Smart, Players Preview Auburn

GEORGIA FOOTBALL VIDEOS

Coach Smart

D. Phillips Jr.

J. Williams

ATHENS, Ga. – Georgia football head coach Kirby Smart, junior running back Dwight Phillips, Jr. and junior inside linebacker Justin Williams spoke with the media on Monday and offered the following comments.

Head Coach Kirby Smart
Opening Statement
"For us, it's on to Auburn. As y'all know, it's the South's Oldest Rivalry. It's an awesome rivalry. It's one that was special to me growing up close to Auburn. I actually lived closer to there than any other SEC school. I've known a lot of coaches there, and it seems like from the two places I've worked most of my life, that's been a permanent rival. It's certainly been a very traditional rivalry both places I've worked, and I have so much respect for them. Coach [Alex] Golesh is doing a great job coming in and taking over the program, installing his belief, his offense, his things. They have a lot of talent. They've got good football players, and it's any given Saturday in this conference, as we see every week. It will be an extremely physical game. They're coming off an off week, and we're coming off a really tough physical game. It will be really important that the mindset and the approach to the game is right because they want to make it physical the way they play. They're a really tough, physical football team on both sides of the ball. Coach [DJ] Durkin, their defensive coordinator, has been one of the best in the conference over all the years he's been in the conference. He's a great defensive football coach. We've got a lot of links, a lot of respect for him. Our guys have to get ready to go play."

On Auburn head coach Alex Golesh's offense…
"Physical. People want to make it about passing, and they do have a lot of good passes, and they have tempo. They get a lot of plays, but they're physical. They're physical at the point of attack. When you watch the games I watched yesterday on them, you immediately see those same pillars of his program, being able to throw the ball vertical down the field and being physical at the point of attack. They've got a guy that can do that at quarterback."

On the Alabama game tape…
"We're focusing on Auburn, really. I don't think I ever said anything after the game about going back and watching the tape of it. We watched the tape of it. It was extremely physical, and this one's going to be really physical, too. It was a really hard-fought game. Mistakes made both ways, but I promise you the page for us is focused on this Auburn team because they're well-rested and have a good football team coming in here."

On dealing with success throughout the season…
"We want good football players. We want high-character kids that want to be at Georgia. We look for toughness, because that's what the conference is, but who doesn't look for toughness? We don't have these traits that are secret to us. We think it's more important what you do with your players than the players you get. We all have a pool of players. I don't think there's a huge separation like some people do between the players. It's what you do with them. It's mindset training, it's lifting, it's concept training, it's defensive schemes, offensive schemes. It's how you practice. It's the culture you breed in the off-season program that makes your programs different. As far as identifying players we take, we want to take tough players that love football. I just don't think that's different than other people."

On teaching composure to players…
"I think it's a learned behavior. I think some people have already learned it when they get here. Some people have further to go in terms of learning to managing their composure. It's part of a DNA trait we have here that we sell early on, and we highlight it each and every day that it doesn't show up. I think you take a lot of opportunities and mistakes that other people have, and you try to learn from them. The greatest learning tool you have is experience your failures within your own program, and we've certainly had those. When we do, we highlight them and bring them out and explain how loss of composure can affect not yourself, it can affect others."

On the origin of 'Mudita'…
"I think it's important in all team sports. You go to a business, and you go across the country and you look at successful businesses, you have to have pride in performance. You have to celebrate team goals. This is a team sport. Football is probably the ultimate team sport. As much as we want to make it not that, with individual awards and NIL and the culture that we've inherited, it still boils down to the best teams play well together. Without 'Mudita,' you can't really do that."

On leaked audio from the locker room…
"It's happened before. It's not something I want. I feel like that's a spot that you should be able to feel safe to talk to your team and communicate with your team. It's happened before to us. We've got to do a better job managing it, honestly."

On Alabama fans interacting with players…
"I don't know that you can predict; you want people to make good decisions and do things the right way, and Raylen [Wilson] certainly did there. There's so much that goes into that. He thought it was a Georgia fan which probably helping him react the way he did initially. It's disappointing behavior by any fan, and certainly nothing we condone. I'm sure Alabama doesn't condone it either."

On potentially moving players to tailback…
"We don't have anybody to move there. Tyriq Green? He can't move there. We have the guys that we have."

On TE Jaden Reddell…
"He's a little dinged up, and I thought he played really hard after the hit and played with toughness. He continues to grow as a player, and I'm proud of where he's at."

On third down success…
"We have an experienced quarterback, and we've been able to run the ball better. If you go back two years ago, for whatever reason, we really struggled to run the ball. What does that equal? Third and long. What does that equal? 39%. We ran the ball better last year, and we had a quarterback that was in his first year starting. I think it's attributed to the offensive staff. It's attributed to the quarterback play. It's attributed to the ability to run the ball on early downs and not get behind the sticks."

On the safeties against Alabama…
"Some good, some bad. There are some things we can improve and work on, but they certainly played hard."

On changing expectations for first-year head coaches…
"I'm still waiting for the first 'Curt Cignetti effect' in the SEC. It's tough, tough, tough sledding, week-in and week-out. Maybe it can happen with the right guy bringing the right players with him, but it's tough. The key to all that is the quarterback, and Coach Cignetti's done a tremendous job developing or bringing or getting quarterbacks. That's a big part to every offense or team's success."

On the freshmen making an impact in games…
"I would say, those two [Craig Dandridge Jr. and Blake Stewart] that you mentioned, they don't play late in the game. They play in the game. It's not a late-in-the-game deal. They're good football players. Some have created opportunities through injuries. Some have created opportunities through earning it themselves. In this day and age, you can't survive without freshmen being able to play. It is one of two things if you're not playing freshmen: you've got a really good old team, which is rare, or you don't have very good freshmen. I don't really want to have the second. If those guys are available and the best to play, obviously, they'll play. We've had a really good track record for the last couple years, the most played snaps of freshmen. We've been in the top five in the country. That's because we play a lot of players, we sign good freshmen, and we're not afraid to play them. "

On RB Dwight Phillips, Jr….
"His vision, his unique toughness for his size, and his speed. He has great vision, a great one-cut, and he's got great toughness. His speed is elite."

On WR Isiah Canion's status and missing Canion and WR Thomas Blackshear at Alabama…
"It's a lower extremity injury [Canion]. We had to go all week not knowing about Isiah [Canion] we knew on Thomas [Blackshear]. How does it affect you? I think if you talk to Mike [Bobo] and you talk to the offensive staff, it's frustrating because you don't really know who's in and who's out. You're trying to make decisions. Like I said, we thought Nate [Fraizer] was going to be able to play, and that was a surprise to us. Isiah, we knew we'd be close, or maybe or maybe not. It just makes it hard because you can't get enough reps for guys, especially when you've got guys trying to take some reps as walk-through reps."

On offensive coordinator Mike Bobo's impact…
"We don't have some magic potion in the way we do things. We're a week away from humility on both sides of the ball. I do think his intense way he carries himself with the offense, the way the offensive staff plans, the schedule we keep Monday through Saturday of prep, of changing, of evolving, of adding this wrinkle, taking this wrinkle, utilizing personnel groupings, scheme. He's very smart in the run game in a world that, I don't want to say young coaches, but a lot of new-age coaches don't get infatuated with the run game or the details of a run game in terms of who's blocking who. All of those things are important to him. When I say that, I say it talking about his total staff and the way they go about presenting to the total offense each and every day, day in and day out, Monday through Saturday."

On Auburn's defense…
"Speed, athleticism. They can fly the ball. They play really hard. They attack the ball. They blitz and come after you. They're aggressive. You can see his [DJ Durkin] personality coming out in the players in the way they play."

University of Georgia Athletics

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Players Mentioned

Thomas Blackshear

Isiah Canion

Craig Dandridge

Tyriq Green

Dwight Phillips, Jr.

Jaden Reddell

Blake Stewart

Justin Williams

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