The following are the highlights of Coach Kirby Smart’s appearance on the SEC Football Coaches Weekly Teleconference from earlier today:
- As was the case on Monday and Tuesday, Smart indicated he was excited about facing Clemson because, for one, he’ll “find out a lot about our team.”
- According to Smart, it’s “impossible’ to judge how good a tackling team you have entering a season. Even though a team can tackle in fall-camp scrimmages and in practices (as long as it’s not 50 percent of the time, per the NCAA), “you get better tackling by tackling.” According to the head coach, his staff often reminds the team, “It’s harder to thud someone the proper way in practice than it is to tackle” an opposing player. Smart added a “critical part of this [Clemson] game is who’ll tackle the best in space, who prepared the best to tackle in preparation for the game.”
- Smart reiterated that Clemson was an “attacking offensive group,” featuring physical wide receivers, backs who can catch the ball out of the backfield, and experienced tight ends. “They know how to get to the perimeter in the run game, they know how to run the quarterback, and they build plays so that if you’re stopping one [aspect of their offense], they can compliment off of that [aspect].” Smart added Clemson has demonstrated it often compliments its play-action passing off of its run game, and vice versa. “They do a good job of ‘attacking your eyes.’”
- On Georgia’s middle linebacking unit: “It’s a good group because they have some depth. We’ve been able to rotate guys in through that core.” He added the Mike and Will linebacker positions are “interchangeable—to the point where we don’t even take them and line them up anymore like we used to. You just got to be able to play both [the Mike and Will].” Georgia’s inside linebackers must understand the “coverage multiples based on where they line up.”
- Specifically about the middle linebackers, Smart called Nakobe Dean, “the alpha of the group, the main leader.” Quay Walker has apparently come a long way since he showed up at Georgia. Besides those two, Channing Tindall is another leader in the group. Rian Davis and Trezman Marshall each had a “good camp.” The head coach said the “two young kids,” Jamon Dumas-Johnson and Smael Mondon will play “very big roles on special teams.” He added Mondon is “very intelligent and has been a surprise this camp. Whether he gets snaps at inside backer is yet to be seen, based on the other guys. But he’s certainly talented enough and he’s a very good special teams player.”
