Kirby Smart gives us a recap and his take on the 2024 G-Day Game. What did he see from the team that he liked? Is he worried about the transfer portal going into 2024? How is Carson Beck Looking after the game? Why did he end it with a tie? Find out all this and more!
KIRBY ON HOW G-DAY WENT:
I thought the defense played much better today than they did in previous scrimmages in terms of like energy, enthusiasm, running to the ball, we rushed the passer better today. Offense probably didn’t have as good a day as maybe they’ve had in the two scrimmages, but overall I don’t evaluate things on today. I know you guys will ask questions and talk about today. For me it was about the entire spring 15 practices. Very pleased with our our health coming out of it.
CARSON BECK’S SPRING:
Carson had a great spring to me. He’s had a quiet leadership, he’s got a lot of confidence when things aren’t going well to kids and players and O-line turned to him. He had really good moxie out in the field. He never, you know, pressed or got frustrated even today. He drove the team down and made some really elite throws there at the end to give us. A chance to tie the ball game, but taking the day out of it. I mean, I don’t. I don’t even go off today. He’s had a good spring. He’s just he knows how to navigate a pocket. He knows where to go with the ball. There’s nothing he hasn’t seen on defense, so I’m happy with where he is going to continue to grow as a leader.
ON THE DEFENSIVE BACKS:
That we got a long way to go. You know, we lost three really good football players there and we’re saying we got better in the secondary, but we’re not where we need to be in terms of being able to make plays on the ball downfield and affect the quarterback.
KIRBY WANTS 4 SCHOLARSHIP QBs:
Yeah, our goal is to have 4 and a really good walk on that’s the goal. We think we’ve got a fourth walk on kid. It’s a really good player that’s coming in and excited about him. We thought he was a really good player in our state. You know, we’ll see what happens. I… I can’t predict the portal. I won’t even try to, you know, I’m… I’m… I’m worried about our guys and…and the retention of our players.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE PROGRAM:
Lifting. Monday we get after it we’re going to work out. We’re going to target some guys weights. We’re going to drive some weights down, we’re going to lift. We got to get our bottom half of our roster to the top half and you’re not going to get there watching the spring game tape. You got to get to work. We’re going to work really hard on those guys. We’re going to keep meeting and talking to our players. I told them jobs not done. We’re not where we need to be. We just don’t get to practice anymore. We get to do other things so we’ll get back to work Monday.
ON LETTING THE GAME END IN A TIE:
Didn’t want to put a two point play on tape, which we did that last year. It was last year, the year before we did it and I was like, yeah, we won’t keep those things in our pocket. We don’t need to show off those and figure the kickers needed to work.
HOW CONCERNED IS KIRBY WITH PLAYERS & THE PORTAL:
I’m not. And then can I control it? I can’t. So I don’t. I mean, I don’t. If I concern myself with things I can’t control, I won’t live long. There’s just too much out there, so it’s really one of those things where it’s like, do you want to be here or do you not because they know how we do things by now. They all know. They said that was the easiest practice we’ve had all spring, so they enjoyed it thoroughly and guys want to be somewhere else. I have no control over that.
