Head coach Kirby Smart, inside linebacker Chris Cole, and offensive lineman Micah Morris, met with the media on Tuesday afternoon. They offered the following comments. 

Opening Statement… 

“We jumped into working on ourselves yesterday and got back to work for an off week. We had a good practice yesterday, got a lot of reps for our twos and threes, and today we’ll get a lot of reps for everybody. That’s a work day and work the rest of the week towards starting on our next opponent later in the week.”

 

On the running game…

“Some of the looks were just copycat looks that other people have done that we admire. That’s what everybody does offensively and defensively, is plagiarize from somebody else and take other ideas. It came from Coach Bobo and Coach Searels background as well as Coach Lilly and Coach Rauscher. A lot of different areas pulled from for those.”

 

On the offensive line’s development…

“Well, any work helps them. Growth walkthroughs help them, meetings help them. They’re just so far from their ceiling, because they haven’t had the same amount of work. They also have to be healthy, which makes it hard, because you’re balancing health and  reps, trying to get guys back healthy.”

 

On dealing with Tennessee’s tempo… 

“Tennessee’s a tempo team. They go fast all the time. If you’re asking, were we prepared for it? I certainly thought we were. It didn’t look like it, but we practiced it really hard, and it didn’t come to fruition, like the practice plan and the things we practiced didn’t play real well. They did a better job than us.”

 

On Juan Gaston’s status…

“He seems fine. He did some work yesterday. He’s got a midfoot that’s bothering him some, but it didn’t hold him back for much yesterday.”

 

On Juan Gaston’s development… 

“Juan is trying to get healthy. He came in. [Dontrell Glover] got a little banged up, and he came in and helped [Dontrell Glover] out there for a period of time, and then he had another ankle that was bothering him, and he came out, and they just kept going back and forth. He’s not completely all the way healed and trying to get well, so we’re just trying to get all those guys back,so they can get better.”

 

On the right tackle position…

“I don’t know. With [Ernest Greene III], we took some time there in the Austin Peay game to try to get him better and do some things with him rehab-wise and try to get him back. He certainly was not 100% and tried to go out there and go and give us all he could. I think his endurance and the stamina part was hard in that kind of game to go out there and just jump back in and play. Then, you know, we’ll continue to work on it and try to figure out what the best lineup is for everybody.”

 

On the secondary against Tennessee…

“There was some good and there was some bad. There’s probably more bad than good, obviously, but they’re not things that aren’t correctable. There’s some eye-control things. We’ve played Tennessee with a mindset of not giving up explosives and not getting the ball thrown over our head, and we’ve played well. Then when you get the ball thrown over your head and give up explosives, you don’t play well. It pretty much comes down to that. There’s 35, 40 plays in the game, and there were 35, 40 plays in a window of the game where we were in control of the game defensively, but it didn’t start that way, and it wasn’t that way late when we gave up the explosives, so there’s good and bad. All of those DBs have made that play before, but they didn’t make it when we had to make it.”

 

On Noah Thomas…

“He’s a guy that’s been really good for us, in terms of winning one-on-ones and practicing really hard. The team concept is important to him, knowing that it was important to him that he started on special teams. So he has really competed on punt block and PBR to help our team, and I think it’s going to help him in his future in terms of being able to be a special teams player. He’s made plays for us in practice. He’s done great. It’s really been unfortunate because there have been times that his number was called, and we didn’t necessarily protect it well, or something happened or something came in the way, but he has not been fazed by it. At least he’s not shown it to us. He works hard. He buys into the team morale and concept, and in this world of football, you never know when your number’s going to be called.  London [Humphreys] has probably never caught a ball on that route in his entire career, and that was the first time we’ve thrown it to that route. So you just don’t know when it’s going to happen. I think Noah will continue to work to get better for our team.”

 

On coaching man coverage…

“There are drills that we work on year-round. One of the three characteristics of defensive backs that you must have is the ability to play the ball in the deep part of the field, and it’s a critical factor that can be improved. Some people are inherently better than others at it, and we try to put them in those situations every day. You can’t do that enough to simulate it.” 

 

On the outside linebacker group…

“They’ve done everything we’ve asked them to do. They haven’t been in a lot of the games when we’ve had leads. We’ve subbed out a lot of guys, and they’ve done a tremendous job of that. The Tennessee game was certainly a very different game because their offense creates a style of play. We didn’t get a lot of third downs. When we got people to third down, we usually got them off the field, but we didn’t get them to third down a lot. So that group has worked really hard. They’ve closed and played our edges better. Gabe [Harris Jr.] and Q [Quintavius Johnson] in particular have played the edge game much better than we have in the past, and I’m excited to see what opportunities they get in the future.”

 

On approaching the bye week following a taxing game…

“There were very few guys that played 95 snaps. We didn’t have many offensive players that played 95 snaps. We had a few, but defensively, we platoon. We cut back some guys who had a large volume, and that’s the way we try to look at it from the standpoint of getting recovery,(8:29) getting their legs back underneath them. At the same time, we have to train to get better,  and there’s a lot of things we can get better at, and that’s our target area for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.”

 

On Micah Morris’ performance…

“He’s a good puller. He’s powerful. He’s done it a lot from a conditioning standpoint. He was a guy that played 95 snaps. I’m pretty proud of him for that. I’d like for him to play with more effort and cover down with more strain for longer, like some of our other low linemen are able to do. He has done a great job of getting his weight down. He’s been a rock for us and understands leverage and protections. He’s experienced. The biggest thing he can do is help those younger guys grow and get better with how he works, his work ethic, what kind of example he sets for them, and what kind of attitude he has to daily work. We want to  improve those young guys, and that’s a big ask of Micah for us.”

 

On Chris Cole…

“He’s been great. He’s taken on three roles. He takes on a role as a sub pass rusher, a normal-down inside backer, and a normal-down regular personnel sandbacker. That’s three pretty different, very distinct roles that he takes on and we have to find ways to keep utilizing Chris’s strengths. He has strengths that we have to utilize, and he’s a good playmaker, so I’m proud of the way he’s practicing and playing.”

 

On the impact of players believing in Gunner Stockton…

“You want to play hard for players that make sacrifices and that you like. Ultimately, when you like someone, you love someone, you endear yourself to someone, you play harder for them, and the players love Gunner. They want to play hard for him. He doesn’t complain, he doesn’t point fingers, and he doesn’t lay blame. He takes hits on the chin and takes some pretty vicious ones, and he gets up and goes on to play the next play. I think there’s a lot of respect in that humility that the other players on offense and really the whole team have for Gunner.”

 

On Peyton Woodring’s consistency…

“It’s tremendous confidence, number one, in him because he’s been there, done that. He’s been in some really tough environments. I don’t think he’s affected or swayed by emotions, but I think he’d be the first to give a lot of credit to. Also, to Bo and the guys that he’s involved with in terms of snapper, holder, kicker. It’s a three-part deal that he gets credit for, but I think those guys with him are very elite as well.”

 

On the benefits of a shorter trip back to Athens…

“I think the recovery is not much different. I think it’s a lot more about when you play than where you play. The night game, getting back at 2 or 3 a.m. has more impact than how far you travel. I don’t think that plays a significance. I think it’s more significant night versus day.”

 

On preparing for opponents during the bye week…

“Our off-week strategy has always been to look at opponents furthest away first and back into the team that’s most recent. So, we work on everybody that we would play before the next bye week, in terms of coaches, we may not work on it with players. We don’t have enough time. We work on ourselves on the field, and the coaches work on every team we have upcoming.”