Kirby Smart, Bulldogs preview 2026 Ole Miss football game

Georgia football head coach Kirby Smart and two players, junior running back Nate Frazier and junior outside linebacker Quintavius Johnson, spoke with the media on Monday about their upcoming road game against the Ole Miss Rebels.

No. 3 Georgia (7-1, 5-1 SEC) and No. 12 Ole Miss (6-2, 4-2 SEC) will square off on Saturday, November 7 at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in Oxford, Ga. The game will be televised by ABC at 7:30pm ET / 6:30pm ET (Buy Tickets).

Chris Fowler will call the play-by-play, Kirk Herbstreit will provide analysis, while Holly Rowe will report from the sidelines.

Below is a transcript of the Ole Miss press conference which was provided by UGA.

Head Coach Kirby Smart

Opening Statement…
“First, we have a double-header in Stegeman, with our women’s basketball team playing West Georgia at 5 PM, and then the men are playing North Carolina Central at 7:30. It’s a great opportunity to go out and see the Dawgs play and watch both those programs as they get started in their season. I know I’m excited to watch both of them this season. For us, it’s on to Ole Miss, a really good football team. Pete [Golding] has done a tremendous job since taking over. Obviously, we know the two games last year with them were both really hard-fought battles, hard games, a lot of ebb-and-flow in both games. They’ve done a tremendous job this year. They probably have the best quarterback in the country who plays at a high level. He is extremely hard to defend and a great player. I have a lot of respect for their staff. I know a lot of those guys and the team, the way their team competes and plays. They’re playing really well right now. At home, they’ve been exceptionally well. Our guys will be excited for the challenge. Another opportunity. Another week in the SEC, as it always is. It’ll be a great atmosphere.”

On what has contributed to the increase of sacks this season…
“We have inside linebackers that are good blitzers. That’s helped with that. Chris Cole accounts for some of that. He does a little bit of everything, edge and inside. I think scheme-wise, [Glenn] Schumann does a good job of mixing it up. It’s a collective effort. You don’t get a sack because of you. You get a sack because of the pocket push on one side or the other or scramble or flush. Just different ways to create pressure and confusion for quarterbacks. We’ve been better at that this year, and that’s helped us in terms of affecting the quarterback.”

On what is the program’s biggest challenge at this point in the season…
“Staying healthy. There are lots of challenges. Challenge is to go on the road and play in an atmosphere that’s extremely hard to play in, but that’s this week which is my single focus. If you talk about our greatest challenge the rest of the season, it’s can we do it better than whoever does it? They do it. That’s an objective for us every day to go out and do it better than other teams. I do think that our teams have gotten better throughout the year, historically, and that’s the goal again. Do we get a cumulative effect of what we’ve been doing? Do you hit a peak and then start going down? I don’t know. I certainly hope that we’re on the ascent.”

 On defending against QB Trinidad Chambliss…
“How long do you have? We could talk for an hour about it, but it’s not even that. I wrote down, so I watched every game, wow plays. It’s not the wow plays. The wow plays are what you guys love and what America loves. He had some wow plays against us last year, really, in both games, but especially the second. It’s the down-in, down-out decision making that he’s really elite at. The accuracy that he’s elite at, the release, the decision. His pinpointing. He has an anticipation of windows that’s probably unmatched. I don’t know if that was God-given or the fact that he played a lot of football before he got to Ole Miss. He has played a lot of football and experience helps. You throw all that in, and you have a tremendous athlete. He goes forwards, backwards as fast as he goes sideways. He can back up and go for it. He’s just a great athlete that is a great quarterback.”

On pairing back practices to accommodate roster updates and injuries…
“First thing about that question I have is, the more I think about it and the more it came out, my initial thought when that question came up from Chris Low was, we have less people than we’ve ever had, so we have less people to practice with. That was a major concern of the coaches from the get-go, that the settlement decided or the people who were involved in the settlement decided the number was 105. We’re not at 105 right now, so I don’t want to be complaining. We have more than that because we have these designated student-athletes, but we will eventually all have 105. I think the amount of work you do gets poured on less people, and it can cause injuries to go up. My wish would be if a kid’s at your school and he’s going to your school and he wants to play football, why should he not be able to? Why should he not be afforded that opportunity? Hence the word, “walk-on,” because everybody’s talked about 105 scholarship players is plenty. It’s great, but it’s not what we’re used to having, and we’re playing more games, longer season. I think that you should have the opportunity to have kids that are there and at your university to help you.”

On managing player motivation…
“You worry about the motivation. It’s different now. I think it’s awesome the players are getting paid. I wish they got paid when I played because then I maybe had to get a $5,000 job in the summer trying to work. That is none of my concern. It is more long-term effect or earning power. What is the value of a dollar? Do I actually know how hard it is to go out in the real world and say, ‘Hey, you have to go work for $60,000, $70,000?’ That outlook can get tough on guys when they get through playing, but the earning power they have while they’re here, more power to them. I think the intrinsic motivation to still be a good player, even though you’re making money, is just that. It boils down to the individual player, and that still is an art of recruiting and decision-making. Are you recruiting the right kind of kids that will not be affected by that? We used to deal with that all the time when I was at Alabama. Every NFL scout would come in and say, ‘Well, is him being a first-round pick or a second-round pick going to change him?’. That’s your job to decide that, not mine. Now it’s our job to decide it as coaches. You have to get the right kind of people in your program that are motivated to win for the team, the culture of the program, and the brand more than just themselves.”

On RB Dwight Phillips, Jr…
“He’s fine. Dwight’s fine, I think he’s more tired than hurt.”

On playing a night game on the road…
“There’s nothing I can do about it. It’s not a decision I get to make. A lot of things I would want fixed or corrected in our league before that. That’s not a priority. I think we play on the road at night because we’ve been a highly ranked team all those years. You say, ‘Okay, well, why haven’t you played at home at night?’ Well, we haven’t had as many premier matchups.

Let’s be honest, we never play Florida at home. That’s one of our premier matchups that lands on 3:30 all the time. We haven’t had the home opportunities since, whether it be Notre Dame, whether it be Alabama last year, where we’ve had some matchups and opportunities for those. The discrepancy is what it is. I don’t speculate on it. I don’t really get into the conspiracy theories everybody else does. I worry about playing the games.”

On roster management and retaining a squad…
“We’ve dealt with it more in past years than we did this year. This year, there’s not as much room to wiggle. Things are more stretched than have ever been. We’ll deal with it when the time comes. I do think the off week is a good time for, when you say roster management, the future projections and what does it look like. That’s a staff thing, not something where you go to the kids. We meet with the freshmen periodically to make sure we check in with them, see if they’re doing okay and to explain that everyone is in a different spot right now. Zykie Helton’s is different from a kid who isn’t playing. We want to get retention out of those guys. No, I’m not meeting with players or going over about things in the future because I owe this team everything I’ve got, and they owe each other everything they’ve got. That doesn’t mean players aren’t being tampered with or kids aren’t thinking about it. Absolutely. Parents and kids, they think about the next move before they get this move. It’s always on their minds, and that creates doubt sometimes. Our job is to be where your feet are, keep getting better, and there is a season for that”.

On Chambliss’ in-game decision-making process…
“I don’t know if I can answer. Pre-snap is post-snap. You have to process what’s going on in terms of looks both ways. I can’t get inside his head and say what he’s doing pre-snap, post-snap. He’s elite at both, in my opinion. He surveys the field. He knows what he’s going to do. He’s been in this offense long enough that he knows what he’s basing his decisions on, and then after the play’s snapped, he goes through his progressions and does a great job. He knows how to navigate a pocket. I think his pocket presence people don’t give him enough credit for it. This guy’s not just like a take-off-and-run guy. He steps up in the pocket. He goes through the pocket. He’s made some of his best ‘wow’ plays working through the pocket.”

On ILB Chris Cole taking his game to a higher level this season…
“His intelligence first. This guy’s really intelligent. He is very purpose driven. He’s not a silly kid that wants to go around. He loves football. He’s very smart. He’s uber talented because he’s been blessed with length and height and speed. He’s got all these attributes, but he’s smart. He understands football. He’s well coached. He listens. He’s different than some of these linebackers we’ve had. He’s different from Jalon [Walker]. He’s different from Roquan [Smith]. He’s different from Quay [Walker]. He’s different from Nakobe [Dean]. He’s different from all those guys, but he’s very good, a very good different.”

On planning for Ole Miss’ strength in the red zone…
“You have to play well in the red zone. A lot of that has to do with the quarterback extending plays and running the game. The quarterback run game in the red area really shows up with every team. He’s a tremendous decision maker in terms of what he wants to do with the ball. There’s two, three plays in the red area this year that you would say, ‘He’s never even supposed to pull that ball.’ He does it and makes huge plays. You’re not doing that against the sisters of the poor. He’s doing that against SEC teams. That makes him hard to defend in the red area. They got really good skill players, and he’s got really good touch and accuracy to make throws. All those things combined to be a good red zone player. It’s hard to say, ‘What do you do in the red zone?’ You have to play well. You have to play disciplined football, and you have to make it hard to run it in on. That’s what most people that are good in the red zone can do.”

On making Chambliss uncomfortable…
“You have to be successful at a lot of things. You have to be able to pitch and catch, not just do one thing. There’s nothing we’re going to do that he hadn’t seen. You’re not tricking the guy. I think that’s what people get infatuated with, is, ‘How can I trick him and do that?’ You can’t do that. You have to go play good sound football. You have tackle the man that catches it. No yard after catch. You have to create some turnover. You have to bat some balls. You have to make plays and get off the field when you have a chance on third down. There’s not a perfect remedy. If there was, somebody would have done it.”

On DB Ellis Robinson IV…
“He looks good. Hopefully, he’ll be good to go. We’ll find out more today.”

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