Kirby Smart sounds off on ‘alarm bell’ for upcoming Georgia games

ATHENS — It would be difficult to find much issue with how Georgia played in the first half of its win over Oklahoma.

But the third quarter showed some potential cracks on offense, as the Bulldogs had more turnovers in the 15-minute period than first downs.

Georgia still won with ease against the Sooners, winning 41-13.

But Kirby Smart has his eyes on the future and did not love everything he saw on Saturday.

“I think it’s always indicative of your halftime adjustments, what you’re going to do the second half, what kind of energy you have,” Smart said. “Are you, you know, are you complacent? Do you look at the scoreboard? I mean, if you’re going to be that way, it’s probably an alarm bell for upcoming games. Because if you’re going to be, you know, happy with where you are, then you’re not going to improve.”

The second half lull was not the only thing on Smart’s mind after the win.

Below are Smart’s full comments following Saturday’s game. The Bulldogs next face Vanderbilt.

Kirby Smart sounds off on ‘alarm bell’ for upcoming Georgia games

Opening statement:

“Excited for the turnout, the atmosphere — that’s what an SEC atmosphere is supposed to be like. Really amazing, awesome atmosphere, I thought it was a great deal.

“I would like to mention a good friend of ours, a good friend of the program, he was here a long time with me, passed away at 90 years old, Ray Lamb on Thursday. (He) coached at Commerce: 22 years, three state titles, 250 wins. He’s a legend in our state. His sons and daughters have littered the state with coaching staffs. He’s got a grandson that’s coaching, and they’re doing a great job at college coaching. We all know, and very near and dear to our hearts, coach Lamb. He meant a lot to us, so I want to think about his family and the passing they had here recently.

“Excited for our guys. They play very hard, and they got to keep getting better.”

On Chris Cole’s game:

“Yeah, I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think Chris gets the credit for that. He’s Johnny on the spot, but the credit is the pressure, the calls, the effort of the other players. He certainly was in the right spot at the right time, and that’s not the guy you want to be chasing. He picks up the fumble, he’s hard to catch. But the big-time play in the game is (Rasean Dinkins’) punch-out. There’s forced fumbles, and then there’s gifts. We like to say that the Dawgs don’t beat the Dawgs. The Dawgs didn’t beat the Dawgs today, but the Sooners in a lot of ways beat the Sooners. They gifted us multiple turnovers that could have been touchdowns and the game would have been different. So, opportunistic, a little luck, but proud of Chris for running it back and (of) KJ’s interception.”

On how important this game was for Talyn Taylor’s confidence:

“Yeah, Talyn Taylor’s got a lot of confidence. He has confidence every day in practice, so it’s not one of those deals that I think all of a sudden he’s got confidence. He had confidence going into this season. He had confidence at the end of last season. He’s just gotten an opportunity to showcase it, and he’s taking advantage of it.”

On if he feels like his team faced adversity today:

“Not really. Every game has adversity at the start of the game. Once you get in the flow of the game and you get a 14-point play, that doesn’t happen in football much. They’re going in (to score), and we score (instead). Those plays are hard to overcome. It’s literally their seven, then your seven; it’s a 14-point swing. It’s really hard to overcome that, and it’s hard for them, too. I don’t know how much adversity we had to face after that, but I do know that our team is getting better. We had a good work week. I go by the work week: Do we have improvement? We improved this past week.”

On how similar Taylor’s TD was to the drop against Alabama last year:

“Similar, but a different ball. The ball was a little closer. It was a little flatter. There wasn’t as much air under it. It was more of a drive throw. It was a good retribution for him.”

On how the other running backs besides Nate Frazier played:

“The running backs did a great job. Got to hang on to the ball, got to get more yards at the contact. We talk about dog yards. We’re going to be an elite team, they’ve got to turn three-yard runs into five-yard runs. They’ve got to turn five-yard runs into seven-yard runs. They’ve got to get yards after contact. I don’t know that we actually did that today. I think we played against a really good defense, really good defense. We did not knock them out or blow-by-blow, take them out of the game like we wanted to. They’re talented and they’ve got a good coach.”

How close was Frazier to playing:

“I don’t know.”

Ellis Robinson IV update:

“He looks good.”

On the offense’s lull and how much had to do with Oklahoma playing well:

“I don’t know. I don’t know that. We definitely had a lull, and good teams don’t have lulls. They don’t sleepwalk. Usually when we watch the tape, it’s something we did. In the first half, I went in and said, ‘Hey, they didn’t stop us. We stopped ourselves.’ That’s important. I think in the second half, they stopped us some. But in the first half, we did it.”

On his team winning the situational moments so far this season:

“Some good, some bad. I mean, we didn’t convert a lot of our third downs today. I mean, we didn’t, I don’t know what it was, they were 2-of-14 and we were 3-of-12. Obviously, that’s not good. We’ve got to be better than that, and we can’t get in third-and-longs.”

On if there’s a specific area he plans to focus on in practice this week:

“I don’t even want to take that question. I’m not going to say anything like we’re going to go out there and just throw and catch the ball. We’ve got to get better at everything. We’ve got to get better at everything. We’ve got to be more efficient. Defensively, we’ve got to have more three-and-outs, more disruption. You know, we pressured today and didn’t finish. We affected the quarterback, but we didn’t really hit the quarterback. We affected the quarterback. We did not hit the quarterback.”

On how important Hezekiah Millender was for the scout team this week:

“He’s great every week. I mean, Ryan Montgomery does a great job. (Bryson) Beaver does a great job. I mean, I told the team in the locker room, the best week of scout defense, scout offense we’ve ever had in terms of the look and the way they went about their business. But Buddha was a part of that. He did some nice things. He gave a really good picture of John Mateer.”

On Dwight Phillips Jr.:

“Explosiveness. Explosiveness. We got to get Peanut more touches and find ways to get him the ball. I mean, that’s what we saw all spring and fall. I mean, we just got to get more opportunities. And some of these leads have hurt our opportunities to get him in because, you know, you want to protect him too. You don’t want him out there taking hits when you’re up 30 points on somebody. And I was really proud of him today, his stick-to-itiveness, his ball security, his hitting the hole. But then he also had a special teams tackle on one of the best returners in the country. And that’s what we challenged him to do this game.”

On Raylen Wilson:

“Yeah, he’s in a long line of good linebackers. I mean, I think (defensive coordinator Glenn) Schumann does a great job of teaching those guys fundamentals, awareness. He’s able to be the signal caller and get us in and out of calls based on certain things. And he’s a good player.”

On not playing a four-quarter game:

“I don’t know. I really don’t know that. I mean, I guess it depends on how we play when we get into a four-quarter game, right? We will have benefited from exposures and less risk of injuries, but we’ll also have to see how they play in tight ballgames. And there’s going to be tight ballgames, and you’re going to have to execute at a high level, and you’re going to have to be conditioned to execute at a high level.”

On taking away John Mateer’s legs:

“Yeah, I don’t know if we took his legs away. I talked about how we affected him. So I don’t want to say that we took his legs away. He’s a good athlete. He still scrambled. We had a lot of missed tackles. We expected that coming in. But he’s a good player, and we’ve got to finish better on the quarterback when we have a chance.”

On Gunner Stockton’s explosive plays in the second half:

“No, I wouldn’t say he did that. I mean, I guess you’re talking about the Talyn (Taylor) play where he threw it downfield. But a lot of the explosives downfield were in the first half. He’s got to take what the defense gives him. And, you know, people have got to play well around him. I thought our offensive line did a really good job on that. That defensive front of protection, keeping Gunner upright and giving him a chance to throw, the opening third-down conversion to Talyn was a big play. ”

On DB Braylon Conley:

“Awareness, savvy. He’s a smart player, instinctive. He’s confident, and he’s playing well.”

On the letter grade for his team:

“I don’t even know. I want to watch the tape before I give out letter grades. I would be remiss if I said, you know, (a) letter grade without seeing the tape.”

On the second-half offense:

“Yeah, I think it’s always indicative of your halftime adjustments, what you’re going to do in the second half, what kind of energy you have. Are you, you know, are you complacent? Do you look at the scoreboard? I mean, if you’re going to be that way, it’s probably an alarm bell for upcoming games. Because if you’re going to be, you know, happy with where you are, then you’re not going to improve. And I didn’t think that we, you know, played to a standard in the second half. And, you know, give Oklahoma credit. That’s what we felt like as coaches. There’s some of the stuff they did that made it hard on us. But I’ll always hold our standard to what we do.”

On safety KJ Bolden:

“Yeah, KJ’s, you know, playing well. When he practices well, he plays well. He has to stay focused on his practice and not, you know, worry about things outside his control. What he can control is how he practices and how he takes care of his body and how he lives. And he does that right. He’s a good football player. He’s a good leader for us.”

On the fourth-down decision in the first half:

“Just felt good about our offense. Felt good about the play.”

On having good matchups downfield:

“No, I mean, we always feel good about downfield. We don’t look at a game and go, ‘Ooh, we’re going to be able to throw it downfield here.’ We take what the defense gives us. And if it’s downfield, great. If it’s a five-yard screen pass, great. We’re not looking to just chunk it to chunk it.”

On what the Georgia standard is:

“The standard is excellence. The standard is taking the ball off people, not giving up points, red zone defense, third down defense. And, you know, they’re frustrated because they don’t have the stats they want because we’ve had some games that guys have gone in and let that down. And, you know, they want the opportunities. They want to go out there and put up shutouts and outscore teams and outperform other teams’ defenses. And they don’t always get the chance if we get leads, but they’re going to get an opportunity to do that. And in the end, it all comes out. I mean, it evens out because there’s going to be tight ballgames. They are going to have chances to make stops.”

On what he learned about his team:

“That we continue to improve, that hard work pays off, that preparation and consistency and performance is what keeps you in the win column. You know, like, we prepare well. We play with consistency. We don’t take our preparation lightly. And our staff puts a tremendous amount of work into every one of these games. They’re really hard to get ready for. And a lot of sacrifices are made through the staff and the players. And you’ve got to be willing to do those.”

On DB Gentry Williams: