Kirby Smart takes final ‘hot yoga’ jab at Lane Kiffin after Georgia beats Ole Miss

ATHENS — Lane Kiffin and Kirby Smart saw their teams trade blows for four quarters on Saturday.

“I do want to thank Lane, though, for the end of the game,” Smart said. “He gave me some hot yoga tickets so I can go get a yoga. So, I tell him I appreciate that.”

Smart and Kiffin had a long conversation after the game, not as enemies but as friends.

Everything Kirby Smart had to say after Georgia beats Ole Miss, Lane Kiffin

Opening statement...

“Another day in the SEC. One possession games have become the norm. I don’t know that I’ve ever been a part of anything like that. A lot of credit goes to Lane and his stuff. Their team was really prepared to come into this game and start fast, as they did. A lot of credit goes to our offensive staff and the preparation they put in to not stop. I just told the guys, that’s a culture win. You don’t win that game if you’re not physically tough, mentally tough. We call it hard to kill. The one thing we are, we’re hard to kill. We won’t go away. We’ve got to keep getting better. I’m so happy the players get return on the work ethic, physicality we play with, how we practice. It paid off on offense. Our ability to run the ball at the end of the day is probably the difference in the game. We sure couldn’t stop them very often.We stopped them when we had to. Great crowd, unbelievable crowd. Hats off to Ole Miss. Their offense, guys, I think they lead the country in plays over 30 yards. We probably helped put them further ahead. They’ve got a really good team.”

On the relentlessness of the defense...

“We finally got the crowd into it. You’ve got to win first down. We got an incompletion, a batted ball, just anything to get a break. The turning point was when the offense scored and all the offensive players ran over to the defense. I thought they inspired the defense. Before we got the first stop, it was right after we scored, about seven of them ran over there, (Lawson) Luckie, Nate (Frazier), all the guys, Earnest (Greene). I think the defense felt the juice. They felt the juice, got a little cooler, got a little louder. We got some big stops there.”

On why the team is so good at second half adjustments...

“Again, I don’t think it’s second-half adjustments. I talked about that on McAfee show. I don’t know that there’s enough time in the locker room to truly adjust. You can recognize formation in the plays and play them better. We didn’t call a lot of different defenses. We obviously didn’t play real well the first drive of the second half for sure because that was a one-two punch and gone. Every time these kids walk off the field, they just believe they’re going to stop them the next time. They just do. We never got a stop once. We could never get off serve and get back to where we needed to get to to win the game. They were struggling to stop our offense too, which gives the defense hope.”

On what it says about the offense to stay so consistent and scoring all game...

“Yeah, I think that’s the hardest part for us is that who we are is, we’ve talked about it, it’s methodical, bludgeon you. You have a heavyweight boxer that just wants to box with you, box with you, box with you, try to knock you out in the fourth. That’s hard to do when that scoreboard is lighting up, because every now and then, everything’s not perfect. All of a sudden, you end up in a third down, and all of a sudden you’ve got to punt or you’ve got to go for it on fourth and one or two. You can’t live in that world. You’ve got, to play like we were playing offensively, which in this game was incredible, you’ve got to get some defensive stops. We didn’t do that.”

On Luckie’s three touchdowns and what he brings to the program...

“This guy, man, he speaks up at every meeting. He loves the place. His dad played here. He never complains. He doesn’t gripe. He just keeps on working, man. He’s got some of the best toughness in our program, never complains. He probably statistically wasn’t having the year he wanted to have, but he never pouted. He never complained. What about Dillon Bell? That play Dillon Bell makes, probably that broke the game. It changed the field position, put us in milk mode, put us in what we’re really good at, which is like four-minute offense, chew up the clock. That play Gunner makes and Dillon makes and Lawson’s three touchdowns were a really big part of the second half.”

On how difficult it is to score on every possession...

“Well, it must not be too hard because both offenses did it. I mean, the first half, I don’t think there was anything. We were off serve because of field goals, I guess. We had one more possession than them because we got the ball to start the game, and we ended the half with the ball. We always talk about winning the middle eight, but we lost because we had to kick a field goal, which I didn’t want to kick, and they get a touchdown within two plays. So, you know, you lose that middle eight, most of the time you’re going to lose the game. The way we played defensively, you’re probably going to lose games. But, look, as bad as we played on defense, I can’t sit here and tell you without watching the tape, that’s a really good offense. When you go up against them, they have really good weapons, they’ve got a good plan, and the quarterback run element right now for them makes it really hard to defend.”

On how much he considered going for it on the last fourth down...

“I wanted to. I believe in winning the game. I believe in winning the game. We believe in winning the game. They needed a touchdown, and, you know, everybody assumes, I guarantee you analytics is just going to say that I should have gone for it, because we win the game on that play. By putting it in their hands, and everybody assumes that the field goal is made. See, that’s the assumption that you’ve made the field goal. And we had a tough snap there that Gunner gets low, gets up, and Peyton (Woodring) gets it through. But you can’t assume that. Like, I want my offense, who’s clicking, who’s rolling, who’s 6-for-6, who’s 12-for-12 in the second half throwing, it’s fourth and two. Go win the game. I really believe in that. But what got me was the stops the defense had. You know, the stops the defense had gave me faith that whether we made the field goal or not, we could go out and stop it. And, you know, being at home and them having to go out in that environment was really hard in that two-minute. We lived that last year at their place, trying to play two-minute. Guys were jumping the snap count, getting rushed. The only time we got rush all day was in the two-minute.”

On if he can remember a time in his coaching career where he didn’t get a stop in the first half...

“I’ve been a part of a few. Johnny Manziel may have done that to us at A&M. I don’t want to remember them, so I don’t know if that’s a fact or not. But the problem was, it wasn’t that they scored every possession. It’s that we were chewing up a lot of clock. So they weren’t getting to score a lot. They were getting to score a couple times. He had to be frustrated because he wants the ball. So here we are methodically going down the field. He’s score, score, score, plus the field position. We’re giving them a head start at 35. We cannot keep the ball out of bounds, guys. The percentages of scoring from 35 to 25 changes 10 to 15 percent. And you just can’t be a good team and do that.”

On how this team is a fourth-quarter team….

“I don’t know. I’ve always felt like we’ve got good fourth-quarter teams. We’ve always been really a good physical win-the-game in the fourth-quarter team. We just have had so many leads in the fourth quarter because we have been better than everybody else. We’ve had this distance and this margin that the game didn’t come down to one little thing. Our margins are smaller. The margins are tight everywhere. I mean, go look at these scores all over the league. And we’ve got two NFL coaches on our staff, and they say it’s every week in the NFL. The SEC is becoming — I’m not talking about the NFL in terms of talent. I’m talking about the way the games go. The clock management — I mean, (Kiffin)’s the best in the country to me. He always has his three timeouts. He always can get an extra possession. He managed the clock beautifully. The clock management within that game, how he went timeout, timeout, timeout forced us. We’re 2:06. We decided to squib it, because we don’t want to give him a free timeout. So we burned the clock on the squib to make him not have a free timeout. I mean, it was like textbook stuff going on out there. And, you know, if I squibbed that and they get it on the 40-yard line, what are you all going to be saying? You know, but I’m trying to get him not to have that timeout. And it worked great for us, and he managed it right. And, you know, your question is, are we a fourth-quarter team? I mean, we have to be because we’re behind. You know, we’ve got to find a way to play better earlier. And the theme this week was fast and free. I wanted the guys to be free from all hostage of a scoreboard. And I don’t know that we — I don’t know that we — I think offensively we played that way. I don’t know that we did defensively.”

On the defensive penalties...

“I don’t know. What penalties?”

There were a couple of pass interferences...

“Right. So how do you get a PI? Right. So how do you get it? You’re playing man-to-man. So if you play zone, you let them catch it. You play man-to-man, you might get a second and ten. And right now we’re just trying to get a second and ten. So, like, we get some stops. We won the game in man-to-man. So I’m going to live and die on that sword, because if you just give guys free access and stay off of them, which they did, Gunner went 12-for-12. Their guy was 12-for-12 when we played zone. So I’m going to take a PI to get the third down.”

On the Gunner Stockton-Lawson Luckie connection...

“Yeah, they’re great friends. Lawson’s the one that had the quote last year in the Texas game. He said, ‘I hope you believe in you as much as I believe in you.’ And they’ve got a great rapport with each other. And I think that helped. You know, I don’t know if all those plays were designed for him. I know the pop pass was. The RPO was. I don’t remember his third one. But, you know, those are things that he made big plays when his number was called.

On what he’s like in the fourth quarter...

“Really calm. I’m old, man. I was walking around thinking about what I was going to do. I knew what I was going to do. It’s like, the old me would have been, you know, running up and down the field. And it does you no good. It’s just make good decisions in intense moments. And make quick decisions. Live with them and go with it. I wanted to show confidence in our defense, which it’s hard to do right now. But we did by kicking that field goal.”

On the team adopting his mentality...

“I don’t think so. I don’t think our team pays attention to that part of it. I think at halftime we had a really good effect on them. Because I told the defense, I said, guys, we got them right where we want them. We ain’t stopped them yet. We got them right where we want them. We’re coming out in the second half. And we’re hell in the second half. And that didn’t work. But we kept coming.

On Colbie Young...

“Yeah. I should know what it is. It’s not good. It’s a fracture down there. It’s broken. I can’t remember if it was tibia or fibula. I don’t know which one. But it’s not good.”

On the offensive line...

“Everything. I mean, we got to go to work. We got to get healthy. Like, this was the first game, guys, that we looked over there and said, man, we can give (Greene) a blow and Juan (Gaston) in. And we stayed fresh. And, like, we can be really good if this offensive line is healthy because they can lean on people. They just wear people out like an anaconda, just keep squeezing and squeezing. And we had, like, some guys roll in. And that was the first time we were able to do that.”

On Gunner Stockton...

“Well, first off, he’s got a great coach. Okay? He gets coached the right way. Mike Bobo and Brandon Streeter, they spend a lot of time with those quarterbacks. The play Gunner made today now, guys, he took it to another level because, I mean, they got a blitz to tackle the back. They got a guy covering the tight end of the flat. And they got a guy running right at him. He pulled the ball, beat the guy blitzing, and then ran for a touchdown. Had some huge scrambles, great throws on time, darts, like the throw to Dillon Bell. I mean, like, let’s give credit where credit’s due. He’s wired for these type moments because he’s tough and his team believes in him. You know, I didn’t get to talk about it, but this kid couldn’t practice Monday and Tuesday. I mean, he literally couldn’t practice. His oblique, the shots he took at Auburn, he’s beat up. And we’re like, okay, we won’t use you in the quarterback run game. We’ll get to you. ‘Uh-huh, coach, I want to run it. I want to run it. My team needs to see me run it.’ And he did. And, I mean, we were concerned he wouldn’t be able to go.”

On the offensive line...

“Yeah, I was amazed. I kept talking about that. I thought that would be the only way we get a drive killer was that, and they have great technique. We do a lot of research on what are holds, what aren’t holds, and send them on, make those kids watch those each week. And I think that helps us. But, you know, one of our coaches said it best. He said, if we can run the ball and stop the run, which we have done that, we’ve run the ball and we’ve stopped the run, we’ll be in every game we play. It’ll just be holy hell to win it. And we are defining that every week. We are slowly but surely defining that.

On Nate Frazier...

“More aggressive, less thinking. You know, he had some strip outs in this game last year. He’s concerned about it. I thought he had some big runs. Killer was the third... and the one that we could ice the game. We thought we had it. We missed a block. I wanted Nate to hit that and ice the game. But I think we missed a guy on that one. But I’m really impressed with what Nate’s done.”

On Gunner impacting his teammates...

“Oh, yeah, absolutely. The offensive line? I mean, they see it. They see how that kid plays. They want to play for him. They want to compete for him. The backs, too, the receivers, they love Gunner. I mean, Gunner’s the most lovable guy because he never crosses anybody. He’s just Mr. Positive and, ‘yes, sir, coach. Yes, sir, coach.’ You can’t get him to say anything.

On the margin shrinking in CFB...