When asked after Thursday’s practice about the play of his special teams, Kirby Smart showed the coaches in this era of limited high impact contact. His answer boils down to, “I don’t know, but the effort is good.”
 
 
“That’s the hardest part to judge because we do offense/defense live – we tackle, we scrimmage. You don’t really do special teams because of the collisions, live. We go as close to live as we can and we focus on them a lot. Roderigo (Blankenship) has done a good job, a much better job with kickoffs. Cam (Nizialek – transfer from Columbia) has punted some nice balls, he’s been a little up and down – he’s punted some good balls. So it’s hard to say where we are in that perspective. I am comfortable with the work we’ve gotten done.”
 
“Our kids really challenge each other out there and those drills, special teams wise. I mean we had Sony Michel going against Lorenzo Carter in a punt return drill and they are life or death competing out there – I love that! – but it’s really hard to measure because we don’t have life situations.”
 
 
Kirby, how much will Cam Nizialek push Marshall Long”
 
 
“I expect a lot. It’s hard to say because Marshall’s not kicking yet. He’s coming back. He’s slowly getting his motion back, but he’s not 100 percent comfortable yet. And Cam’s punting all these balls right now. So I expect it to be a really good battle in the fall. Cam’s had good averages in the spring, hang time and average, so that’s good.”