Georgia football head coach Kirby Smart and two players, running back Dwight Phillips Jr. and sophomore defensive back Ellis Robinson IV, spoke with the media on Tuesday about their upcoming game against the Austin Peay Governors.
Fourth-ranked Georgia and Austin Peay will square off on Saturday, Sept. 6 at Dooley Field at Sanford Stadium in Athens, Ga. The game will be a streaming-only event on SEC Network+ and ESPN+ and it will kickoff at 3:30pm ET (Buy Tickets).
Clay Matvick will call the play-by-play, Chase Daniel will provide analysis, while Madison Fitzpatrick will report from the sidelines.
Below is a transcript of the Austin Peay press conference which was provided by UGA.
Head Coach Kirby Smart
Opening Statement
“I’m excited to get ready for Austin Peay. Another home game. Another home opportunity for our team. A lot of respect for this team. They played a good Middle Tennessee team and jumped on and played really well. Done a great job with their program. They had some injuries last year that probably hurt them, but they’ve got a good group coming in to play us. Our guys had a really good practice yesterday. I thought we had good energy, enthusiasm, made some corrections, and then worked on us and worked a little bit on Austin Peay as well. Looking forward to this week.”
On his evaluation of the offensive line against Marshall…
“I thought they did some good things in the run game. We had some play-action pass mishaps between them, the backs, and coordinating some calls. Pleased with the guys that stepped up and played. We were able to play a lot of players in the offensive line, both out of necessity, but also out of getting a lead. It was really good to get a lot of experience for guys to go in and play the game. Didn’t think we had great stamina in terms of being able to play long drives and stay fresh. It was a little bit warm out there, but it’s predicted to be even warmer this week, so we have to do a really good job of being the best conditioned team. That’s important.”
On correlation between going for it on fourth downs and more mobile quarterbacks…
“I don’t know if there’s a correlation between offenses going for it more often because of mobile quarterbacks. I don’t see the correlation there. I think people are going for it more on fourth down based on analytics. I think it’s a matter of who the quarterback is. There’s been athletic quarterbacks for a long time in college football. What does the link between parity and mobile quarterbacks have? I don’t know what you’re suggesting when you say there’s more parity, so there’s more athletic quarterbacks… If that was the case, then you’d think there’s a lot more scoring, right? I agree with you. More people are going for it on fourth. It didn’t seem like the scoring was up, at least in week one. If anything, it was down. Maybe those going for it didn’t work. Maybe they’re not happening at the same success rate. I think defenses are going to adapt to the analytics, and people are going for it more often. They’re playing you differently in those situations than maybe they have in the past, but there probably is more parity. There’s definitely people going for it more often.”
On his evaluation of defensive backs Daniel Harris and Ellis Robinson IV…
“We talked a long time about process over results, and that’s probably the message that goes to every position group, not them, not directed at them. Did they do the process right? Were their eyes in the right spot? Did they play with the correct leverage? Did they play the right technique? There were a lot of those things we didn’t do right. The results were fine, but they knew the process right. We’re really trying to hone in on not results. It doesn’t matter how it came out. It matters, ‘Did you go about it the right way?’ We didn’t do that a lot in a lot of positions in terms of process.”
On the status of defensive back Daylen Everette and offensive linemen Juan Gaston and Earnest Greene, III…
“Daylen Everette is dealing with an ankle injury and seems to be doing well. He was able to run and do some things yesterday. Should be able to crank it back up today and do more. Juan and EG [Earnest Greene, III], we are hopefully going to get both those guys back this week, but only time will tell.”
On the development of Ellis Robinson IV…
“He’s improved his stamina, first and foremost. He can finish practices and get through practice and keep up. The pace of the practice is really high, so his ability to maintain that, compete in the realm of receivers, play after play, and play in fastball circumstances, he’s done a good job doing that. He’s always been very talented at covering people. There’s so much more that goes into playing defensive back, and playing corners specifically, than just being able to cover people in terms of zones, checks, eyes, motions, adjustments. He has bought into that. He’s said, ‘You know what, that’s important. That’s what’s keeping me off the field and I want to work on that.’ His communication, his understanding of the defense has been really good. Tackling and physicality is always important at corner and he’s not a guy that’s afraid of it. He has to play big on blocks a lot of times, but he’s not afraid of contact.”
On what stands out about Austin Peay’s defense…
“Twitchy, quick, disruptive, keep you off balance. Their defensive coordinator was at Tennessee Tech last year and does a great job. They have guys that run to the ball really well, disruptive inside. They understand their job and their gap. It’s not as simple as just walking out there and saying, ‘You’ve got bigger and supposedly better players than these guys.’ Just go run all over them. It’s not that simple. These guys are disruptive in what they do. They’re tied together. They play really hard, and effort counts twice. If you play with great effort, you can see it’s worth double the value.”
On two-dimensional quarterbacks and whether he sees more mobile quarterbacks in high school recruiting…
“I think there are degrees, right? Think of the greatest running quarterback you’ve ever seen on a scale of one to ten. If that greatest running quarterback is a ten, where is he on the throwing element? The ability to be a great thrower and a pocket passer. Those two are not mutually exclusive, but for the most part, when you’re good at one, you don’t get a lot of work at the other because you spend some of your time doing both. I think looking across high school football, our game feeds up from them just like we feed up to the pros. The pro teams we’ve talked to in the offseason, our game’s creeping up to them. The high school game creeps up to us. What do you see across high school football? You see more and more athletic QBs, guys that you’d always say 20 years ago, 30 years ago, some of those guys might have been tailbacks. They are not because they should have been, but that’s just what football was. Now, they’ve got the ball in their hand every play, and they can make throws, not make throws. Josh Allen or any of these guys you can mention can also take off and run and hurt you and beat you in the pocket. I think we’re seeing that evolution. I think it’s just more what high school is feeding to us, in terms of the guys that are available and the guys that play well. ”
On the progression of running back Dwight Phillips Jr….
“What his progression has been is weight room, develop, grow, protect the ball, get bigger and stronger. He needed the weight room really badly when he got here. He had never really been in a hardcore weightlifting offseason program. If you remember, he didn’t get the spring before his freshman year. His first true developmental offseason being to be here and lift and get after it, and he did those things. He still is a work in progress. He knows he has areas he has to improve on, but that’s the great thing about Dwight. He knows that he’s not afraid of the hard work. He embraces what his weaknesses are, and he’s trying to get better at those.”
On his evaluation of the safety room against Marshall…
“Those five guys that played back there did a nice job. Continue to improve. They didn’t get tested probably as much as they get tested in practice. Like I told you guys, there’s a bunch of opportunities to get better, and one of them is today. Those guys will go out and compete and continue to develop and get better by the drills we put them in and the competition they have. Saturday, they did what they were supposed to do.”
On the status of running back Roderick Robinson II…
“He’s got a little bit of a hamstring, and he was going to try to go Saturday if he could. One of those deals that we didn’t want to press it once we got out ahead. He’s continuing to rehab, get better, come off of this. He had an ankle surgery, as well, and continues to get comfortable with that.”
On the progression of quarterback Ryan Puglisi…
“That’s what we’ve seen really in camp practices with him. He does a nice job in the pocket. He’s got really good arm talent. He understands the game. He’s taking more and more reps. I think the plays that we called for him in there, he’s very comfortable with and if he does a good job, we’ll give him the opportunity. We’re going to continue to develop him, and develop Ryan Montgomery, as well as the other two guys.”
On the importance of creating turnovers on defense…
“It’s critical and really important. Just haven’t found a way to be dominant at it. I don’t know whether it affects us, whether teams protect the ball better against this, take less chances, or we just don’t get them out. It’s not something we don’t reach sell, attack, and try to do. Historically, at least since we’ve been here, we have not been elite at that. It’s one of the things that popped out at us the other day, defensively, that we didn’t have as many opportunities in 55 plays, but we didn’t take advantage of the ones we had.”
On where quarterback Gunner Stockton needs to develop…
“Next step is to continue to gain confidence in trusting the offensive line for play action, shot plays, two-minute, four and a half. I thought he did an excellent job of improvising when things weren’t there, or there was a breakdown. That was probably the best thing he did, was take care of the ball, protect the ball, and make plays with his legs. He continues to get better. The next step is play with a little more confidence. I think each time you start playing games, you lose some of that anxiety.”
On how the coaches determine when a player has ‘fire, passion and energy’…
“No analytical system for that. It’s an inherent trait that some people have. Some people don’t, but if they don’t have it. We try to expose it and bring it out and highlight it when they do. There’s no statistical trait that we have to measure that.”
On how the running back room opens up the offense…
“I look at all our backs. It’s really good. You mentioned Nate [Frazier] and Dwight, but I mean, Chauncey [Bowens] had a great camp. Bo [Walker] didn’t get a chance to do a lot the other day, but Bo had a good camp. He’s practiced really hard. He’s been very broad; he’s been there when he’s healthy. Then, we’re hoping to get Josh [McCray] involved. Depth at back is something you need. Those guys have to contribute on special teams. If we’re able to be successful, and it’s not on the backs, your running game is not completely dependent on your backs. It’s completely dependent on a lot of other things. If we continue to do that, it’ll definitely complement the passing game.”
On ‘incentivizing’ fans to turn out for home games…
“Better incentivize? I don’t know that you’d incentivize the turnout. I don’t really believe in incentivizing things. I think it has to be a core DNA trait of belief. When you sell things, it’s, ‘I will do this if you do this,’ and incentivize. I don’t think that’s great motivation. I think it’s intrinsic in who you are. I think people should love to be at a Georgia home game because there’s only so many of them, limited opportunities. It’s the same thing about our players. We don’t incentivize them to run to the ball by saying, we’ll go up your NIL if you run to the ball. You got to do it because you want to be great. You got to do it because you want to be different, and if our fans want to be great and different, then they’ll do it.”
On where he wants to see the team improve after the win over Marshall…
“A lot of areas, as far as I talked about it in the beginning, process over results. The process of playing your position efficiently and effectively, regardless of who is across from you, is what I want to see. That improvement, the process over the result.”
On the importance of the fourth quarter and the importance of shutting a team out…
“I learned a long time ago, I’ve never been into stats here. We don’t do that. We play more players when the game’s at hand than probably anybody in the country. I don’t know. I think of those opportunities as development opportunities. It’s why we’ve been really one of the better programs at turning players over in terms of what we’ve put into the draft and lost early outs. Having someone ready to go. I think that’s number one. We develop in the group. Number two, we practice our guys more as twos and threes. Number three, when they get an opportunity to go to the game, which we didn’t last year, but in the years past we have, we put them in the game. If it costs us a shutout, then that’s a great lesson learned. I’d much rather that kid cost me a shutout in that game than he cost me a touchdown a year later in an SEC game, and we’ve just erred on that side.”
On the status of punter Brett Thorson…
“That’s what we talked about last time. He’s got to be cleared by the medical staff. He’s close to being able to do that, but that’s a measure, it’s hard measurement. I hope he doesn’t have to make a tackle, that’s the hope, but he does have to be cleared.”
On the status of offensive lineman Micah Morris and defensive back Kyron Jones…
“I’m not sure of the timeline on that. He [Morris] has the option of a hand cast with fingers out that he was not as comfortable with, that he may be moving to. Kyron’s dealing with the same thing, but I can’t answer that. I don’t know when he’s going to be able to be out of the complete club.”
On further details on the injuries to offensive linemen Juan Gaston and Earnest Greene, III…
“Yeah, both lower extremity injuries.”