Heartbreaking: Fans Stunned As Kirby Smart Georgia bulldogs Head Coach Announces His Resignation and Departure…see..more…

Heartbreaking: Fans Stunned As Kirby Smart Georgia bulldogs Head Coach Announces His Resignation and Departure…see..more…Opening Statement…

“Practice nine in the books. I didn’t think it was the best of our nine practices. It was our first scrimmage, our first chance to tackle live, so you always have to be careful how you assess your team when you tackle live for the first time. In my experiences as a coach, it’s not pretty. Today was not pretty from a tackling standpoint. Offense was ahead of the defense, which is probably to be expected. I’m a little disappointed in the energy, enthusiasm and leadership from the defense. There wasn’t a lot of support there. When things go bad, there wasn’t a guy to pick them up and grab the bull by the horns, we didn’t have the right direction. But I felt the kids played hard, especially early in the scrimmage, we had guys really play hard, physical, came out with the right mindset. Like I said, practice nine in a row, with one day off between the nine. So, they have gotten after it. They’ll get a day off tomorrow and get back to work Monday. We have a long way to go to get where we need to go, and that has nothing to do with Oregon, that has nothing to do with anybody we play, that has to do with the Georgia Bulldogs. We have to look ourselves in the eyes, as coaches, and figure out what guys we have to do the best and get them to go execute that at the best. We have good football players on this team, we didn’t necessarily play with the right energy and enthusiasm across the board as a whole today. There was some good individual performances, but all in all, I think we have to have a better scrimmage next Saturday.”

On the young running backs…

“I think anytime you talk about being able to help a team, it’s probably easiest at a skill position, at an early age. When you look at the history here, we have had freshman wideouts lead our teams a lot of times in receiving. And at running backs, we’ve had more of an old head, like there’s always two old guys. It’s not a lack of running backs being able to, we’ve had more experiences backs. These two young guys are different. They’re a little heavier, thicker, run behind their pads and they probably don’t show up best until days like today, because they’re a little harder to tackle. You don’t see that in practice every day. I thought both those guys [Andrew Jones and Branson Robinson] had good scrimmages. Not great, they’re not where they need to be, not where they need to be in pass-pro, but they are hard to tackle and they’re thick. I’m very pleased with where they are. Neither one going through the spring hurts their development in terms of number one, special teams, and number two, picking up pressures. We need them to come along, because durability is always an issue at back. I don’t think I’ve been through a year here where we didn’t have one of our top three backs miss a game. If that happens, one of those guys better be ready to step up and play.”

On the QBs…

“I would reserve judgement until I really get to watch the tape. I thought statistically, Stetson (Bennett) had a really good day. You don’t know everything when you’re standing behind them, you don’t get to judge what was going on. Watching them, I thought the offensive line did a pretty good job in the pocket. We didn’t get a lot of pressure defensively, which allowed the quarterbacks to have a pretty good day. I’m very pleased with where the quarterbacks are, in terms of Brock (Vandagriff), Carson (Beck) and even Gunner (Stockton). I thought Gunner made some really good plays today. You don’t get to see as much of Gunner, because we do fours in our practice, he gets reps, which is good, but he gets primary reps in the scrimmage, when he gets to go out there with the threes and things. And I thought he did a good job. I have a lot of confidence in all of our quarterbacks. Coach Monken does a great job with those guys. They understand what they need to do and how to get the ball to their weapons.”