University of Georgia head football coach Kirby Smart met with media on the Southeastern Conference's weekly teleconference call while Sedrick Van Pran and Kearis Jackson offered post-practice comments.
Head Coach Kirby Smart
Opening Statement…
"Our guys have had three good days of prep; we continue to work. Got started with a lot of them on Sunday, a lot of them came in to watch tape, we really got a head start there. Monday and Tuesday have been good practices. The hope is to get the same kind of energy and enthusiasm today to prepare a really good football team, one of the hottest football teams there are in terms of scoring points. They have done a tremendous job on offense with scoring a lot of points, they are really fast. It has just been tough preparation to prepare for these guys offensively and defensively. They do a tremendous job playing with a lot of energy and enthusiasm, you can tell."
On Jamaree Salyer…
"Yeah, the ground game is important. The passing game is important. The play-action game is important. The screen game is important. They are all important. So, we have to do a tremendous job in all facets of it. It is one of those deals in that a little bit of it is dictated by how they play you defensively. If teams continue to play tight techniques, tight fronts, put people in the box… I mean there is a lot that goes into the ability to run the ball. That is a big part of what we do that sets up other things. As far as Jamaree goes, like I said yesterday, he has gotten better. He has been able to do some weight bearing things. He did that all in walk-throughs, all the practice stuff, conditioning as well, we are hopeful. But we won't know more until after practice today."
On Kendall Milton…
"He is running. He is doing a lot of work in the walk-through's, standing in type of stuff with the special teams. I don't know how far he is, but he is getting better. His conditioning with our strength coaches during short periods of the day and then he is walking reps and doing visual reps in other periods. But I don't have a timeline."
On preparing for the road environment…
"We work crowd noise like everyone in the country does. But it is not necessarily 'Rocky Top.' We have artificial crowd noise, and we have other periods where we music and we turn it up loud and try to focus and concentrate. Just a tough place to play. I think when you look across the league this year, you see a little more struggle with that because we went a year without it. We talked about it when we went into Auburn, 50 percent of your team has only played in those type of environments. Auburn was a tough one. Put those two places up against anyone in the country in terms of atmosphere. Again, it's eleven guys between the lines and the crowd noise can impact, it can create penalties…You have to be able to execute between the lines."
On the Tennessee defense…
"They have a lot of players with a lot of experience across the whole board. When you look at it, they have a group in the secondary that has player for a long time. (Jeremy) Banks has gotten better and better and better. Everyone knew coming out (of high school) he was going to be a good player, and experience helps you with that. He's grown. He's gotten better and when you play a lot of football games you have knowledge and experience. Things don't trick you for the first time. He's playing at a really high level."
On difficulties of preparing for the hurry up…
"The speed. It's obvious, right? The speed at which they get lined up. The hardest thing to prepare for that is the simulation of it. Everybody has tried to do it, but you can't duplicate it. You can only try to duplicate it. You have to do a good job of communication. Simulating that tempo and chaos is the hardest thing."
On Hendon Hooker…
"Incredible athlete. Composure. Poise. Hard to tackle. When he decides to run an extra running back. He throws the ball really well. He's got incredible arm strength and arm talent. He can throw the ball to all parts of the field. He has great velocity of the ball. Great touch on the ball. He's a weapon. He can make you right in every play… He's really hard to defend."
On the secondary…
"We have a lot of guys growing. We have a lot of guys getting a lot of work in. We have a lot of guys who have been in our program for a while, that work really hard. (Ameer)Speed, (Latavious) Brini, (Christopher) Smith, (William Poole). Those guys all have worked really hard for a long time, have been a part of our program and system to learn it. They are playing more now than they ever have. Our depth is probably not the same as it's been in terms of number of guys. We are still trying to work on that. Get more guys to work with and build and grow. Get where we can rotate and play more guys.
#63 Sedrick Van Pran| RS Fr. | OL
On the emphasis on run blocking in the previous game…
"It's definitely has been an emphasis for us just because honestly, we feel a little bit disrespected. We feel like our whole identity of who we want to be as an offensive line is to run the ball so it's something we're looking to fix going forward."
How does Nolan Smith make an impact at practice…
"Nolan is definitely one of the heartbeats of this team. He keep things going at practice. Every time we see him, he wants to move us and get us better. He keeps things going and when we may not be feeling it that day after maybe a long day of school, he definitely helps get guys going."
How has the team been handling the pressures that go along with being the number one team…
"Every week we're looking to get better. Honestly, every week we're looking to improve and find ways that we can dominate. I know a lot of people may look at it as we have a target on our back and people are trying to attack us, but we are focused on trying to get better every week and make sure we are doing what we need to do to execute on all cylinders."
#10 Kearis Jackson| RS Jr. | WR
On Julian Rochester playing on Saturday for the first time in a while...
"Julian has worked his tail off to get back. Everybody on the sideline was so excited to see him back out there. I looked up at the screen and said, 'Oh, that's Big Julian out there!' We all got excited because we love the physicality that Julian brings to the game. Just having him back out there is a huge piece to our defense."
On how Nolan Smith's leadership compares to his...
"Nolan's voice is like a microphone. He is so loud, especially at practice. He always brings a lot of energy, brings the juice. He keeps guys on their toes. He is always going to be out there pushing guys, going harder. His voice, he is very vocal. He brings a lot of energy and we are glad to have Nolan on this team."
On showing their explosiveness compared to other teams...
"That is all expectation. Every game that we go into, we want to be explosive. I know that many people do not look at this receiver corps as an explosive group, but at the same time, you can check the stats, check the numbers. We are just as explosive as any other team out there. We just love and enjoy playing football."