We’re getting ever so close to the clash between No. 1 Georgia and No. 4 Ohio State in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, one of the College Football Playoff semifinals, on Saturday night.
Both teams are in Atlanta and have gone through onsite prep work as they put the finishing touches on game plans and practices.
It’s a matchup many expected, midway through the season, to see in the national championship game. It is going to take place one game sooner than anticipated after Ohio State was upended by Michigan in the last game of the regular season.
It has been apparent Georgia head coach Kirby Smart has a lot of respect for the Ohio State program, coaches and players based on what we’ve seen and heard. He continued that theme in his first press conference on Monday.
Here’s everything Smart said about the Buckeyes and beyond after looking at more film and really diving into things as he stepped to the podium as his team continued to get his team ready for the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl.
Opening remarks
MATT GARVEY: Thanks for joining us, Coach. If you would, just give us a quick opening statement on how bowl preparations have gone so far.
KIRBY SMART: Our guys have been in good spirits, getting after it. Proud of the way they worked. Proud of the way all of them came back locked in and ready to go from a travel break they had and all of them back. They did a great job getting back. They’ve been awesome.
So we’re getting ready now to head over to Atlanta.
On the availability of two key players for Georgia
KIRBY SMART: We’re excited to get those guys hopefully back, and we’ll see how they do this week.
On what he saw with the two transfers Georgia signed last week
KIRBY SMART: We knew about those kids coming out of high school, I think a lot of them. They performed at a high level in our conference, and I think they’ll challenge and compete with the rest of our roster and be competitive wideouts, which is important in this conference.
On what type of defensive alignment he thinks he'll get from Ohio State after the Buckeyes loaded up against the run vs. Michigan
KIRBY SMART: I expect to get a little bit of all of them.
Certainly it will determine what personnel we put in, and how we use our guys. We’ve got three, four really good tight ends, and we hope to be able to use those guys in this game.
A lot of that’s going to boil down to how we play and what we do and try to dictate to them. They’ve got a really good defensive football team. They’re very physical. They’ve done a great job dating back to the Oklahoma State days. Very good, aggressive, multiple package on defense, where they give you multiple looks and things.
On what he remembers about C.J. Stroud when recruiting him knowing that Georgia was his second choice coming out of California
KIRBY SMART: I loved his mom, man. What a tremendous woman. She’s awesome. Went all the way across the country and got to sit in his home and visit with him.
He has a really good disposition about him. He’s not real high, not real low, not real emotional. He keeps a really level head, which to me at quarterback is one of the No. 1 qualities you can find.
He came on a visit to our place as well and got to see him at the Heisman. He’s just matured. To see him grow, he’s always had tremendous arm strength and touch and velocity on throws, but he’s become a complete
quarterback there in their system.
On how he looks at the bowl activities and whether it's a distraction or just part of bowl week
KIRBY SMART: I think it’s part of the bowl process, and the merger is unique between CFP, the playoff games and the bowl games, because the bowl games have their traditions, have their beliefs, have their sponsors, and
those traditions are very important to the bowls.
I mean, any of the playoff games that you can play in, even though they’re rotating, they have bowl traditions. I went to those bowl games as a coach or a player a long time ago, and they started those traditions. So those traditions are important to them. The playoff and the meaning of the game is important to them, too, but you have to balance the two.
You’ve got to make sure your players understand this is my off time and they have activities that are scheduled, but we also are here for a purpose, and it’s a business trip. It’s not just a joy trip. The balance of those two is important.
I look forward to the activities. We had them last year at the Orange Bowl. It’s important to get your mind off of the game at times, and those activities allow you to do that.
On how important it is to have two quality tight ends and the pressure it puts on defenses
KIRBY SMART: I think it’s just different. So much of college football now is 11 personnel, so when you play 12, it’s always different from a defensive perspective because you know what sets they can make. They can be a little
more multiple, but you probably lose some speed when you do that.
That’s probably what makes ours different is we don’t sacrifice a lot of speed from 11 to 12, like some teams might. To stretch the field vertically and horizontally, you need speed. So 12’s been a good personnel for us this
year.
We’re excited about 13. We’ve got some guys that have been out. Through this bowl process it’s given us a chance to work those guys.
So it’s a good opportunity to get your best football players
on the field, and I think you have to do that.
On defensive back Chris Smith's growth
KIRBY SMART: Really proud of Chris and his growth. He came in as really an astute, tough, competitive, fiery, just competitor, and he’s grown into this incredible leader, I think through his passion and his competitiveness.
He hates losing at anything. He dislikes underperforming. He’s one of those guys, when you give stats in practice, he calls you out and thinks they’re wrong. So he’s really prideful about things.
But he’s a product of our development, and he came in and has really blossomed into a really good safety prospect at the next level. Just proud of the work he’s done. He’s a great example of, if you stick around and grow in this system, you can be really good.
A lot of his buddies and friends left and moved on, and he stuck around and it’s proven to be worth it, just like Devonte and Jordan did.
On the key to maintaining the level of success on defense with so many changes from last season
KIRBY SMART: It’s just culture. That’s not going to change. What we do is not going to change. It doesn’t matter if one coach leaves or another coach leaves. That doesn’t impact our defense.
We rep a lot of players at practice. We have a system set up to get our twos and threes ready. So the next cast of defensive players is getting ready right now just like they were last year. I think, if you’ve got a good formula for
getting guys ready, it prevents large gaps in seasons.
On whether using multiple running backs has become a staple of Georgia for him
KIRBY SMART: It’s really about health and necessity. Throughout our conference we’ve done studies, and very few backs have made it through the entire year with a large burden. They tend to get injured.
Even across the NFL right now, the number of injuries at running backs is rampant through a 17-, 18-game season. We’re playing off of 12, 13, sometimes 14, 15-game season, not to mention the preseason camp stuff.
We try to build it where three to four backs can contribute and play, and some of that’s dictated by whether we have leads in the fourth quarter or whether guys are injured. But we don’t want to get into this part of the season and not
have depth. That’s what the rotation provides us.
On the advantage of playing in the same venue three times in a year
KIRBY SMART: Probably that you know where the scoreboard, the clocks, and all the different stuff is the biggest thing. The field’s the same. There’s not a lot of difference in terms of the diameter and width of the field, but I think it’s more about familiarity of the quarterback knowing the shot clock and the ribbons and the different things.
The biggest difference is both teams are going to practice in there, so they’ll be familiar with it by the time the game starts.
On the benefits of coming into the CFP with a loss like Georgia did last year, and what Ohio State is doing this season
KIRBY SMART: Yeah, it really centered things. You recalibrate, and you look back, and sometimes the reality of your weaknesses pop up a lot more in a loss. We like to say why do you got to lose to learn? You shouldn’t have to do that, but it certainly is a wakeup call in teams I’ve been with. It recentered everybody and refocused everybody.
Obviously we’ve tried to do that without that. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s just one of those things.
Closing remarks
MATT GARVEY: That’s all we’ve got for you, Coach. Thank you very much. We appreciate your time.
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