Kirby Smart surprised no one on Tuesday when he says that this Georgia team still has some growing to do after its second scrimmage.
Kirby Smart is known for being tough to please. It should never come as a surprise when he is quick to point out where his Georgia football team struggles or when improvement is necessary.
That can especially be the place when the Bulldogs struggle defensively. According to sources, that was the case in Saturday’s second and final preseason scrimmage. The Georgia offense won the day. Smart has now had a chance to speak on that scrimmage
“They had a really good camp,” Smart said of his team after noting that they pushed through hot temperatures on Saturday. “We practiced Thursday, Friday, really hard leading into Saturday. So we didn’t expect to have high speeds in terms of the guys running. That wasn’t the purpose. The purpose was to get game-like situations, tackle live. We achieved those purposes, and we came out pretty unscathed injury-wise, which is big when you tackle. So we still got a ways to go, didn’t have as much success defensively in the second scrimmage as we did in the first, but we had bright spots individually, probably on both sides of the ball.”
The opposite was true in the first scrimmage. Those who observed it told DawgsHQ that the defense won the day. Georgia’s offense struggled to move the football outside of some explosive plays. That was especially true on the ground where running room was tough to come by.
Gunner Stockton, who Smart still declines to name the starter despite the fact that he took the fourth-year junior to SEC Media days, only got three series with the ones. Ryan Puglisi got significant action with the ones and twos while Ryan Montgomery had a big day playing mostly with the third team and some with the second.
Georgia essentially broke camp nearly two weeks ago when players moved back to their dorms after nine to 10 days in the Georgia Center Hotel. The Bulldogs stayed in camp mode all of last week, continuing to work on itself rather than the season opener. Those preparations will begin later this week, but Smart says that there was one main difference between this camp and those prior.
“Yeah, I felt that the scrimmage was hot, and it affected our performance as opposed to the first scrimmage,” Smart said while later noting that the first couple of weeks of camp were cooler than normal. “In the history of those scrimmages, it usually goes scrimmage one, struggle, scrimmage two, we get better. This was more of a scrimmage one with 70 degrees, it was really fast, it was really competitive, it was a really good scrimmage one, and then scrimmage two was similar to past scrimmage twos where we had some sloppiness, guys got tired, water in the shoes, just it was hot.”
Category: General Sports
