ATHENS – Georgia head football coach Kirby Smart, along with tight end Oscar Delp, offensive lineman Micah Morris and inside linebacker Raylen Wilson spoke with the media Thursday to discuss fall camp and the progress of the team in preparation for the 2025-26 season.
 
Head Coach Kirby Smart
Opening Statement…
“I am excited to be here and excited to get started again. This is year 10 for us, and I am really pleased with the off season work ethic of this team and the summer program. We had some outstanding testing numbers that I’m really excited about for our guys. We did our traditional combine and then we also did a lot more non-impact cardio. We’re trying to get guys in shape without putting mileage on some of their feet. We’re probably the healthiest we’ve been starting into a camp in terms of looking at the last five years and in terms of guys that were out or were limited with soft tissue injuries. We are young. We’ve talked about that in media days, but we are hungry. We got a team that’s fun to coach. We go out to practice each day, and they’ve been enthusiastic. They’ve been out there working out, just doing all the things you ask. Like I said, a lot of them haven’t had an opportunity to play, and now this is their opportunity. Sometimes when you’re coaching, it’s a lot more exciting for guys when they’re having their first time. Now that being said, the lack of experience sometimes can show, but we’re gonna try to get through that in camp. Our numbers are still pretty good, so we’ll approach the camp in terms of physical and mental toughness is one of our biggest goals to achieve. The second is probably creating good habits, like being on time, resting and recovery. Camp is a grind, and ours certainly is a grind. Then connection, leaning on each other, staying in a hotel for eight, nine, ten days with 15 practices in 18 days with two scrimmages. It’s not easy and it’s hot. We want to develop this mental, physical toughness that we think carries us through the season. Our coaches have done a great job preparing for this and getting a lot of informative tape, NFL tape, NFL quotes, past history of camps here and watching guys that are now in the league that came through here. The messaging has been really good, and we get to kick off today on the practice field.”
 
On keeping the message fresh in year 10…
“The message is fresh because it’s a new team. When you have a new team, you have new years, and you have got new guys. We talked about it before, I think we’ve got 40 or 50 guys that maybe it’s completely new, first or second year players. I don’t think you have to worry about your message staying fresh when you have the turnover you have, but you have to keep your message fresh based on what’s changing in college football and offensive and defensive schemes, things people are doing outside of it and just the demand you have. Our coaches do a great job of changing things up, and I’ll do the same with our guys.”
 
On the biggest changes in the past 10 years…
“I don’t know that fall camp changes from year to year. We’re not changing a lot of what we do. Our number of players in camp is still a good, healthy number. Actually, we have more because we had limitations on what we could bring into camp previously, and we’re gonna have more people in camp than we typically do. We may not have as many kids when school starts out as we typically do. We’ll start to drop there with the limitations. My role has changed over ten years, certainly, but not in camp. Camp is meant to be a grind, physical toughness, focus and stamina. Can you stay awake for a week? Can you lock in? Can you learn from walk through to practice, walk through to practice? Can you focus kind of on what’s next? I think Coach (Glenn) Schumann and Coach (Mike) Bobo both played a tape of some NFL players talking about camp is really where you get to hone your skills and develop your skills. When it’s the season, you’re in a routine. You’re trying to beat an opponent. Right now, you’re not trying to beat an opponent. You’re trying to better yourself, and the only way you can do that is really focus on the process of what’s next.”
 
On the lines of scrimmage…
“I want to see improvement. I want to see experience. I want to see depth building. We talk about it a lot. We’ve talked about it a lot in our messaging about what the standard is in Georgia in terms of, it’s not the number of runs, as much as it is the efficiency of the runs. It’s not the garnish given up rushing, as much as it is the yards per carry. We wanna be very productive in those two areas. Our best team since we’ve been here, they’ve been able to run the ball when they have to run it. They’ve been able to stop the run when they have to stop it, and that looks different in every game. So what do I want to see out of those guys? I want to see improvement. I want to see buy-in. It’s a culture thing. It’s like you get what you demand. We’re going to demand that you stop it, and that we’re able to do it in running.”
 
On preparing the quarterback room…
“There’s only one quarterback who can play at a time, and you’re balancing reps between the two of them. I think everybody in the country has that problem. That’s not unique to us. As coaches, the problem is not getting the one and two enough reps. Absolutely, there’s enough reps to go around. The problem is getting the three and the four enough reps to go around. We have to be creative to do that. We have to ask more of our coaching staff. We have to be more organized and detailed than others to get, while the ones and twos and threes are going over here, can we get the fourth guy reps? When we’re going two-spot, and we got ones and threes here and twos and fours there. How many reps can we get those guys? As far as quality reps and getting Ryan (Puglisi) and Gunner (Stockton) reps, that’s not an issue.”
 
On the offensive line…
“I think to see them gel and playing with a chip on their shoulder. When we talk about playing with an edge, passion, fire and energy. PFE is one of the things we’re looking for. No greater position that you possess passion, fire and energy than the offensive line. There is something about breaking someone’s will or saying I have to move you from point A to point B, and movement is exactly that. Movement is what creates one game.
 
On preparing to practice in summer conditions…
Obviously, you can just say, we’ll just go inside, but your games are outside. How do you balance preparation, safety and all that in terms of planning when you’ll be inside, when you’ll be outside? We face the heat here. We don’t really run from it. To me, the rules and regulations that have been put in place by safety, health boards across NCAA protect the players from that. As short as 20 years ago, we were doing two-a-days every day, in both pads, outside. There was no indoor. It’s changed progressively to make it safer. You can’t practice twice a day, you can’t have pads on twice a day. We need to face the heat and go, the practice intensity of the practices has increased because people know they don’t have another practice that day. With it being one-a-day practices, and we have walkthrough in between, but we do that indoors, we go face the heat. We’re gonna play in the heat, we don’t run from the heat. Our practices are really tough in terms of volume and intensity because we get a lot of reps in a short amount of time.
 
On Jahzare Jackson’s status and tracking recruits’ legal issues…
 
In terms of running into legal trouble? Yeah, Jahzare is disappointed, obviously, in the decision-making process. He’s being disciplined internally, but he’s with the team. As far as the other question, I can’t really talk about recruiting, so I can’t comment about those.
 
On Christian Miller…
 
We need him to be a playmaker; we need him to be disruptive. We talk about habit, we talk about quickness, speed, experience. He’s our most experienced player. He has taken on this role of knowing the burden lies with him to set a standard for that group. And we’re gonna be good up front, and we’re gonna stop the run. It starts with that group. I mean, it’s everybody, but it really starts with the defensive line, and what kind of mentality that room has. And so far, he has approached that the right way. He did not get to go through spring because of a labor repair. And we’re looking for him to have a great fall camp, and push the other guys, and help lead that room along with Jordan, Xavier, and some of those other guys.
 
On the inside linebacker room…
 
We’ve done that every year in that room. That room has been one of our strengths throughout the time we’ve been here. Shuman’s done a great job recruiting, he does a great job developing, he does a great job packaging things to where you can get multiple inside linebackers on the field, and we play a lot of them. Naturally, there’s two out there every play, but sometimes we have three. And we’ll continue to do that, we’ll put the best players on the field. CJ (Allen) and Raylan (Wilson) have been leaders since they got here. They just haven’t had to be in the forefront. And last year, even with Smael’s (Mondon) injury, they were in the forefront more than a typical sophomore would be, and they both embraced that leadership role.
 
On how the game has changed in 10 years…
 
The biggest area that’s changed is the demand and decision-making that’s put on the quarterback. I think in 2016, you would have said RPOs were existent and people were doing them. They’re at a higher rate now, but it’s just a combination of motions and the width of the formation. I mean, in 2016, you were seeing 50%, 60%, 70% of spread out formations. They called it a spread offense because it was spread out. Well, now it’s okay, there’s a taste of tempo in our league. There’s a taste of shift motion. People are always moving sideways, trying to leverage the defense, eye candy, I would call it, along with the decision for the quarterback. Do I hand it, A? Do I pull it, B? Or do I not hand it, not pull it, and throw it, C? They’re getting three options almost every play. So a lot of people don’t, the average fan is not aware of the demand of what the quarterback’s having to decide. And they certainly aren’t aware of what the defense is having to defend, because the eyes of the defense have to be in multiple places. There’s a play on this side of the formation. There’s a play on this side of the formation. Then there’s an interior play. So there are three plays, and the defense is having to defend more of them. So it’s become tougher to defend. It’s also become probably less of a quarterback having to change the protection and play the quarterback position that the NFL would like to have more of a go tempo, dummy it down a little bit, and (12:40) let the quarterback make easy decisions and make throws and runs that make it hard to defend. So it’s become much harder, and our game is trickling up to the NFL, because you see it more and more in their game.
 
On the motto, “Fire, Passion, Energy” …
I feel it every day, because if you don’t have it, it’s hard to be successful. You can’t keep up. Our staff has it. Our staff has great juice. We’ve had a chance to reenergize.
That’s what the summer’s about. We’re coming off of three to four weeks where we got to go be with our families before last week. I see it in the players every day and it starts with 110 heat index last week, seeing them out there running in that and facing it.​​They don’t always have it all the way through that 110 heat index with five, ten, or 20 53s they got to run, but they do push and challenge each other. That’s what I’ve enjoyed about this team so far, they’re not afraid to hold each other accountable and get after each other. They know that they’re stronger together than they are apart.
 
On the loss of his father and coaching a season without him …
 Well, it’s been unique. I don’t talk to him a lot. I didn’t talk to my dad a lot about football.
He didn’t wanna spend time on that. I mean, if I wanted to talk about it, he was more than happy to, but he didn’t bring football up a lot. He talked about my kids, his grandkids. He talked about his golf game and my mom and his relationship, which they would have had their 53rd anniversary a couple days ago, two days ago. She’s the one I’m concerned about.My dad’s in a great place, and he’s done a wonderful thing for so many people while he was here on Earth, including me and my brother and sister. He was an unbelievable role model, and I miss him daily. I’m gonna continue to miss him, but I know he’s proud of the accomplishments of all his grandkids and kids, so my focus right now has been on my mom and her well-being.
 
On Oscar Delp …
Running the ball. Oscar’s a great player. He’s gotten better and better. He has been a better leader.He got one of our most improved boards in terms of work ethic in the weight room and the jumps he made. So he knows this is an important year for him, but for him, for us, it’s like having a Y that can physically hold up and block, which no tight end likes to hear that, but the NFL loves that. They like to have somebody that’s physical at the point of attack and he is strong, he’s physical, he’s good in play action, he’s tough. I mean, he has taken a lot of rips since being here at the University of Georgia and blocked a lot of good defensive players. So we need him to be a factor at the point of attack.
 
On what drives him …
It’s putting the pieces together. It’s like the puzzle of this team is different than the puzzle of last year and being able to decipher the difference in the two teams and maybe what the Wolves’ needs are from me. What does this team need from me? And what does the staff need from me? Where can I be at my best for our team? That’s my why, and seeing a guy graduate. I just came over here and Ernest Greene, he’s got one project left, and he’s going to graduate this summer. That, to me, is the be all and end all when these kids get an opportunity to graduate from the University that I went to, and they get a chance to start, play, and carry on their career afterwards, that’s success. There’s probably not enough stories about that or self-gratification about that, as opposed to when one fails or doesn’t make it. That’s what my why is:  pushing these guys to get that piece of paper and  also become better men.
 
On changing the approach with a younger team…
“54% of our team is made up of younger guys, and it’s a lot, and it worries me as a coach. But it’s probably not any different anywhere else. It’s not like anybody’s sitting back saying, ‘Well, we’ve got 80% guys that have been here and 20% new guys.’
As coaches, we have evolved, and we have more kids coming in in the spring. So we’ve done more with these kids than we’ve ever done before. I’m talking about spring, walkthrough, post-spring this year. We even took it and said, ‘You know what? We’re gonna do 30 minutes a day of football school. We’re gonna dedicate our time to football school 101.’ So the onboarding and the process you go through, the summer plan, every minute we have by NCAA allowed, we use, and we have done more to this point with kids than we’ve ever done before. So am I worried, am I concerned? Yeah, I’m always worried and concerned about new guys, but we’ve onboarded guys, and we’re going to continue to install at a fast rate because we want to see what they can learn, especially during this practice  window. We find out who can play football, and then move into the season of game planning.”
 
On the most important aspect for young players to work on…
“Mindset. It’s something they can’t work on because they’re going to be overwhelmed by the speed and tempo of practice. ‘Can I fail, and can I pick up and go again?’ It’s been seen over and over again. When these NFL guys come in, they want to know how a guy learns, and when they come from our program, they’re gonna learn well. They’ve had to learn well, but can they overcome failure and adversity? So many of them come in with, and because of social media and heavy accolades and expectations and the drop from how high they come in to where they fall to where they fail is so deep in depth that it’s really hard to build them back. So we have to be really careful as coaches that we make sure to point out when they do things right and make sure we explain to them that it’s okay to fail. You actually grow through that failure, and a lot of our guys are starting to realize that.”
 
On Phil Rauscher and John Lilly’s impact on the run scheme…
“Well, they both have run backgrounds. Most tight end coaches in the National Football League either evolve into O-line. Coaches are tied into the run game. So both of those guys have great ideas in the run game. It may not be a new run by design because you can’t reinvent the wheel. There’s insides going outside the zone, there’s a gap scheme. There’s different ideas. We have a quarterback who allows us to do more. They both have been around systems that involve that. Technique-wise, they both may have different ways of doing things than we do. Some part of it is who you play, and some part of it is what you call. Some part of it is how hard you play. All of that is a factor. Those guys have been great assets and will continue to help us improve that.”