Georgia head coach Kirby Smart took the podium on Tuesday in Hoover, Alabama at the 2021 SEC Media Days.
Below you can read how Smart answered questions and you can click here to read his opening statement.
Q. Through your introspection and self-evaluation of last season, where do you need to be better to win the East this year?
KIRBY SMART: We need to be better everywhere. It starts with what we do. But the introspection was for us to find maybe a different way to do things and hear a different voice, and we’ve done that.
The weekly meetings that we’ve had, that we’ve drawn time away from football, have been incredible. The gains we received in players being able to confront each other. It’s easy to say the guy’s not doing his job, to demand him to do it right, but it’s hard when you have a unified group pulling the same direction to be the outlier.
We’ve tried to make that more difficult through our introspection and through our meetings and through our growth as a team. I’m just excited to see the dividends of that in fall camp of where we can go and where we can get better.
Q. Do you think that for the elite players, the guys that are headed to the NFL, that the name, image, and likeness opportunities can benefit them as a way to expose them to the business side of football before they get to the NFL where it’s even more of a business?
KIRBY SMART: Yes and no. Definitely, that experience can be valuable for them, but they probably are the ones that have to be the most careful with brand selection because, if your identity becomes the lowest on the totem pole just to get $200, $300, that’s not going to be real good branding when you get the opportunity to go to the NFL.
Those guys probably need it the least although they’re the most valuable, the face of the organization, the high draft pick, they need to be the most selective because what you brand yourself with doesn’t change.
Q. In the past, you’ve said you only want to use the transfer portal on a need basis, so what needs do the three guys that you did bring in — Arik Gilbert, Tykee Smith, and Derion Kendrick — help fill?
KIRBY SMART: Well, the first two, the defensive backs, we’re under our scholarship quota of defensive backs. We had two guys come out early, two guys come out of the portal. We’re at a deficit just from scholarship numbers, not to mention experience. Those two guys bring an immense amount of experience.
With Arik, anytime you can get a skill player that can do things with the ball, you’re always looking to be dynamic. You look at teams that have won the National Championship recently, they’re most dynamic on offense and at the skill positions.
Q. To kind of continue the thought you just said about the dynamism on offense, the last handful of title winners, we’ve really seen quarterbacks who have been able to stretch the field and have really played at an elite highest level in the sport. Do you think JT has that type of arm talent to be comparable to those guys? Where do you need to see him grow to get there?
KIRBY SMART: Absolutely, he has that arm talent. Actually, I don’t think that arm talent is the number one quality for being a great quarterback. There’s a lot that goes into being an elite quarterback.
The two guys that were the last two years’ national champions, they were really good quarterbacks. They were great decision makers. They were actually better athletes that people give them credit for. The decision-making process, touchdown-to-interception ratio, protecting the ball, using your playmakers, which both had really good playmakers around them, JT has those skill sets. Coach Monken has that experience doing it in the NFL. With Tampa Bay, they led the league in passing. We have the recipe for those things.
We’ve got to stay healthy, we’ve got to protect the quarterback, and we’ve got to find more skill players to make plays for us.
Q. I was wondering if you could tell me the story of how you became to have the cell phone number of Quavo. Secondly, another question, the NIL, how has that changed recruiting so far, and have you seen a trickle-down effect to high school?
KIRBY SMART: Haven’t seen a trickle-down effect to high school. Has it affected recruiting? It’s a discussion — how has it affected recruiting? I don’t think it’s impacted recruiting, especially when you talk about SEC to SEC recruiting. We’re under certain parameters, so it doesn’t make for a competitive advantage.
The biggest concern, and I think Commissioner Sankey hit on it yesterday, is federal legislation would be nice because, if you looked and you combed across the country, not everybody’s playing by the same rules. In other words, some schools are allowed to arrange deals. Some schools are not allowed to arrange deals.
In the SEC, our footprint has been very simplified, and it’s the competitive balance is there. So there’s not a distinct advantage. That’s not necessarily true across the country.
So it has not affected recruiting in a grand way. Does that change as more deals come out? Possibly.
As far as Quavo, that started back around the playoff run, National Championship run, he reached out, communicated through a couple of our players. He’s come and spoke to our team before. I have a lot of cell phone numbers in my phone.
Q. Can you just talk about the importance of having a spring practice in a summer when the team has really formed as opposed to kind of last year with the craziness of not having the whole team be able to go through a full spring and a summer to bring the group together.
KIRBY SMART: I can’t even put that into words. I think the biggest difference is spring practice. Having spring practice and the summer workout program that is traditional, in terms of conditioning, getting yourself ready for the heat, we didn’t even have that last year. So you can’t even put a measurement on that, not to mention a new quarterback with a new coordinator. So it was extremely different.
You don’t appreciate spring practice until you don’t have it, let’s just say that. A lot of states in the United States don’t have spring practice for their high school programs, so the development of those young men is impacted.
The footprint of the SEC, almost every state has spring practice, and you can see why in the roster that we have, with the young guys who have been impacted of having a spring practice. I’m talking about mid-years and players last year that didn’t get it.
Q. Sort of speaking on that spring practice thing, how have you seen the relationship between JT and Todd Monken grow in this somewhat normal off-season? And how critical is that relationship, especially between a quarterback and an offensive coordinator?
KIRBY SMART: It’s the biggest relationship there is because it’s not a set of positions. Every other position has multiple starters, different guys that play. At quarterback, it’s not typically that way. Whoever your starting quarterback is, he has to have direct communication.
You treat a quarterback differently at times. You give him lines of communication to tell you things he likes and doesn’t like, and they have it. Todd does a great job speaking with JT, and JT understands what he likes to do. JT does a great job of making sure that he’s keeping skill players accountable for what they have to do and demanding excellence.
I appreciate the thought that JT puts into the game plan. I appreciate the thought that he puts into the guys playing positions around him. That shows he’s a true quarterback and a true leader.
Q. I want to ask about Mike Bobo. Just what’s that relationship been like going back to y’all’s playing days together, and what do you think Auburn is getting in having him be offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach?
KIRBY SMART: Mike and I go way back. Both of our fathers were high school coaches and crosstown rivals. We grew up competing against each other and then got to live together in college.
He’s a dear friend. Close to their family. Excited for him to be back in the SEC. I think he makes the SEC a better conference. Glad to get him back this way.
Q. Obviously, Shane Beamer was on your staff for a couple of years. What do you remember most about Shane as an assistant and working with you? And now seeing him on the head coaching stage as well, what comes to mind, and what is that like to see?
KIRBY SMART: The preparation he puts into special teams, tight ends play, whatever he’s in charge of, he spends a lot of time and takes a lot of pride in the performance. That’s what successful people do. They take a lot of pride in their performance. They want it to be right.
I like to think it’s a demanding place that we work at, and he did a tremendous job meeting those demands.
Q. Kirby, can you explain kind of the back story of Jordan Davis deciding to come back to school. I think there’s a lot of people who watched the Peach Bowl and assumed, after the performance he had, that he would go off to the NFL.
KIRBY SMART: It’s not a big back story. We have a process we go through of educating our players. We get them information. Jordan was very deliberate about “I want to get information, Coach. I’m not making a decision prior to.” In this day and age, I don’t know that that happens all the time. I think a lot of kids make their mind up, it’s a predetermined decision, and he didn’t do it that way.
He’s got wonderful guidance at home. His mom, Miss Shay, that’s his why. Tray Scott has done a wonderful job with his relationship with Jordan. Jordan wanted to graduate. It’s really important to him that he graduates. He wanted to have a better season. He wanted the opportunity to do what so many SEC players have been able to do, to move up, and a lot of times the financial reward for moving up is greater than going right where he is.
He enjoys the college game. I think he’s excited about playing in Charlotte. He gets to go back to his hometown and open the season there.
Q. Kirby, I wanted to follow up on Derion Kendrick. How did the opportunity for you to add him come about? I know obviously he hasn’t been on campus too long, but what’s the significance of adding an all ACC player like that, as you said, in a secondary that didn’t even have the scholarship quota?
KIRBY SMART: D.K. is a kid that we knew through recruiting. We recruited him at University of Georgia, but Coach Muschamp also recruited him at South Carolina. Both of us felt like we had a good feel for his family and his dynamic there. He’s a young man that comes from a program that’s been very successful. He’s played and had a lot of experience.
When you look at what the portal took away from us and we lost, we were able to gain as well. I think that’s an interesting situation when you look across the board at what’s going to happen to the future of college football, whether it be NIL, combination of portal, of the haves and have nots, and that line of parity separating even more because we were able to get a guy that had a lot of great experience playing, and we needed someone at that position, having lost four DBs. They all got drafted. It was a dynamic situation we had to replace.
Q. Demetrius Robertson headed over to Auburn. What are they getting out of him as a player, and are you looking forward to seeing him again during the season?
KIRBY SMART: D. Rob is a tremendous young man. He’s a kid that I feel like I’ve known — I mean, I can go all the way back to the years at Alabama when we were recruiting D. Rob as a young player. Then I come to Georgia, continue to recruit him, don’t get him, get him by transfer, and now he’s going to graduate this summer and be able to go to Auburn.
I’m so excited for D. Rob because he’s a great young man. This young man did everything the right way. He’s got a lot of speed. He’s a vertical threat. I know Bobo and those guys at Auburn are excited to get him.