Smart, Players Preview Arkansas

GEORGIA FOOTBALL VIDEOS

Coach Smart

J. Reddell

K. Barnes

ATHENS, Ga. – Georgia football head coach Kirby Smart, junior tight end Jaden Reddell and senior safety Khalil Barnes spoke with the media on Monday and offered the following comments.

Opening Statement
"We're on to SEC playing Arkansas, but before I get to that I would like to give a quick congrats to our long snapper, Will Snellings, for being a male winner of the Joel Eaves Scholar-Athlete Award for having the top GPA of any senior entering his final fall. He's the first football player to do that in five years to win that honor so certainly proud of him. I know his parents well. I played with his dad, roomed with his dad here in college. He obviously got his intelligence from his mom, but he's a great kid. He's an honor to be on our team. I really enjoy Will, his work ethic and the things he does to win that kind of award. With that, we're on to Arkansas, playing on the road in the SEC. Humility is always a week away. It's a tough environment for regardless of where you play in the SEC. There are no bad environments in the SEC. There are only raucous environments in the SEC. They're really tough to play in. Tougher earlier in the year than later, as they go along, they get harder and harder. This is a challenging time to go on the road, especially with a group that you really haven't been on the road with yet. With that, we'll be focusing our attention on them."

On S Tyriq Green and Xzavier McLeod…
"T Green, we're finding more and more out on. We will see what the deal is with him as the week goes, whether he's able to play or not. The status of Xzavier McLeod is that he's not on the team."

On Arkansas HC Ryan Silverfield's comments at Memphis…
"That's much ado about nothing. He made a choice to talk about what he wanted to talk about. He did apologize about it. I think was talking about generalities. All coaches, we show things other schools do to make mistakes and try to educate our team. He's trying to educate his team. He said what he said, but that is over and done with for me."

On preparing for a team with a brand-new roster…
"A lot of them came from Memphis. Quite a few came from Memphis. Every team we play has a lot of turnover. When I first talked to Coach [Tyson] Helton, I would say they had 65 or 70, so that's the norm. We have two games at least. That's more that we had previously on these other ones when we started out. You don't know much about them, so the evaluation is of our team. That's what I spend my time worrying about is our team. You spend too much time worrying about their team, and you won't have a good team. I'm a lot more worried about what we do than what they do."

On the evaluating the effort of the defense…
"You said it. You answered your own question. It hasn't been really tested in terms of it. Effort? Great effort when you play four series or five series. The heat. It's been warm in really both circumstances, especially the first one. Expect it to be warm this Saturday. I think it's still to be seen."

On the reps the starters have taken and experimenting in fall camp…
"I don't know if we can judge that. There's no measure for that. A more important decision right now is how we're practicing right now, and how we're practicing six and seven weeks from now in terms of health and number of players. In terms of the number of snaps guys play, I really don't get too into it. I don't look at it and overthink it and say, 'Oh, they have to play more snaps.' The number of exposures you have, our kids have never had the exposures they'll have because of a nine-game SEC schedule. It'll be greater this year than it has probably ever been before, playing a nine-game schedule. I think with that thought in mind, you're not counting snaps in games. You are counting conditioning reps, snaps in practice, and what gives them the opportunity to be able to play a game. You play 50-60 play scrimmages that are almost a full game against an SEC opponent."

On Arkansas QB KJ Jackson…
"Very accurate passer. He throws a great ball. Anticipates timing of throws. He's got a really strong, live arm. He gets the ball out there. He's a good athlete. He's got size that makes him hard to tackle, but he eludes and scrambles and makes some plays. A lot of respect for him."

On S Khalil Barnes…
"High level of maturity. He was very well coached where he was. Very scheme-diverse. Very Intelligent, picking things up. He's been a good leader and a constant for us in terms of being consistent in his performance."

On what RB Chauncey Bowens offers on third down…
"Good to catch the ball. Protect. Wisdom. Age. Experience. I think of all those backs. They're all capable of being third down backs. They've been in our program for years. Let's pick up three years of pass-pro, three years of catching the ball out of the backfield. It comes with experience. That's something that most high school kinds don't come with naturally, so you have to work at it. All those guys have achieved that."

On the North Oconee HS program…
"It's high-quality football. I've lived it and seen it now. I've lived here for so long. From the youth programs all the way up, they do a tremendous job with programs across Oconee County. Not just North, but both Oconees do a great job of developing young people. Football players, high academic, high character, they practice hard, they do it the right way. Football in the state of Georgia is the best in the country. A microcosm of that is Oconee County, where the education system is so high. They've got a great educations, and they have multiple schools and options to play at. They do a great job producing football players."

On WR Talyn Taylor…
"You said it. He's had more opportunities. Number one, he's been healthy. He would've been doing what he's doing now last year had he been healthy the whole time. He was an up-and-coming player. It drives him. Runs good routes. He's explosive. He takes pride in his blocking. He takes pride in his performance. He works hard at things he still needs to improve on. He's got a lot of energy; he's a ball of energy. He's always wanting to celebrate and be excited. He loves the game. He has a passion for the game, and you don't want to take that out of anyone. Pleased with where he's at. We've got to do a good job of keeping him healthy and continuing to grow him and be scheme-diverse."

On the front seven…
"Just happy that they play hard. Coached hard, and they're receptive to our coaching. I'm pleased with their effort and their buy-in to each day's practice. I don't know that there's a measuring stick of on-field performance. You can't really measure that with the number of snaps they've had. I look at it as: day-to-day interaction, work ethic, buy-in, 'mudita,' the success of the other guys in the room, who gets credit for the tackles for loss and sacks, it doesn't matter. A lot of times the picker doesn't get it, and the wrapper gets it, and the picker did a better job than the wrapper and you guys all talk about the wrapper, but the picker did the work. For us it's internally pleasing to see guys that don't have ego."

On the effects of kick times and travel…
"I don't know. To each its own in terms of the way you maneuver the week and how you manage the week. From a standpoint of recovery, everybody's going to play pretty much the same number of away games and everybody's going to play the same number of home games, for the most part within one or two. You have to navigate that. It's certainly challenging. I wouldn't like it either, just a tough situation to be in."

On QB Gunner Stockton's experience playing on the road in the SEC…
"It's more valuable than not."

On Stockton facing adversity and not running the ball…
"I don't know if I would say anticipating adversity. I think that you have to as a coach anticipate adversity. I don't know when it's coming, and I have no control over when it's coming, nor do you or the players. To not anticipate it would be failure. You try to anticipate it. We try to create it every day in our practices in some kind of way. As far as being intentional about not running the ball, that's not dictated by us. That's dictated by the defense. That's dictated by how he feels. Ryan Puglisi is not somebody that is designed to run the ball. The defense dictates that sometimes. Some of that is controlled by the setting and different factors that we don't control."

On DL JJ Hanne…
"Reliability. Consistency. A buy-in and P.F.E. He embodies that room with really high energy. He loves football. He kind of changed positions a little bit. He's growing and evolving as a player. He's maturing and has one of the most positive outlooks and positive attitude guys that I've ever been around."

On learning about a team after the first road game…
"It depends on who you play and how you play. You'll learn a lot about them if they have adversity. I've learned a lot about our teams in the past from going to play in SEC environments when maybe we haven't played our best or maybe we get in one of those hornet nest games and you have to fight your way out of it. It just depends on how the game goes."

University of Georgia Athletics

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Players Mentioned

Khalil Barnes

Chauncey Bowens

Tyriq Green

JJ Hanne

Xzavier McLeod

Ryan Puglisi

Jaden Reddell

Will Snellings

Gunner Stockton

Talyn Taylor

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