FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The narrative on Kendall Milton’s Georgia football career is paradoxical. Early on, the knock on the big running back from Fresno, California, was that he lacked toughness and was injury-prone. Now a senior and the Bulldogs’ second-leading rusher, Milton’s toughness might be considered his most defining trait.
Running backs coach Dell McGee will help you sort it out.
“He’s battled injuries freshman year, sophomore year, junior year and even this year,” McGee said of Milton. “Just to have the mental capacity to keep pushing speaks tremendously of his character and his drive. … He’s done a great job of getting himself back, and he’s played very well down the stretch for us. He’s almost healthy. He’s still wearing a knee brace, his hamstrings are taped up, so it’s not like he’s 100%. But he’s pushing through, and that’s the life of a running back in our league.”
Now holding a degree from Georgia, Milton still has NFL aspirations. While that might’ve seemed a foregone conclusion when he signed with the Bulldogs as a 5-star recruiting prospect in 2020, it’s less of a certainty after injuries forced Milton to miss 12 of 40 games and big chunks of several other games his first three seasons.
But Milton has managed to stay on the field a lot more this season. He missed only one game – Alabama-Birmingham in Week 4 – and is expected to get the start Saturday against FSU in the Orange Bowl (4 p.m., ESPN). He enters the game as the Bulldogs’ second-leading rusher (686 yards) and leading scorer (12 TDs).
“I feel like right now I’m just kind of having fun with it, being like a kid again and having fun with it,” Milton said. “I had one thing earlier in the year that I’ve been dealing with from the whole injury aspect. It’s hard to play your game when you have a lot of thoughts in the back of your mind about (getting hurt again). There’s a lot of second-guessing going on. Once I was able to eliminate those doubts, I was able to just play my game.”
Four years later, Milton is only now playing the way everyone expected when he came to Georgia as an early enrollee. A 6-foot-1, 220-pound athlete, he’s been able to run inside with power and outside with speed. He recorded a career-high 156 yards, including a 51-yard run, against Georgia Tech in the final game of the regular season and had 127 yards and two TDs two weeks earlier against Ole Miss.
Milton was averaging 11.25 yards per carry in the three games leading into the SEC Championship game. But Alabama was able to shut down the Bulldogs’ run game, and he finished with only 42 yards on 13 carries. Once again, though, he was Georgia’s leading scorer, with two TDs. Nine of his team-leading 12 have come in the past four games.
For some fans, that might seem like too little, too late. With 1,735 career yards and only four starts entering what likely will be his final game as a Bulldog, that’s far below the expectations that came from California with Milton.
But for him, he wouldn’t change a thing.
“It’s been amazing, just being able to embrace the Georgia culture and embrace the legacy that other players have left behind,” Milton said. “I still talked to James Cook and Kenny McIntosh. Sony (Michel) comes back all the time, Nick (Chubb), Todd (Gurley). Being part of a legacy like that is a blessing.”
Daniel Harris sticking with Dogs
It was widely reported this week that freshman cornerback Daniel Harris had entered the NCAA transfer portal. That was because Harris himself announced it on social media Sunday.
But coach Kirby Smart said the 6-2, 175-pound Miami native not only is no longer in the portal but maintains that he never was.
“He’s not in the portal,” Smart said. “Just because somebody posts that doesn’t mean they’re going to be in the portal. They have to go into the portal, which he’s not.”
That’s a good thing for the Bulldogs. They were down to four cornerbacks after junior Nyland Green and freshman AJ Harris left via the portal.
Harris’ presence drops the Georgia’s number of players in the portal to 19. One of those is place-kicker/kickoff specialist Jared Zirkel. But Smart doesn’t really count him either.
“He’s probably not going to go kick anywhere (next year),” Smart said of the fourth-year junior from Kerrville, Texas. “He just wanted to see if he would get any interest. … He said he wanted to stay and kick in the game, so we allowed him to do it.”
Searels ‘ornery’
Georgia offensive line coach Stacy Searels remains hospitalized in Athens with pneumonia and is not expected to join the Bulldogs for Saturday’s game. Smart provided an update Friday.
“Feel like he’s doing really well,” he said. “Stacy is moving around in the hospital now in Athens. I don’t think he’s going to make it down for the game. They don’t want to move him right now, but he is up and moving and recovered. His wife, Trish, said he’s ornery as hell. So she’s having to deal with him. But he’s got a wonderful wife and two daughters, and I know he’ll bounce back.”
Smart said the former All-SEC lineman from Auburn was feeling “little sick” before the Christmas break but didn’t feel too bad.
“I thought when we had three or four days off, he would bounce back,” Smart said. “Then when we got ready to come back to work the 25th, he was still struggling. (Executive associate athletic director/sports medicine) Ron (Courson) had him check in.”
Offensive quality-control analyst Manrey Saint-Amour is coaching the line in Searels’ absence.
Nostalgic coaches
Somewhat overlooked on Smart’s long coaching resume is the fact that he once coached at Florida State. It was a short stint. He spent two years there as a graduate assistant under the late Bobby Bowden in 2002-03.
“I was a defensive coordinator at Valdosta State and decided to go (to FSU) be a graduate assistant, which people would say was a step down. But to be in a room with Mickey Andrews, Odell Haggins, Joe Kines, Jody Allen, Kevin Steele, a lot of really good minds in college football, it helped shape me. To be sitting in a staff room with coach Bowden for two years getting to see how he ran the team and commanded the respect of the team was really instrumental in my upbringing as a coach.”
FSU is located only 45 minutes from Smart’s hometown of Bainbridge. Before that, Smart spent two years at Valdosta State as defensive coordinator. It was there that he first encountered Mike Norvell. Now FSU’s head coach, Norvell at that time was a wide receiver at Central Arkansas.
Later in Friday’s press conference, when Smart was asked about his experience at Valdosta State, he used the opportunity to needle Norvell.
Asked what was his favorite memory from his time with the Blazers, Smart deadpanned: “My favorite memory would be beating Central Arkansas.”
Said Norvell: “I knew you were going to bring that up.”
“Were you playing then?” Smart said, knowing full well Norvell was.
“Yep,” Norvell replied. “Good halftime adjustments there.”
Turns out that the Blazers trailed Central Arkansas 31-7 at halftime only to come back to win.
“That’s crazy, 31-7. I can’t believe we came back and won that game,” Smart said, grinning.
FSU addition
To date, most of the news on the Seminoles has been about who was leaving their roster. But there has been one significant addition since the ACC Championship game.
Darrell Jackson, a 6-5, 334-pound junior defensive lineman who transferred from Miami before the season, had his eligibility restored for the postseason. Jackson played at Maryland before the Hurricanes. He has played in 20 games and recorded 27 tackles and 4.5 sacks in 12 games in 2022.
“Unfortunately, at the beginning of the year was denied an opportunity to play this season due to the two-time transfer, which now apparently has changed,” Norvell said. “It’s a great example of, control the things that you can control. Darrell has brought a smile to his face throughout the course of the season. He’s worked his butt off to be in position. We knew once we got to the postseason that he would be eligible to play, and that’s been our focus.”
