Kirby Smart, Bulldogs discuss start of 2025 football season

UGA football head coach Kirby Smart and two players spoke to the media on Tuesday about Georgia’s fall 2025 football camp.

Smart touched on fall scrimmages, quarterback Gunner Stockton, position groups, and more. Junior wide receiver London Humphries and sophomore inside linebacker Justin Williams also fielded questions.

Below is a transcript of the comments that was provided by UGA:

Georgia Head Coach Kirby Smart

On his assessment of the fall scrimmages and where the team has improved looking ahead to Marshall…

“I felt that the scrimmage was hot, and it affected our performance as opposed to the first scrimmage. In the history of those scrimmages, it usually goes scrimmage one, we struggle, scrimmage two, we get better. This was more of a scrimmage one with 70 degrees. It was really fast. It was really competitive. It was a really good scrimmage one, and then, scrimmage two was similar to past scrimmage twos where we had some sloppiness, guys got tired, water in the shoes, just was hot. They did push through. They had a really good camp. We practiced Thursday, Friday really hard leading into Saturday, so we didn’t expect to have the highest speeds in terms of the guys running. That wasn’t the purpose. The purpose was to get game-like situations, tackle live. We achieved those purposes, and we came out pretty unscathed injury-wise which is big when you tackle. We still have a way to go. Didn’t have as much success defensively in the second scrimmage as we did in the first, but we had bright spots individually, probably on both sides of the ball.”

On what he expects to see from Gunner Stockton…

“Good decisions, good decisions. Make good decisions, continue to develop, understanding situational football. We’ve made football so complicated, some quarterbacks, I don’t think they know the down and distance. I don’t think they actually know, ‘Do I have another down after this play, or is this my last chance to get the first down?’ It’s just little things. Being a quarterback, understanding the game, understanding what the defense is doing. He’s grown so much in regards to that. ID in protections, ID in run game. Playing quarterback is like being a computer. It’s got a million things going on at once, and he’s gotten better and better at handling those things. That’s what I want to see him do when he gets the opportunity.” 

On where the receiver group is after two scrimmages…

“The receiver group does some really good things at times. It’s been hot at some practices which makes it tough catching situations when you’re in the wet world of sweat everywhere. It makes it really hard to be functional sometimes when it gets like that, but when we’re inside playing fast, more game speed type things, not the mental toughness stuff, they’ve done a really good job. We have some depth at those positions. We’re trying to put those guys in key positions on special teams, which in the last couple of years, I feel like we’ve had eight, nine guys at wide receiver that contribute and play special teams. This year, hoping that’s 10, 11, and that difference of two is a lot on special teams.” 

On Kris Jones moving to outside linebacker…

“He helps us because he has length. He has the ability to play on tackles. We multipurpose those guys. There’s not an outside linebacker that hadn’t been here that we don’t ask to stack, fall over the top. Play goes away. you become an inside backer, play to you. You have to be able to play on offensive tackles and set edges, and he’s able to do both those things. He’s grown a lot at that position. He continues to grow. He’s a kid that we want to be able to develop as both inside linebacker, outside linebacker. He does some packages on third down that allow him to play stack back and rush from standing up, things he’s done in the past. It really just helps our team. He’s got the ability to be versatile.” 

On the competition between the offensive and defensive lines throughout camp…

“I think any physical camp, training camp, those guys get to be closer than anybody else because they’re constantly on top of each other, hitting each other, play in, play out, challenging each other whether it’s pass rush or running the ball or conversion on pass, play action. They get after each other a lot. Both groups respect each other and go about it the right way. I think that’s the tone that each ‘O-line’ and ‘D-line’ coaches, those guys in those rooms, we have to protect each other in there, but we’ve also got to make each other better. That’s a fine line between how you play the game from a safety standpoint and a violence standpoint to getting better versus taking care of each other. Both groups have done a really good job to me in camp of challenging each other.” 

On what stood out to him about Gabe Harris Jr. during fall camp…

“What stood out as far as what he did fall camp? He did what he was supposed to do. He’s executing probably at a higher rate than he did this time last year. He didn’t go through spring practice, so we’ve had to balance what is the right number of reps to get him in shape and get him better but not wear him down as a 270-pound, 65-, 70-pound guy. He’s having to fill some big shoes that have played here in the past between Ty Ingram[Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins] and Mykel [Williams] and those guys. It’s a role that he’s serviced, and he’s done a nice job doing what we asked.” 

On his preparation for the season…

“We take this week and continue to work at us and get better for us. The staff has off-season work they’ve done on opponents as well as our opening opponents, but today, tomorrow, and really the rest of the week is focused on what did we need to improve on coming out of the scrimmage? What situations have we not hit? How do we get the bottom of our roster caught up to the top? How do we get healthy? Just what do we need defensively, offensively, and special teams? And some of those are set things we need that we have to check off? Other ones are we haven’t been quite as good at this. We need to improve it this camp. Then the first question was about penalties? It’s hit or miss. We’ve had days we’ve had more of this than that, and some days less of this than that. We do a penalty report every day. We go over it with the players. We coach them on that. We show them clips of past calls that would have been called, wouldn’t have been called in that same scenario. We have a long encyclopedia or library of clips and calls in games and try to show them ones similar to the ones they got so they can learn from them.”

On preparing fast-paced decisions during practice for the quarterback position…

“We simulate it in practice. That’s what we do. That’s why we practice, right? You simulate it for a quarterback. It’s not any different between practice and a game. We’re not hitting him. It’s one of those things that you get lots of reps at it, but there’s a decision that he has to make every play. There’s not a play that he takes that he doesn’t have to at least decide something because that’s what offense has evolved to. You don’t want to be in a bad play, so the best way to avoid a bad play is to give people options. The more options you give them, the tougher it is. The more tough it is, the more you get second-guessed. That’s what we do.”

On what he has seen from wide receiver London Humphreys during camp…

“London’s been great. He’s a high-quality special teams player. He has become very reliable and made some huge plays for us last year in the Clemson, the Tennessee game. He does a lot of really good things for us, and he has consistency in performance. He has dependability. He’s got fire, passion, and energy. We’re very fortunate to have someone of his character, quality, speed, athleticism. We’ve got a lot of expectations for London.”

On running backs Josh McCray and Roderick Robinson II’s physicality…

“A running back is a running back. It’s your guys’ job to say the size of the back. Derrick Henry’s a big back. He’s big, but he bounces out a lot and out runs people to the edge. That’s the way he was when he played. I’ve seen really small guys like Daijun [Edwards] get inside, really hard yards and be 190 pounds. I don’t try to put guys in categories. Let them be who they are. If you’re going to be a big back and not be super elusive, then you better be physical and run that way. The identity of the back is based on the back, and I do not think that proves itself out except for in scrimmages and games when things are tackle.”

On talks of the College Football Playoffs expansion and the importance of the league championship games…

“I’m probably, like most people in the majority of, I would love to be able to expand the playoffs if it’s done the right way in terms of giving more teams the opportunity. I think that’s what fan bases want. People are not excited about a mid-tier bowl game at some of these programs they’re at. I think those bowl games are great experiences. I played in them. I’ve coached in them. I love them. That’s an opportunity, but the more teams you give an opportunity to decide things on the field, like you do, whether it’s college basketball, high school football or old one-double-A football back when they had the playoff, you’re going to get things decided on the grass. So, yeah, I’d be for that. Then you say, ‘Well, what about the championship games? I love the championship games. Can you have your cake and eat it, too? Can you move the season up, start it, get it done?’ If you can’t and you can only have one of those two, I don’t know which one I would pick because it would probably depend on the format. “

On inside linebacker Justin Williams’ growth during his time with the program…

“Probably physically. He came in very intelligent mentally, very instinctive, very bright-eyed, and loves football. He’s got every part of the fire, passion and energy we want. He came in a little bit lighter, and he’s gotten a little bit heavier. He’s able to take on things, and he understands the defense better. He’s improving as a tackler. It’s one of the areas that he really targets at getting better at, and he knows he has to work on that to be an effective player. I’m very pleased with where he is. I was very pleased with where he was last year in terms of coming in and doing what he needed to do.”

On the importance of the ‘middle eight’ portion of a game…

“Since I came to Georgia, Mel Tucker was on our staff, we talked about it. It was a big NFL thing at that time. I don’t think we had the two-minute warning per se. Everything was two-minute, it just wasn’t a two-minute warning. We’ve kept a stat since we’ve been here every year, and we show it every Monday, who won the middle eight. It’s not any more important now than it was then. We talked about it for a long time. We’ve won it in a lot of games, and we’ve lost it in some games. It’s crazy, the statistics. One year, everybody talks about turnovers. Well, that’s the greatest indicator of who wins. The next year, it’s explosive plays. That’s the greatest indicator of what determines who wins games is who has more explosive plays. Both of those are huge indicators. Then, there’s the belief that the middle eight is the greatest indicator of who wins games, and statistically, you could go year to year, and it’s just very thin margins between the difference in who wins games over those three factors. So, middle eight, you could say it’s just as critical as those. You’re trying to double possess some people. That’s why a lot of people defer in the first half to get a double possession. There’s a lot of strategy in it. There’s a lot more people going for it on first down closer to half to keep somebody from getting an extra possession. We look at it. We study it. We try to attack it the right way. We, historically, have been really good at that, and probably, the worse we’ve ever been at it was the Notre Dame game. We’ve never been outscored that much in that period without touching the ball.”

On whether emphasis of effort has had an impact on this year’s fall camp…

“Not really. The temperature was the biggest difference in this camp. The first, I don’t know exactly how many practices, I would say nine, ten, or eleven, it was uniquely cool then back to normal. That’s been a different thing about the camp. There hasn’t been a huge difference in terms of what we do.”

On his evaluation of defensive backs Daniel Harris and Ellis Robinson…

“I think both players have got tremendously better. I think Donte’s [Williams] done a really good job with all the corners. Both those guys and Demello [Jones] have gotten better, made more plays and tackled well. Dom [Kelley], Jontae [Gilbert] as young players, both getting better. Daylen [Everette] has probably a little bit of a lightened rep load in terms of multiple positions, learning different things, but still playing. He didn’t go through spring, so it made it where he had to get back into challenging and competing for things. Those guys have done a tremendous job, and both of the two you mentioned have gotten better throughout the year.”

On the importance of tackling…

“We’re not the tackling team we need to be. I can tell you that from the last scrimmage. The only way to get better at it is practice it. So, what do we do? We practice it, but we try to practice it in safe ways. When you tackle to the ground 11-on-11, statistics indicate it’s your highest injury rate. Every coach in the country is torn between possibly losing a starter versus missing tackles in opening games. We do the best job we can to simulate it. Our defensive staff spends countless hours on leverage, pursuit, tackling, but nobody’s perfect at it.”

On the punter position…

“I thought Drew [Miller] had his best scrimmage since being here. His last scrimmage, he hit really good hang times, distances, and field zones. I think it was five or six in his field zones. Hit some really good pooches. Brett [Thorson] is kicking. He did not kick in the scrimmage. He kicked at the scrimmage just not live in the rush periods. He’s improving. He’s getting better. I don’t know if we would say he’s 100% yet. I can’t answer the question whether he’s going to go in the first game or not. We’re going to see where he is, see how he’s doing where he and Drew compete. Drew’s punting really well. At least in the second scrimmage, he punted better than the first.”

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The Georgia Bulldogs are set to open the 2025 season at home against the Marshall Thundering Herd on Saturday, Aug. 30. The game will be televised live by ESPN at 3:30pm ET (Buy Tickets).

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