ATHENS – John & Alice Sands Offensive Coordinator Mike Bobo, Fain & Billy Slaughter Defensive Coordinator Glenn Schumann, Special Teams Coordinator Kirk Benedict, Assistant Head Coach/Tight Ends Todd Hartley, and Co-Defensive Coordinator/Safeties Coach Travaris Robinson, met with the media Wednesday afternoon to discuss the team’s progression in fall camp and preview the upcoming season. They offer the following comments.  

John & Alice Sands Offensive Coordinator Mike Bobo 

On the areas of improvement determined during the self-assessment process….  

“There’s no doubt. Anytime you start a football game, you want to start fast. We always talk about starting fast at the beginning of each half, and the end of the half as well. And you go through it, and a lot of times, it was execution issues. And then sometimes, to be quite frank, it was a little bit of being conservative in those situations. And then the other side of it, the teams we played were pretty good on defense, and stopped us early in games. But that’s been a big point of emphasis for us. There’s several of them, but starting fast is one of them. And you’d like to start fast every day. Sometimes starting fast does not necessarily mean you’re scoring a touchdown, touchdown, touchdown, or touchdown, field goal, touchdown. Sometimes starting fast is when you get a couple first downs, and you change the field position. When you go three and out to start games, that’s something we definitely got to improve on.” 

On the offensive line having a chip on their shoulder based on the performance last season…  

“Well, that’s something you’d have to ask them if they have a chip on their shoulder. But I think we need to play better as a whole offense, and offensive line, it starts with them. And we have some youth up front, but there are some guys that are coming back that haven’t had experience. And there were injuries, and the offensive line is about cohesion and playing together. And we did not play together well enough last year to be efficient in all areas. And that’s the main thing that we’ve been working on. We’ve got to be one unit up front. I think all offensive lines have a little bit of chip on their shoulder, because of who they are and how close they are as a group. And I think this group is doing a good job, even though they’re young, practicing hard and focusing on it day by day.” 

On his thoughts on Gunner Stockton’s performance and preparedness last season…  

“I thought Gunner was ready for the moment in the SEC Championship game. And it’s a hard spot to be in. It’s something you talk about with your guys all the time. You’re one player right away. But quarterback’s a different position than any other position. There’s other positions, they might not be the starter, but they might get in at a rotation. They might get to play on special teams, so they’ve felt what it’s like to be in a game. And a quarterback’s a little bit different. But I thought Gunner last year took a step during practice of approaching every practice like it was a game, and prepared like he was the starter. And those aren’t just words. Gunner would probably prepare as hard as anybody on a football team. And he didn’t know if he was gonna play a snap, so he was ready from a preparation standpoint. I know there were certain things he knows he wishes he could have done better. And he’s been working on those things all season and through fall camp, so he can be a more efficient player at that position.” 

On what he wants the identity of the offense to be this season…  

“Well, I mean, I think that’s the great thing about fall camp, is where you’re trying to form your identity of your football team. Now, it’s a lot different than it was five to ten years ago, because 90% of your class is coming in, came in spring practice and went through spring, and summer’s different. And now that we can meet with them and do certain things with them. So you have a better feel of what you are offensively going into fall camp. But fall camp is a little bit different, you’re practicing every day, it’s longer hours, it’s a little more taxing. So it’s what can your guys handle mentally and physically? And we’re trying to figure that out. But you want to put guys in positions that could be explosive. I think we’ve got to be more explosive on offense. But I think your identity, everything starts with the run game. At any level, you’ve got to be able to run the ball and stop the run. And that’s been an emphasis of ours since we got back from the Sugar Bowl and started meeting as a staff and meeting with our players. How can we improve in that area? And I’m not just talking about numbers, I’m talking about being efficient. And a run game is not going to just help you offensively, it’s going to help your quarterback, it’s going to help your defense, it’s going to help in all areas. And hopefully our identity will be efficient in the run game and everything will run through that.” 

On where Nate Frazier has grown the most this off season…  

“Well, I want to give Nate and his coach, Coach Crawford, a lot of credit. Because he was one of the few guys that did not come in mid-year last year. He got here in June, and Nate is a tireless worker. He’s always in Coach Crawford’s office or in the bullpen with some of our quality control guys trying to catch up. Running back, not as complex as some of the other positions except for pass protection. But this guy dove in, and he worked extremely hard. Early in the year, we were trying to get him on the field and get him some touches. It did put him in a lot of situations that would involve pass protection by the end of the year. We weren’t afraid to have him in there on third down. So I think he’s growing as a complete back. I guess the next step is, stop trying to look for the home run all the time. That’s something we got to get better with all the backs, is that we got to learn to get to dirty yards. And every play’s not going to be a home run. A lot of these backs in high school, they’re the best player on the field, and they can bounce anything. And in turn, an average player is supposed to play by bouncing it out running. This league’s different, and working on his steps, working on his vision, and keying the right defender up front, and pressing the hole and hitting. And that’s something, I think, in the first six practices, you’ve seen an improvement of Nate being willing to stick it in there and get to dirty yards.” 

On coaching Gunner’s willingness to run and take physical hits…  

Yeah, it’s one thing to say not to do that, and on the flip side, it’s hard to practice that because our quarterbacks aren’t live in practice situations. In plays, there’s loose plays all the time for the quarterback and he’s a guy that can extend plays, and make plays by extending them and throwing the ball downfield, and running with the football. So whether we’re at a walkthrough or a practice, even though he’s not getting hit, we’re constantly talking about, what would you do in this situation? I’m going to get to yards, I’m sliding here, it’s third down, I’m going to get to first down, because his makeup and his mentality sometimes is, I’m going to go get everything. And there’s a time and place for that, and it’s one thing to say it, but it’s a hard thing to practice because he’s not getting hit. So we’re constantly talking about those things, looking at the field, and situations where he’s pulled it down, he’s extended it, or maybe he’s running. What are you going to do here? And we’re talking about it, and we’re going to have to live through some of that. Because he’s got the mentality of a guy that’s going to go get it, but he’s not 230, 235 pounds. So he’s got to protect himself when he does decide to pull the ball down and run the ball. And then at the same time, there are going to be some instances where we’ve got quarterback runs designed for him, but there’s got to be a balance. Because any play that’s called, he could turn it into a quarterback run. So as a play caller, you got to be mindful of that, and it’s something we’re working through.  

On how new transfers will positively impact the offense…   

“We have great competition at all the skill spots, at tight end, at running back and at receiver. We brought a lot of guys in, you mentioned the portal guys, but the freshmen at those positions, too, have provided unbelievable competition. That’s what Coach Warren has built this program around: competition and building depth. I like those guys, a lot of them are young, but they are willing and eager. I have to figure out where we are going to put these guys to get them in the right spot, and figure out ways that sometimes in the past, we’ve kind of let the offense run through the quarterback. [Coach Warren] takes the guy that the defense gives us, so maybe a passing concept. We are going to have to figure out ways to get some of these guys that you mentioned, generate touches for those guys.”  

On Colbie Young… 

“I’ve been extremely impressed with Colbie. He’s grateful to be here and his opportunity to be at Georgia. He was dealing with a little nagging injury in the spring, but he wanted to go through spring and fought through all 15 practices. Since he’s been back every day, he doesn’t take a play off. He’s a guy that we brought in out of the portal, but he is probably the leader in that room. He sets the standard of how to work and I’m not just talking about whether it’s route running or catching balls, it’s blocking and it’s his effort. That’s kind of contagious, because we’ve got some talented receivers in that room, and some of them are young. They need to know what it means to wear the Georgia uniform, and he represents that every day. We brought Noah [Thomas] in, that’s competition for him and he has not shied away from it. Noah, through six practices, is starting to slow down for him. The spring was probably a struggle, if you ask him, new system, new terminology and trying to figure everything out. He probably was not playing as fast as he would like and our message to him was, ‘it’s gonna be okay, just keep your head down, keep working’ Now you’re seeing incremental improvements from him and he’s light years ahead of where he was in the spring. He gives you another big body outside that can catch those balls that are contested.” 

 On expectations from the tight end room this season… 

“There’s competition in that room and Coach Harley has done a great job of recruiting guys. When they’re in that room, they know they have to compete. A lot of times we look at the tight end, the catches that they might have, or the unbelievable plays that Brock or some of these guys have made in the past. They know that they’ve got to get dirty, they’ve got to block and they’ve gotta put their face on people. He’s done a good job of creating toughness in that room. Those guys don’t run away from competition and it’s any year, you’ve got tight ends, you’ve got receivers or you’ve got backs. You’re trying to figure out what’s the best personnel group, what’s the best mixture between 12 and 11, or different personnel groups of getting those guys on the field. I tell them, we’re practicing against our defense and we’re not just competing against our defense, we’re competing against those tight ends, we’re competing against those receivers at practice. They want us to be in 12, or even 13 more. At the end of the day, we’re going to put the guys out there that have the most production, and are able to create positive play for us.”  

On his early impression of the freshman receivers and early enrollees’ readiness to play… 

“It definitely gives them a chance, especially at the skilled positions. I always tell these guys when we’re recruiting them, that they want to walk in the door, and they expect to be running with the first team, and everything goes perfect. I tell them when you come in the spring, you’re going to get to go through these walkthroughs and these spring practices where we have a day off, and it slows down. That spring practice and that midyear, you got to think of that as your redshirt year, you’re learning. Learning what it means to practice at Georgia, how we practice, and learning this playbook. Then you’ve got summer, where we’re gonna do it all over again. Then you’re trying to get yourself a position where fall camp starts, where now I can play to my true ability. Now, that’s an ongoing process for those guys, but it definitely gives them a better chance because they’re here midyear, because the rules have changed in the summer, where coaches can be around and meet with those guys. Then the staff that our administration allows us to continue to have. We’re cutting corners in our staff and there’s guys that meet with these guys year round. It puts them in a better position to be ready to play early.”  

On the growth of Gunner Stockton from last season that gives him confidence in the running game this season… 

“First, Gunner, like I said earlier, he was ready for that moment because of his preparation. I don’t think he has changed. He’s in this offense now for his fourth year and some of the same notes, some of the same reminders, some of the same coaching points. That guy every day is taking notes like he’s a first year freshman. Just the attention to detail and ready to go every day at practice is probably a little higher because he knows now he’s running out there with the ones the majority of the time at practice. He’s worked on things in the offseason fundamentally that you see improvement. We were just in a meeting and we were pointing out the things that we had done during spring practice, post-spring, summer, early in fall camp, fundamentally in showing us doing the drills individually and how it’s correlated to in practice. So we can always be more efficient in everything we do fundamentally and technique-wise at the quarterback position and that’s something that we’ve been working on. Gunner is, not just because his name’s Gunner, but he’s a little bit of a gunslinger and working on, sometimes everything does not have to be a howitzer, learning how to layer the ball. He made a throw yesterday that we pointed out to some things that we had done and tried to just improve on little things. Every day, what can I improve on? As far as, second part is about the running game, right? As far as the running game, that’s a big emphasis for us. That’s the emphasis, number one. I do not think anybody, that’s not a secret. Coach Smart said it, I said it and I think, the last time I talked to you at the Sugar Bowl. We have to be more efficient in the run game and again, that does not mean numbers. We have to run the ball efficiently and find ways to be explosive in the run game, not just the pass game. What I’ve seen is, every day, it’s an emphasis for us. When we come together as a unit on offense, we’re talking about the run game. A lot of times we think run game means just offensive line, but it’s the offensive line, it’s the tight ends, it’s the running backs, the right reads, hitting the right tracks, it’s receivers blocking downfield, it’s quarterbacks getting us in the right run and it’s quarterbacks on their face. We made an emphasis every day to point out those things when they’re good and they’re not up to our standard. Day by day, we’re working on those things and we know that we’ve got to be able to run the ball, and that’s the point of emphasis right now.” 

On his personal health … 

“No, I feel great. Everybody knows I had some health issues when I was at Colorado State, and I deal with some of that with the nerves in my feet. But I feel great, and I’m probably as excited as I’ve ever been, not trying to prove something. I’m excited that college football has changed a little bit. You’re coming, you’ve got a new team. You’ve got a lot of new guys, and we’ve got a lot of young guys. We’re a young football team and there’s a lot of eager guys that are hungry to learn, hungry to be here, and excited to be here. That gets you fired up as a coach. And when kids, they’re not excited about being in Georgia, or wherever I’m at, or playing football for the love of the game, then that’s probably when I won’t do it. As far as my health, I feel great. It’s awesome to be here coaching these guys, because every day they come over here they’re bright-eyed and trying to learn.” 

Fain & Billy Slaughter Defensive Coordinator Glenn Schumann 

Opening Statement… 

“I just wanted to acknowledge, we challenge the players all off season in terms of passion, fire and energy. I think through the first six days, that’s been outstanding. Obviously, it’s early, there’s still things that need to improve in terms of execution. It’s built that way on purpose. The first six days are heavy insulation on both sides of the ball. Philosophically, you do that because over time, you get more reps. The best way to add to knowledge and add to execution is by getting reps doing it. The earlier you put it in, the sooner that they can make mistakes and get that corrected. There’s still a way to go in terms of that, that’s what camp’s for. The passion, fire and energy has been great. It’s a credit to them. I told the defense the other day, it’s kind of like marriage. Everybody’s happy on their wedding day. Everybody has a lot of passion and energy in the first five or six days. What separates teams from others is what happens from day six to day 15. Then the consistency over the course of the season can keep that going. I’m really pleased with where that is at the start of this.” 

  

On consolidating calls to fewer words and recruiting players based on their recall abilities… 

“When you go through the recruiting process, the more time you spend with people, the more you can tell guys that really love ball and that are going to be invested in it. It’s our job to teach them, and it’s their job to put in the work to learn. We’re a team in that manner. It’s not necessarily just a war quizzing and seeing who has the best recall, and they’re the guys that need to be here. Obviously, that’s beneficial. The guys that really love it, they’re going to be determined to work through it. Ultimately, learning comes from their own personal investment in it. I think you’re gauging guys’ levels of investment and love for the game of football. Then, do they want to just play or they want to talk about it? If they want it to be part of every aspect of their life, that translates.” 

  

On size, shape, athletically comparing this team to previous teams… 

“I’m really pleased with where this group is. I think they had a great off-season. I think that we have size. I think we have speed. I don’t think comparisons are fair to the guys here or the guys before. I’m really pleased with where they’re at. The conditioning level that we have, you’re continuing to build up stamina to play. You build from playing a four-play drive to a six-play drive to an eight-play drive. There’s nothing like playing football to get in football shape. We’re still doing that. I think comparisons are not fair to the past or the present.” 

  

On CJ Allen and Raylen Wilson’s growth on the field and as leaders… 

“It’s honestly really crazy to think about. I constantly refer to them as the old heads now. I think that reality for them of, hey, time’s running out a little bit. It feels like you have forever when you first get here, and the next thing you know, you’re a junior. Their maturity level has always been high. I think their outward confidence, their leadership, how vocal they are and how that translates to them playing the game. They’re playing faster, they’re communicating faster. The reps allow you to see, people don’t like the game slowing down. The more you play, the more it slows down, right? Because now you’re anticipating, you’re not reacting. I think you saw a little bit of that last year in spurts, where, at times, they were playing really fast. I think the more they play, the more confident they are, both in terms of communicating defense and commanding from a leadership standpoint. Speeding up their run fits what they do in coverage and what they do with blitzers. I think all of that is part of natural progression. Those guys work really hard in all aspects of their game.” 

  

On someone taking on the same “uncomfortable” role that Jalon Walker took on last season… 

“Within saying, make us uncomfortable, you ask the players to be uncomfortable because that’s where growth comes from. I think it’s important in camp you assess, who are our best players? What do they do well? Obviously, there is a blueprint for what the Georgia defense is. There’s a standard there, but that’s more about how to play the game than it is about, are we going to be more quarters or three deep zone? Are we going to be more five man front or four man front? Are we going to play more base defense, like number of linebackers on the field? Are we going to get in dime on third down? All those variables are really based on who you have and what they do best. That’s part of what you find out in camp. You teach the defense, and then as you get closer to games, you mold it to the guys. We’re not asking anybody to go replace Jalen Walker in that way. It might be three different guys replace what he did. It might be relative to their strengths. It might be a little bit from the outside linebacker room, something from the inside linebacker room. We’re not going to ask somebody to fill exactly what he did because that might not be the best interest of this team.” 

  

On Christen Miller’s role on the defensive line… 

“There’s times that he’s been at a really high level. The challenge there is sustaining it, because his level of intensity, effort and his level of communication. His urgency is at an all-time high, which is what it needs to be. We need him to be a guy that can both anchor in the middle and also be really disruptive. When you’re playing, we always talk about that you’re playing base mode. Let’s say we’re playing technique up front — the gaps are very clear in front of you. Linebackers have to fill those gaps. We need him to be strong at the point of attack. We need mount back. Then when we move, he’s a really good athlete. He needs to add value in terms of disrupting plays when we do move him There’s ways to navigate edge pass rush on offense. It’s really difficult to deal with the dominant pass rusher in the middle, in terms of pocket push and winning matchups on guard and centers. The more he can do that, we need that from our interior defensive line, not just the run-stopping ability, but pass rush ability and ability to disrupt plays and push the pocket. That’s what we need from that.” 

On factors contributing to the change in run defense stats the last two seasons compared to seasons prior… 

“Stats always tell you something. Stats are what they are. You start rationalizing stats, then you’re just making excuses for a performance that wasn’t up to our standard. The number one thing we need to do better in run defense is tackle better. In fact, we did not tackle to our standard last year. If you tackle better, you eliminate yards after contact, and we need to leverage football better, specifically, on the perimeter, where the ball bounced out too much. That goes back to trust and playing together as a unit. So one thing we’ve just been really harping on is the right way to tackle, which we always do. That’s not like this is some unique thing, but our guys are very aware of where we need to improve. They know to play Georgia football on both sides of the ball, we need to run the ball and stop the run. They’ve taken great pride in trying to improve in those areas. But we need to tackle better, leverage the football better, and then ultimately, we talk about changing the math. Like on an offensive playbook page, everybody’s blocked except for the middle field safety. Let’s not act like there’s no blocked guys, no matter what you do on defense. Every once in a while, you might trick them. The way to change the math is to either take two blockers or beat your blocker. So that goes back to striking blockers, getting off block, technique, tech blocks, technique and fundamentals. And the more guys we have that don’t trade, we call trading one for one. Like, if you block me and I stay in my gap, but I don’t do anything else to affect the play, I trade one for one. The offense won on that play. So, tackling and leveraging the football. And then we had got to do a great job of not going one for one in terms of dealing with blockers, and that’s what it is. We don’t do that well, at least the results we saw. So we’re not worried about that. We’re just worried about the future. The guys are taking pride in doing those things every day.” 

On managing the abrupt movement pre snap rule with his players… 

“I think Kirby had a quote about defining what abrupt is. That’s really important, educating your players on what’s seen as abrupt and not seen as abrupt. Any time there’s rules, whether it’s roughing the passer or abrupt movements, you educate your players on what the right way is and you coach them how to do that. It’s not gonna be our job to officiate it. It’s our job to present the rules and the information to our players, coach them the right way, and make sure we do it that way.”  

On the status of Elo Modozie, Joseph Jonah-Ajonye, and Quintavius Johnson… 

“Elo’s a bright kid, I just love you wouldn’t know that he hasn’t been here his whole career, just watching him. From a standpoint of seeing him fit in with the guys, he has meshed with our unit exceptionally well. When you bring in a transfer, there’s always an element of, how are they gonna fit in with our people? When we bring people in, do we think they fit our culture? And he’s done a great job of that. He’s still learning. This is really six practices into it for him, but he’s an athlete. The things you saw on tape that made us interested in him coming here, you see those. And I think as he gets more and more reps, he’ll continue to see more and more of what he can do from an edge rusher standpoint and setting. He’s also a really good athlete. This guy played wide out in high school. So when he does need to drop and do those things, he’s unique in that sense. But we’re six practices in, it’s his first six practices. So even though he’s an older guy, he’s out there adjusting like some of the other new players. So he’s only gonna get better from here. Joseph is a great athlete for his size. He has the length we look for in the defensive end position. He has some natural power to him. And I think that for him, you’re looking at that Mykel [Williams] role, where you want to be a guy that can go from playing inside the tackle to outside the tackle, and that’s really what we need from him. With him not getting as many reps, it’s saying that every day he’s getting better, and I’m really excited about what he’s gonna do this year. We had high hopes for him at the beginning of last year. Q is the guy who you think about athletically. This guy was a high school quarterback, he played on his feet. So some of the things that marry up with what I said about Elo’s skill set. That balances out. Q’s really bright. The guy really cares at a high level, he’s a good athlete. And as an outside linebacker, there’s a lot asked of you, more than just setting the edge, and he’s able to do all those things. And so he’s had a good camp, he had a good spring, and we need more out of him than what we’ve seen so far. But with the way he works, we’re confident we’ll get it out of him.” 

On what he’s seen from Chris Jones in switching positions and Elijah Griffin…  

“Chris Jones is a selfless guy. When we told him when we had those losses at outside linebacker, and we were looking at the spring. With his body type,he has a naturally bulkier frame. So he’s a guy who played inside and outside in high school. But with his frame, he had the ability to put on more weight to be able to be an edge setter. He was all for helping the team. It’s like starting over. He spends a whole year learning a position, at one position, and hey, these are my alignments, these are my fits, these are my coverage responsibilities, and then you start over. So I think you saw that in the spring. I’ve been pleased with the growth I’ve seen this fall. He’s improved as a rusher, which he didn’t get to do as much last year. I think I’ve really seen him flash there. He’s a heavy handed guy. So he needs to keep developing, but he has a skill set that can help us out there. EG’s doing great. You always want to temper expectations on young players, but he has a maturity to him, a work ethic to him. He’s obviously a big guy with a lot of athleticism. So we hope that Elijah’s able to help us this year. The capacity with which he’ll be able to help us is really about how he continues to grow in advance, but he’s had a good start to camp.” 

On the defensive meeting the standard overall last season… 

“I don’t think we were consistent enough to meet the standard. That’s just the reality. You can’t have games against five playoff opponents, teams that made the 12 team playoff, and play really well there, and then have four other games where you give up 28 points more, point blank period. We know that it has to be better, and you can’t be up and down. Consistency is a mark of great defense. We talk about being a leader or not, to be a leader, you have to be consistent. That’s what makes something elite. So we can’t have up and down performances. Everybody in that room knows that when they came to Georgia, they came to Georgia to play championship level defense, coaches, players included, and so anything short of that isn’t the standard.” 

On the importance of a football coach being a teacher and how to become a better teacher… 

“Well, as a teacher, you teach your students. You have to have the ability to teach to different learning styles, if you’re trying to reach the whole room. So there are times that you have to teach at a pace that’s exciting enough to keep the attention of the guys that have been here and have a high level of understanding. You have to challenge them for their growth, but you also have to teach at a pace that still reaches the guys that are learning. That’s what I think makes a great teacher, is the ability to get through to all levels of understanding. You got some guys that came and played single-A football, and some guys that came from an IMG academy. The level of football they’ve been exposed to is different. So you can’t just coach to one guy. I told the line manager this morning it’s hard for some guys to learn in a lecture hall. There’s 100 students in there. When we have meetings, it’s interactive. So part of teaching is interacting. I don’t want to sit up here and be like Charlie Brown, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. That’s not good. They need to interact, they need to ask questions. So part of that is making sure they understand that communication from them matters, and if they’re not giving it back to us, we can’t help them. We can’t know when they don’t understand. But then part of it on our end is making an effort to reach each individual. How you explain something to one person might not make sense to the next person. So you can’t just teach it one way. You have to find a way to reach each individual, because that’s our job as coaches.” 

Special Teams Coordinator Kirk Benedict 

On how Georgia plays starters on special teams… 

“It’s been an area where young players can develop, but it’s also been an area where a lot of really good players play. I think that’s really key when you talk about being good on special teams. Not only from a culture standpoint, but also from the actual play on the field. We did. We had the same type of level of dedication of starters playing on special teams. You have got to watch their reps and whatnot, but the emphasis was there. And obviously the emphasis is there, but you’re playing with a little bit of a different product.” 

On the punt being the most important play in football… 

“Punts and punt returns, those are the ones that happen most often in the area of special teams. And we look at it as every single time we’ve got an opportunity to punt the ball. A lot of people look at it and go, we have to punt the ball. We think our punt team is a weapon for us, and we dedicate a lot of time and a lot of personnel to that. Anytime we punt, there’s 40 yards plus up for grabs. If you can take advantage of that over the course of a game, three to four punts, that adds up over time in the area of hitting yardage. Say you’re in a situation where you’re backed up. You can take a really bad situation, and you can turn it into a great situation. Take Thorson’s punt against Tennessee in 2022. You know, we’re not necessarily in a great field position. We turn it around to a ball out at the 1, turns into a backed up punt, turns into a fair catch on the plus 35, and then a touchdown the next play. So that is a big area where we can affect field position. And we dedicate a lot of time, and we play a lot of new players on it. We work at it a lot and put a lot of investment into it.” 

On watching snaps in-game… 

“You go into a plan every single game with, ‘Okay, we’ve got this guy here.’ When’s he doing the play before, you’ve got maybe an offensive player. Last year we had Arian Smith and we had Dominic Lovett. They were two of the best gunners in the country, and they were really good at what they did. But at the same time, there was a good chance that both those guys were going to be in on third down. Every single third down, we would have all of our gunners that were behind them report to the pad. If they were running a go route, then they had to turn around and cover a punt, that’s not necessarily fair to ask them to do that. We definitely had eyes on that and awareness of that. I think just their overall level of snaps that someone’s going to play throughout the course of the game, I think it’s imperative that you have a great backup and you have a good plan for those guys so you don’t have a big fall off.” 

On Zachariah Branch and where he can help the team this year… 

“Zach’s done a great job. He brings something that you don’t get all the time, which is in-game experience. In-game experience is really valuable and it’s good for him to have that. I think he’s going to come here and he’s going to have a positive impact on our return units. But he’s working back there with a lot of guys, working probably more returners than we have just as far as catching the ball, reps, we’ve got a lot of dynamic guys back there. But punt returners, we’ve got Zachariah back there, Landon Roland’s back there as a freshman, Talon Taylor and then we’re still working Cash Jones and London Humphrey. He’s back there and he’s repping, he’s getting really valuable reps here. Got a lot of catches this summer, and I think he’s continuing to grow. I think any time you’ve got a good returner, and I think we can get a good one out of that batch, especially with the in-game experience of Zach, I think that will help us for sure. Drew Miller was put into a pretty tough situation last year when Brett got hurt.” 

On Drew Miller’s performance in the Sugar Bowl and his preparation for this season… 

“They always tell backup quarterbacks that you better prepare like you’re going to be the starter, I think you say the same thing for backup punters. It’s also a little less realistic that the backup punter is going to go in the game. He had to prepare probably differently than he ever has, and he had longer to do it for one game. He did a great job. The most valuable thing is in-game experience and having him get that in-game experience is going to be huge moving forward throughout his career. He’s got some years of eligibility left as he goes forward. He prepared really well, and I think it helps too when you put a punter out there and you look around. You see the guys that he has surrounding him in that situation. He felt really comfortable with the personnel that was out there with him and knowing that they had his back.” 

On stats to gauge punting yardage goals… 

“Every single game we track hidden yardage. So how many yards did we gain in the special teams realm? Where did our offense start on their drives based on their offense? Where did we help our defense out? Where did we help our offense out? Every single yard has to be yards, and that could be anywhere from six yards to maybe it’s negligible. Itt could be sometimes as big as 90 yards, which is when you look at it, basically a complete offensive drive. We track that every single game. It’s an area that we harp on our guys, because sometimes you can go out there on a special teams play and the reward yield is not as big as you may think. Coming off the field, you look at it over the course of a game and you’re like, ‘Wow, that impacted the game significantly.’ So we do track that on a daily basis.” 

On Brett Thorson’s return from injury… 

“It’s been fun to coach Brett over the years as a punter. Seeing him rehab an injury, you get to see him in a different light. I’ve been proud of him the way that he has attacked the rehab and how he’s really been proactive about getting after it into the training room. He’s been great, he’s on schedule, he’s doing great, he’s doing everything the training room has asked him to do and probably more. He’s eager and right on track, he’s doing well.” 

On the important of the gunners and replacing Arian Smith and Dominic Lovett… 

“We’ve had a good track record of gunners around here with Arian and Dominic. You go back and look at the success they had combined with Thorson’s punts, and those guys were great. I think the biggest thing as far as what you look for in a gunner is one, speed, fire, passion, and energy comes into that too. Two be out there. Three, the ability to get someone on the ground. You don’t always know that with offensive players. You’ve got to put them out there in practice and situations to make sure that they have that third one. Those three things, speed, fire, passion, energy, and ability to get someone on the ground is huge. I think Arian and Dom have made it easier for us to look forward to the future of who’s going to replace them. They set such a high standard that now it’s not something like pulling teeth to ask someone to go out there and do it. They want to do it. It’s become kind of a place of honor on our punt team. It’s up for grabs, and it’s a competition, and we’ve got a lot of good candidates. We’ve got London Humphreys working over there. We’ve got K.J. Bolden working a gunner. We’ve got Daniel Harris. We’ve got Jeremy Bell. We’ve got Daylon Everett. You know, no one is off the table when it comes to working at that position. We’ve had a lot of good candidates. We’ve got a lot of guys that can run. We’ve got some guys that can get some guys on the ground. That’s a great competition to keep an eye on and obviously one that those guys want to be a part of.” 

On recruiting kickers and punters… 

“This is why you should come to Georgia. Development, right? When you have a good track record with kickers and punters, typically those guys see the track record. They want to follow in the same footsteps as those guys. The other thing too, we all know that the platform that Georgia provides as far as the level of competition that you’re going to have. That attracts the right type of specialist that we want. To come in and be a kicker as a freshman, to come in and be a kicker even as a sophomore, and to be put on that stage early is something that you can’t shy away from. Those guys wanting to come here and be that guy tells you a little bit more about their mindset and how they attack things on a daily basis. They want to come kick at Georgia, they’re going to come kick in front of hundreds of thousands. They are going to have that pressure, and they want it.” 

On the difference of kick off return yards between the 2023 and 2024 seasons… 

“Fair catch, yeah. A lot of that was situational, so obviously there’s a lot of really good kickers in the SEC. We have got a lot of balls coming out of the back of the end zone. As far as the statistics, being ranked really well and then not having as great of a year last year, that’s been a point of emphasis in this fall camp. We show the statistics, we say this is where we want to get better, but at the same time some of that was also a little bit situational. We had some squibs, some unfortunate bounces as far as the ball checking up on the sideline that we didn’t necessarily get to have your normal return that you would get to set up. But with that being said, it’s great fuel to the fire. Those guys have attacked KOR up to this point through six practices really well. But I think that’s definitely an area that we want to try and get better at.” 

On kicker mechanics for accuracy… 

“It could be mental or it could be mechanics. Sometimes the mental part leads to the mechanics. You have got to keep an eye on both. You also got to have conversations with them about what’s going on and see if you can fix that part too or help them along in that part. The biggest thing is people that maybe claim to be kicking gurus, I think the biggest thing you can do is watch film of them and talk them through, and you basically show them, ‘Hey, here’s what you were doing when it worked well; here’s what you’re doing now. Let’s get back to what we were doing when it worked well. Then, ‘Why are you doing that?’ I think that’s important, the why, when you’re coaching kickers. That can sometimes lead into the mental part. You have got to watch them, help them and be there for them through the process of maintaining consistency.” 

On using KJ Bolden as a gunner… 

“No, not at all. He’s going to be put in very similar situations as a gunner than he would be playing safety. So we have the best players play special teams, and especially on Punk, and I think he’s going to be a real asset there.”