Everything Kirby Smart said after Georgia’s loss to Auburn

ATHENS — Even after the first loss to an unranked team since 2019, Georgia coach Kirby Smart is still confident about what comes next for his team.

“They’ll work,” Smart said. “They’ll respond and they’ll work. They’ll listen and they’ll work. And we gotta go to work. We’re not much better than other people. We don’t beat ourselves usually.”

Georgia looked like the best team in the country through the first six weeks of the season.

To get back to that level, though, Georgia is going to need to clean things up after turning the ball over three times and committing some brutal penalties in the loss to Auburn.

Smart had plenty to say about his team after the 27-24 loss to Auburn on Saturday.

Below is a full transcript of Smart’s remarks.

Everything Kirby Smart said after Georgia loss

Opening statement:

“Yeah, tough one. We like to say, ‘The Dawgs don’t beat the Dawgs,’ but they found a way to beat themselves today. I’ll open by giving a lot of credit to Auburn. Their physicality showed. I thought they were physical at the line of scrimmage. Their quarterback is really hard to tackle. We knew that coming in. He did a tremendous job of yards after contact, getting out of sacks, keeping them in good, normal down and distances. We helped them. We gave them three turnovers and some really critical, undisciplined penalties. Like I say, humility is a week away. Auburn played better than us today, executed better than us today, didn’t turn the ball over, and hit the red-area plays. We had some really, really untimely, undisciplined, uncharacteristic penalties. I give them credit, but at the end of the day, we pick it up. Everything we want to do is in front of us. I know it’s a big deal to everybody else, but to me, it’s another game, and we have to turn around and get ready to go play again because it is a war in this league, week in and week out. Everybody can beat everybody.”

On what he said to Gunner Stockton after his fumble in the fourth quarter:

“I really didn’t get a chance to talk to him. We had to go out and stop them on defense. Saw him in the locker room, his head was up. I mean, we wouldn’t have been in the position we were in if it wasn’t for Gunner. We wouldn’t have been able to do some of the things we did if it wasn’t for Gunner. He was 6-of-12 on third down. That’s efficient against these guys. I’m really proud that he’s growing up and getting better. He had all the success last week, and so many people want to reach out and talk about it. It’s so tough. He did no difference in his preparation. He didn’t do anything different. They did a good job and took a lot of our run game away, and (that) puts a lot of pressure on him. I thought he did a good job keeping us in the game. Very unfortunate on the fumble. If there was anybody I’d pick to have the ball in their hands, it’d be him because he does a great job with his ball security.”

On Stockton’s two interceptions:

“The one they were in two-man, he stared the guy down too long and safety made a great play off the hash. That’s probably a checkdown or throw the middle read off a two-man, and (the) safety made a good play. And then the other one was, we had a boot naked out there. The guy was open. He missed him. He said it, he said he missed him and overthrew it a little bit. I think it was Ethan Barbour or somebody right there wide open. He needed to put it on his body and threw it over him a little bit and (Auburn linebacker Elijah Melendez) caught it.”

On what Stockton was dealing with when he left the game on the first drive:

“They checked him out and said he was good. He had a stinger in his shoulder which numbs your shoulder, but that happens a lot in football and you come back from that. They were checking him for concussion and things. They checked him out and brought him back in and said he was cleared.”

On if he felt the stinger had an impact on how Stockton played:

“No, I don’t think so. He’s had that before.”

On some of the defensive issues:

“We talked about it. Penalties was one. We literally just gave them third down, roughed the passer, don’t get off the field when we substitute on our sideline. Those were silly, silly penalties. Then they hit two plays. You have to make this guy throw the ball to beat you. They throw a trick pass, and you have two players there on it and they kind of collide and the guy makes a good play. Then the play on Demello (Jones), Demello’s in great coverage position. That happens. They made two plays to get 14 points. If you hold either one of those two field goals, then it’s a different ballgame. Give them credit. They are physical. Their quarterback’s a good runner. When you have a quarterback run game, man, it’s just really hard because he has an extra hat. They were running plays with a lead blocker and a back. We’re a good run defense. We have a really good run defense to stop people. They made it hard.”

On the impact of not having safety KJ Bolden today:

“I don’t know. I thought Ja’Marley stepped up and made some plays. He communicated well. He got tired in the game. We tried to play Ja’Marley (Riddle) and Zion (Branch) some. KJ has been really good for us back there. He’s a little bit of an eraser, but that doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, we’ve got to go play with the guys we’ve got.”

On facing adversity coming off Alabama win:

“Those guys in that locker room, they know. They know. I mean, we practiced good this week. I was really pleased with it, and the guys practiced hard. We knew it was gonna be a physical game, although the outside world didn’t think that. Auburn has a lot of pride, they got a lot of experience. And that quarterback has played in a ton of games. He’s a good football player. And when they don’t turn it over, and we turn it over three times, and hand you extra possessions on penalties, the Dawgs beat the Dawgs, man. And that’s no disrespect to Auburn, because I think they were really physical. They did a good job on the line of scrimmage.”

On why ‘the Dawgs beat the Dawgs’ today:

“Why? Yeah. I don’t have a good answer for that. I mean, I don’t know why we turned the ball over three times. That happens sometimes. We didn’t get the ball off them. And they protected the ball. Their quarterback has several fumbles and he was protecting the ball really well. The undisciplined penalty, I don’t think you can really control turnovers. Gunner’s gonna have that sometimes. But the undisciplined penalty is probably the most disappointing thing, because we talk a lot about it. We showed — on Friday night, we showed the roughing of passers that they were calling ... and said, ‘This is what you can’t do.’ It takes great restraint not to do it, but we didn’t have great restraint.”

On what the Auburn defense did:

“They played a lot of the same things. They stopped the run a little better. I felt like we had a really off-tempo, off-base, attacking, moving, hitting some explosives. We stalled out there for a couple drives, and they did control and win first-down runs better. We were in second-and-long a lot, and didn’t get the run game that maybe we had in some other games.”

On the biggest thing to work on in the off week:

“A lot. No. 1, we gotta get in better shape. No. 2, we’ve gotta get some guys healthy and back. We had about eight or nine guys that really didn’t practice this week, in terms of getting into the game, coming out of the last game. And we gotta improve, we can’t turn the ball over, we can’t have undisciplined penalties. But we’re really good in some areas. We got a good defense, we got a good offense, but we gotta get better. I need more players to play winning football. I need to be able to play more than five in O-lineman. I need to be able to play more people up front than we can count on and be dependable. Like, you played Anthony Lonon (Jr.) tonight on third down, I thought he was dependable. I gotta go watch the tape, see how he played. But we’re trying to play more guys, (because) I don’t know that we can make it through this grind without it. So we just need more guys that can play winning football.”

On the running back situation:

“Well, we were in a better situation than we were last week. To be honest with you, we basically went into the game with the exact same thinking Nate (Frazier) would play, and he did play. And so we were in a better situation than we were than the previous week. But we didn’t run the ball as good. They had a good run defense, now. We knew that going in. They were playing lots of snaps on defense because of their offense. And when their offense gets going and they got clicking and they get the quarterback run stuff going, it’s heavy-duty lifting to try and stop them.”

On what he wants to see from the team in response to the loss:

“No, I know that our team’s gonna come back and work. They’re gonna go grind. We have great leaders. This is where you come together as a team. This is actually where you get to do your coaching job. It’s easy when everything’s going good, when everybody starts to question everything. That’s where you step up as leaders. That’s where you step up as coaches. So it doesn’t shock me at all, guys, that we did not play our best. But it should not happen. And everybody wants to force that, say, well, it was (because) of this, it was (because) of that, (because) of their off week, (because) of Alabama. Hey, at the end of the day, we ain’t played our best game yet. And that’s what we’re in search of. That’s my job to try to get them to do it.”

On what he’s learned about this team to this point: