Head Coach Mark Richt
Opening Statement…
“I want to talk to the Bulldog fans and tell you that I love
you and appreciate everything that you do. The Dog Walk will be at 5:00. We
will not be there before 5:00 like we did last time. We jumped the gun, and
there were probably fans getting ready to go to the Dog Walk and realized that
the players had already come through. We need to do a better job of that, so we
are definitely going to do a better job in that regard.
“The other thing I wanted to mention with our fan base is
how we take care of our campus. It’s one of the most beautiful campuses in the
country and we want to keep it that way. We are Georgia and I am encouraging
everyone to put the trash where it belongs and if you have to bring some baggage, bag your trash. Let’s do that, because it is a
beautiful place and we don’t want it to look like the city dump after a
ballgame. I want to encourage everyone to do that, and if everybody takes care
of yourself and helps the guy next to you, it will be looking good when we’re
done. It’s OK to pick up someone else’s trash if you want to; I do it all the
time.
“Jeff Owens was named to the AFCA Good Works Team. There are
only 11 in the country that got that, and Jeffrey did that and it’s wonderful.
“One more announcement is this week the American Football
Coaches Association is getting involved in the Coaches Cure for Muscular
Dystrophy, and we are going to participate in that. We want to show our support
for the fight against muscular dystrophy.
“We are playing Arizona State for the second year in a row.
We were fortunate to go to their place and get a victory. I was very thankful
last year that it ended up being a night game. By the time the game started, we
were in the shade, which was nice. Our sideline was actually on the shaded side
of the stands. It was good for us. We didn’t quite get the 100
degree heat that we thought we might get after it cooled down. Now they
are coming to play us. I’m sure they aren’t too thrilled about the fact that we
beat them last year; they’ll be ready to go. They are outstanding all the way
around. They are undefeated. I’m sure they are excited about the opportunity to
come and play an SEC team and maybe get a little revenge. Coach (Dennis)
Erickson, we all know, has won a couple of national
championships. He’s been coach of the year many times. We are going to have a
heck of a game. I’m looking forward to it. It’s good to get a couple of wins
under our belt and grab a little momentum. Hopefully we can keep it going.”
On how A.J. Green has
developed since the Arizona State game last year...
“He’s close to 20 pounds heavier than the day he came to
Georgia, so he’s definitely a stronger receiver. I’ve seen no drop-off in speed
or quickness. He’s a much better blocker. He certainly has a greater
understanding of what we are trying to do. Last year we had some guys guiding
him almost every play early in the year. Of course as the season went on he got
more comfortable. He has changed the game for us to a certain degree. I don’t
think there is any question that Arkansas and really everybody that we’ve
played has had a very strong awareness of where he is. Arkansas, as you look at
the tape, you can see that they definitely were rolling their coverage to A.J.,
no matter where he was. A lot of
times in a three-receiver set, not many coaches are going to double the
receiver in the boundary and leave that three receiver set to the field in some
kind of quarters coverage. Everybody is running an overload where they get a
backside safety involved on that three-receiver side and play a lot of man
coverage on the back side, but they didn’t do that very much. What happened
throughout the game is we began to throw the ball to Michael Moore, Aron White and Tavarres King. The
guys that were opposite of A.J. began to make plays; the tight ends down the
middle, I mentioned White and we also had Orson Charles catch a couple of big
balls down the middle. They are all beginning to benefit from the types of
coverage A.J. has been seeing. Then it got to the point where they had to go
back to running the overload and playing press coverage. That was the one time
we happened to throw the fade to A.J. for a touchdown. So A.J., in turn,
benefited from those guys making plays. That is something we had talked about
all offseason where early in the year we felt like the receivers opposite of
A.J. were going to benefit from some coverage looks and they were going to have
to take advantage of it. If the played well enough, maybe we could free up A.J.
to get some single coverage opportunities, and that’s what’s happened. I think
Mike (Bobo) did a good job of scheming to get the
ball to A.J. even though they were playing some double coverage on him. We
still got the ball to him and he still was a factor in that regard too.
“I don’t think there is a certain type of route that you’d
say he is best at. He can run very route. I wouldn’t say he’s just a deep ball
guy, I wouldn’t say he’s just a quick-screen guy. He can really run just about
any route that we want him to run. When you take his combination of height and
the range of his arms, his speed and agility; a lot of guys who are tall might
be fast and can make a play on a deep ball, but A.J. can outjump
people, he can run by people. He can make them miss, and he’s becoming a pretty
darn good blocker. There isn’t much that you’d ask a receiver to do that he can’t do well. He’s pretty good. I’m glad we have him.”
On mixing the
tailbacks…
“There will definitely be a plan to play both of them. I’m
not even sure we have settled on who will start, though I will say Richard
(Samuel) will start the game; I’m pretty sure that’s going to happen. Caleb
(King) did very well. He ran the ball well. He pass protected well and secured
the ball well. He showed no signs of the hamstring becoming an issue for him,
so it was a very good performance for Caleb. I think our tailback position just
got stronger by virtue of that. Carlton (Thomas) certainly has done a nice job
for us, and we still have confidence that he can go in there and play ball for
us.”
On Georgia’s punting
game and long snapper Ty Frix…
“Ty’s Frix, of course his daddy
snapped for Georgia and was on the national championship team. I think he was
on a couple of SEC championship teams. I didn’t want to mention Ty much in the
preseason, because when you have a brand new snapper, you don’t really want to
tell the world about it, so I didn’t say much. Then we he sailed that snap over
the punter’s head, everybody knew who he was. There was a lot of juice on that,
by the way. He really has a strong snap, so I guess we could say there was a
silver lining there. Other than that snap, he’s been extremely accurate. He has
a great operation time. Between he and (Drew) Butler, we get the ball off
pretty quickly; maybe as quick as all the years I’ve been at Georgia, which is
great. He actually has a couple of tackles under his belt. A lot of times a
snapper is a guy who you just hope he can get that one job done, and if he
happens to fall into one as far as a tackle is concerned, you are happy. He
actually gets down and does a good job of breaking down and made a couple of
nice open field tackles, so that’s a bonus with him.
“As far as our punter, Drew, what can you say other than
he’s been fantastic. There is still improvement to be made. When he has decided
to kick it deep, it’s been over the heads of the return men. We do still need
to be very conscious of hang time, because there are so many great return men
that we’ll face throughout the rest of the year. A 55-yard punt and a 60-yard
punt is exciting, but if it doesn’t have the hang time that it needs to get our
people to cover, it’s too much space for dangerous runners, so we have to
continue to be conscious of the hang time and not get too enamored with the distance.
It’s hard to do when you are leading the country in that category or first or
second in that category, but he has to stay unselfish for the team’s sake.”
On Georgia’s biggest
issues it needs to shore up
“I always make the analogy of the team being a train. You
want to get that train on the track and you want to get it rolling down the
track and gain momentum and energy as you go. It’s hard to get that train going
from a dead start. After losing that first game, we didn’t’ get it moving it
all. The second game took a lot of effort to get it rolling, and now we are
getting it rolling pretty good, but I think we’ll roll a whole lot faster if we
don’t have the two anchors out the back of the caboose that are stuck in the
ground dragging behind us, and that is our turnover ratio is very poor and
penalties have cropped up on us. If we can just cut those anchors lose, I think
we will fly even better and if we just improve in those two areas, I think
everything will improve.”
On shoring up
Georgia’s pass defense…
“It’s always the same answer, a combination of pressure and
coverage. Which comes first? What helps the other one the most? The better you
cover, the longer that quarterback has to throw the ball. If you’re in zone
coverage, or man for that matter, we have some man coverage where it’s still
only a four-man rush. We have a couple of high-hole and a low-hole player that
are playing zone, a robber-type coverage. The better
you cover, the longer the quarterback has to hold the ball and it allows your
pressure to get to him. We also know that if we put pressure on the quarterback
he tends to throw the ball too soon or a little bit off balance, and that helps
your coverage. It’s as simple as that. We have to cover better and we have to
put more pressure. One area where I thought we might be putting a little more
pressure on the quarterback where we really haven’t up to this point on a
consistent basis is right up the middle. We need to get more from the inside
push. If the quarterback does step up he’s got nowhere to be comfortable or no
space and we’ve had too much of that.”
On Georgia’s defense
against the run…
“We have been stout against the run. I think some of the
passing yards have to do with the fact that people haven’t had a lot of
success. Coach (Steve) Spurrier and Coach (Bobby) Petrino like a balanced attack. They found more success
throwing so they did throw. Is it very unusual to be able to stop the run and
not pressure the passer. I wouldn’t say it’s highly
unusual. There are certain body types that can maybe stuff the run better than
they can get after a passer but I wouldn’t categorize our guys that way. If you
looked at it from a statistical point of view, you might start drawing that
conclusion. But I’ve seen Jeffrey (Owens), Geno (Atkins), Kade (Weston),
DeAngelo (Tyson), I’ve seen all those guys, and even young Abry (Jones), they
all have the ability to rush the passer and push the pocket. We just haven’t
done it well enough on a consistent basis. So that’s definitely a big point of
contention for us.”
On Georgia’s defensive
identity…
““Game one, I think they actually played an outstanding ball
game. Games two and three we certainly gave up a lot more passing yardage than
we thought we would. Our defense to this point has been outstanding in the red
zone. Once the team has gotten into the red zone whether it’s through a drive,
which doesn’t happen that much, or more with the turnovers and the kick return
yardage.
“Over half the time, they force field goals instead of
touchdowns, which is a huge victory. We’ve had to start playing defense on the
six, on the eight, on the 23, on the 42, on the 37. Before the last game we had
six times where they started the drive in field goal range; three times we
forced field goals and three times they did score touchdowns. We had three
turnovers in the first quarter the last ballgame. We had a wonderful stop to
start the game, and we are going to get great field position, and we fumble the
punt. All of a sudden they have to roll back out there and play ball again.
Then we fumbled the pitch to Richard (Samuel) and all of a sudden they have to
go play defense on the short field again. The pick wasn’t quite as bad, because
they did have the two penalties that pushed them back, but again two more
turnovers where we put our defense in a very bad spot. I would love to see what
would happen if we don’t have to deal with that kind of thing. When we’ve
defended the long field, we’ve defended it extremely well. Going into last
game, it was a rate of 28 percent that they scored on the long drives. Any
drives over 50, the only scored 28 percent of the time, and one
of those drives was aided by a fake punt, which ended up being one of the
drives. Of course we had a snap over the head, we had an interception for a
touchdown. As a team we have not helped our defensive unit when it comes to
those things. We need to do a better job of getting our field position right. I
would just like to see what happened if we did that quite frankly.”
On whether the stats
are an indication of how well the defense has played…
“After two games we were averaging 19 points a game that we
pretty much gave to them if you take the six drives that I think one was 43 and
the rest were 32 or less where the drive started, and a pick six and the snap.
That was a total of 38 points that was given up in those situations. It’s a
miracle with our turnover ratio that we’re 2-1 right now and undefeated in the
league. You can look at it a couple of ways. You can be upset about everything,
which I’m not pleased with some of those issues, but you also can say if we
could just clean up things that are very correctable, who knows how good we can
be? I just want solid improvement. If we just keep getting better and better
and better as we go, we are going to have a chance to be pretty good.”
On Richard Samuel’s
turnovers…
“I’m not too thrilled about it. I don’t know if we are ready
to move him from the No. 1 position, but I would say if that kind of thing
continued, we’d have to really consider whether or not he should start for us.
You can’t have two a game, that’s for sure, and continue to play the kind of
football you need to to win. You just have to do a
better job.”
On how criticism
affects the team…
“I think people don’t understand how busy we are. We are
working our tails off. I would guess we are working somewhere around 80 hours a
week. We are going. We are looking
at the next opponent. We are getting prepared for the next game and trying to
correct any mistakes that we made in this game, but we are moving forward and
constantly doing that. We don’t get too caught up in that kind of thing. We are
a very, very strong team. The one game that we didn’t play that great
offensively is the one game we lost; we won the next two. Winning is what it’s
all about. You are not going to see anyone pointing fingers. You are not going
to see anyone do anything other than encourage their teammate and their fellow
coach. That’s just the way we’ve been operating here for the last nine years
and that’s not going to change.”
On whether Vance Cuff
will play Saturday…
“He’s possible. He won’t go today. At this point, I’d say
it’s possible that he plays. We’re more hopeful than not. If he can’t do
anything at all tomorrow, we’d probably get a little discouraged, but Ron (Courson) feels like he is going to have a chance.”
#14 Joe Cox:
On being named the
Walter Camp National Offensive Player of the Week…
“I was pretty surprised. That’s a pretty big honor to get. I
knew we had a good game, but anytime you get an award like that it’s definitely
something that you are really proud of and feel really honored by.”
On talking with former
Georgia quarterback D.J. Shockley…
“He wishes me luck before the games, but it’s not like we
have long conversations with him telling me everything that I should be doing.
He just tells me to have fun with everything that comes with the job and to
just play loose and play football. I think that’s what our offense has been
doing the past two weeks that we didn’t do week one. We just wanted to have
fun, cut everything loose and just worry about playing hard. I think that’s
been the difference.”
On if he has watched
any of the Arizona State-Georgia game film from last season…
“Yeah, and we’ve watched a lot of their tape. They’re a good
team with a good defense, especially this year. You can tell that they are
playing really hard and flying around. They’re going to want to prove something
when they come here Saturday, so we need to keep practicing like we’ve been
practicing, working hard and preparing for this week they way we have the past
couple of weeks.”
#22 Richard Samuel:
On the play of the
offensive live…
“I feel the line is playing real good. They’ve gelled
together and they’re playing real good. We lost Trinton
Sturdivant a couple weeks back, but we put another
guy in and continued going.”
On quarterback Joe
Cox’s performance against Arkansas…
“Joe’s performance was real good. He just showed what he’s
capable of doing no matter what happens or what people say.”
#12 Tavarres King:
On what sophomore
flanker A.J. Green does that amazes him the most…
“Nothing. Not a thing. That’s Superman right there. He
really is. Nothing he does surprises me. He’s just awesome.”
On if defenses are
playing Georgia as the team expected this year with the presence of A.J. Green…
“We knew coming into the season that his name was out there
and that people were going to try to double team him and maybe even throw
triple teams at him. We knew that was going to happen, and things are going as
planned so far.”
#13 Drew Butler
On his punting career…
“I always knew I was a more natural punter and I had the
potential to punt at the SEC level. My dad was great to have as a personal
coach and to be able to talk and ask him questions after practice. I actually
did not start punting and kicking for the football team until my sophomore year
of high school. Growing up I always just played soccer and golf. My junior year
I realized that I might have college ability and here I am today.”
#58 Demarcus Dobbs
On having to go back
on defense when offense turns the ball over…
“We just tell them to keep their heads up and that we will
get it back for them and they will make it up. And this past game they did just
that.”
On putting pressure on
the quarterback…
“Our defense is centered on stopping the run first. But we
are so focused on stopping the run that we have to do a better job at
converting to pass rush and getting to the quarterback. I think that will come
with experience and being able to read stats better and studying their
offensive line.”
On the high scoring
games…
“It is a bitter sweet feeling. We are glad we came out with
a win, and we think we did some good things on defense, but when you look up at
the score board and see all the points that were put up against you, you will
start looking at things within yourself and ways to get better and change that.
“
#35 Rennie Curran
On the one team he
would love to play…
“Southern Cal because they are respected across the nation
and they get a lot of hype. Also, because of the kind of program they have. I
was hoping we would get them a couple years ago in the Sugar Bowl, but they had
their rule with the Rose Bowl. I think that would have been bigger than the
National Championship.”
On traveling to other
parts of the country to play…
“It makes me realize that we have the best fans in the
world. For us it is just a business trip when we go, but it is cool to see the
different atmospheres and what type of things they do.”
On the high scoring
games…
“It is frustrating as a defense. We want to hold the offense
to the least amount of yards and least amount of points as possible, but we are
definitely doing the right things. We are keeping a good attitude, working hard
and encouraging each other. There were a lot of times in the last game that we
could have pointed fingers and got discouraged, but we didn’t and it has really
helped build us up. We know where we are at as a defense, and I feel that we
are not very far from being great. We just need to take care of some of the
details and I think we can be a great defense and shut people down.”