna Richt) to bring, this is what we’re all battling for just so y’all know. This ball here, there’s going to be a male and female version of this ball. The winner of the high game pin total, and this this is a championship belt that we had last year that my wife last year actually had it upside down. But it’s a championship belt, all five team members will get it.

I remember last year we talked about how the NCAA would probably throw this guy, throw us in jail for letting a player win one of those, but now it’s legal right with NIL. So, the fact that it’s legal now, we’ll do that. But I appreciate you all doing that but anyway, and again one more thing to be sure. It’s called the Chick-fil-A Dawg Bowl 2024, Chick-fil-A was very gracious to be the title sponsor again, and just so you know the on chick, it’s capital letter C Chick with the dash, lowercase letters fill, and then capital A at the end. So get that right because last year we didn’t do it perfect, and I caught heck. I had to beg, but anyway coach.

Thank you for the opportunity and thank you.”

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