POSTGAME NOTES & QUOTES FROM BOTH UGA & ARKANSAS
Head Coach Kirby Smart
Opening statement ...
““The opening remark would be how incredible our fanbase is. They answered the bell today. I think all of you guys will admit that they were elite and we noticed it. To come out there in warmups, and coming out the tunnel to see every seat full at a noon kick is special. It’s special to be at Georgia, and they impacted the game. The first series for Arkansas on offense, our crowd was extremely disruptive. I thought our crowd impacted the blocked punt in terms of cadence and things like that, which forced a touchdown. So, I give our crowd, the
fans, at least 10 points ‐‐ and that’s big. We were patient today but aggressive, and that’s hard to beat. It’s hard to beat that in football, but we were patient and aggressive, and that’s important. We preached that all week ‐‐ one series at a time, not getting ahead of ourselves. I felt like Arkansas had a really good team, but that if we were patient while still being aggressive and physical that we could at least impose some of our own will. I have a lot of respect for Sam (Pittman) and his staff and their team, they have a really good football
team, but today our crowd was very impactful.”
On the run game....
“Well, it’s called scheme. I mean, it’s not a reinvigorated run game as much as it is you take what they give you. And we felt like it was important to play the game patient, but you're aggressive. And I would have definitely thought there might have been 53 runs in this game, 57 runs, whatever there were because that was the kind of game plan that we needed to approach it with. And you know that it might be different next week. The best teams I've ever been around can take on the personality of what they need to take on. I'm really proud of the offensive line. I'm proud of the offensive coaching staff. We did an incredible job game planning against what is a very good defense, in my opinion, a very good defense. And they did a really good job of game‐planning for that. So it had nothing to do with Stetson Bennett, the quarterback, it had nothing to do with a reinvigorated running game, it had to do with what we thought it took to win.”
#13 Stetson Bennett | Sr. | QB
On how well Georgia ran the ball...
"We knew we were going to have to (run it well) with the defense they run. They drop eight on every play ...
They are just robbing with your eyes, and it is hard to throw the ball. We knew ‐‐ the offensive line knew, the
running backs knew, the wide receivers knew, the tight ends knew ‐‐ that their job this week was to run the
ball, and that is what we did."
On having something to prove this week...
"We know how good we are. We know what it takes to be good every week. We know that we can lose to a
team any week. It does not matter how good they are if we do not go out and execute. We do not really care
what the rankings say. We just go out there and do our job. When we do it really well, and we execute, we are
pretty good."
#17 Nakobe Dean | Jr. | LB
On the defense getting early stops...
"Every time we get on the field, we are pushing for a three and out. That is just the standard. If they do not
score, they cannot win. We just try to do our job and get them off the field and get the offense the ball."
Head Coach Sam Pittman
Opening statement...
“I just want to start out by congratulating Georgia. They have ‐‐ at this point ‐‐ by far the best football team
we played. Kirby had his team ready, and I didn’t ‐‐ that is the bottom line. There were a lot of mistakes in the
game. But the bottom line is that we were not where we needed to be physically yet because they dominated
on both sides of the ball. Certainly, our special teams early in the game were not productive. We wanted to
come in and start fast, take their crowd out of the game, and the opposite happened. They put us in a hole,
and we couldn’t climb out of it because of their physicality.”
On his takeaways from the game...
“Well, a bunch of it was that we started in a hole. We worked on the movement and all that but definitely not
enough because we had several jump offsides. You know, it is hard to get 10 against Georgia let alone 15 and
on the first one it was 20. Guys, I don’t want to simplify this, but they just whipped us physically. It wasn’t guys
in the backfield turned loose or anything like that, we just couldn’t block them. We couldn’t get our blocks a
lot of the day. Then, when we did, it took us a long time to get them on the ground. We have to get better,
and we will. But today they just were more physical than us and kind of played bully ball on us and made us
like it. We didn’t like it but there was nothing we could do about it at times in the game. They were just rolling
us out of there on both sides of the line of scrimmage.”
#31 Grant Morgan | R‐Sr. | LB
On the game...
“That was a really good football team. You have to be able to say the facts. We came in thinking we would
have to play a perfect game to be able to win the game. Just be us. We didn’t win any of the three phases –
special teams, offense, or defense... We have to not let this let make it into two. We have to be able to go back
and start preparing for Ole Miss.”
#78 Dalton Wagner | R‐Sr. | OL
On the UGA defense...
“It was a great football team. Those guys are coached extremely well. It’s an elite group. They are the number
one defense and (ranked) number two in the country for a reason.”
GEORGIA FOOTBALL
Postgame Notes: The Arkansas Game, Oct. 2, 2021
*Defense Dominates Again With Historic Shutout Of Top 10 Team: For only the third time in school history and the first time
since 1976, Georgia posted a shut out a top 10 team with a 37-0 victory over No. 8 Arkansas. It was the first time since 1980 that the
Bulldogs had back-to-back shutouts of SEC opponents, doing it against Vanderbilt and Kentucky. Today Georgia posted its seventh
shutout in the Kirby Smart era and the fifth in an SEC game.
The other shutouts of top 10 teams came when No. 6 Georgia blanked No. 10 Alabama 21-0 here in 1976, and in 1942, the
No. 5 Bulldogs shut out No. 2 Ga. Tech 34-0 here. The Razorbacks finished with 156 yards of total offense (75-rushing, 87-passing)
and came in averaging 35.8 points a game.
Georgia leads the nation in Scoring Defense, allowing just 4.6 points per game. Opponents now have scored just 23 points on
the Bulldogs this year.
The Bulldogs are now 12-6 against top 10 foes under Kirby Smart including 4-0 at home. Georgia improved to 4-2 when
ESPN College GameDay is in town including winning its last four. The Bulldogs are 5-0 under Smart for the third time (2017-19).
*Leading Tacklers and Sack Masters: Georgia’s leading tacklers today were Devonte Wyatt with six along with Adam Anderson and
Channing Tindall with five apiece. Also, they got a total of four sacks from Wyatt (1.5), Nakobe Dean (1.5) and Anderson (1). Dean
has 3.5 for the year and those were the first for Wyatt this year. Anderson has a team-best four sacks this year.
*Quick Start For Offense: Georgia QB Stetson Bennett made his second start this year (in place of JT Daniels who has been dealing
with a lat issue) and finished 7-for-11 for 72 yards. Georgia marched down the field on its opening drive, going 75 yards in nine plays
in 4;14 for a 7-0 lead. The drive was capped by a three-yard run by Zamir White, his third of the year and 17th of his career. On the
second possession, Georgia went 56 yards on nine plays in 4:38 for another TD, this one by Kendall Milton, his first of career. During
this drive, the Bulldogs converted a 4th-and-1 at the 35 when White rushed for three yards. Georgia built a 14-0 lead with 4:34 left
in the first quarter. Coming in Saturday, Arkansas had not allowed any points in the first quarter, outscoring their foes 34-0. Today,
Georgia led 21-0 after the first.
*Focused on Rushing Attack: Georgia tallied 345 yards of total offense including 273 on the ground, rushing the ball a season-high
57 times. That was the most rushing attempts in the Kirby Smart era.
James Cook led the attack with 87 yards on 12 carries. Zamir White had a team-high 16 carries for 68 yards and two TDs.
On its first drive of the second half, Georgia started at the UA 46 and used 10 rushing plays for 33 yards before making a 30-yard field
goal and a 27-0 lead. White’s 15-yard TD scamper made it 34-0 with 12:12 left. It culminated a season-high 11 play drive that went 93
yards in 5:50
*Special Teams Summary: Senior punter Jake Camarda had two punts for a 43.5 yard average and handled the kickoffs. Junior Jack
Podlesny was 4-for-4 on PATs to improve to 26-for-26 this season plus he was 3-for-3 in field goals as they covered 47 yards, a season
long, a 30-yarder and a 37-yarder. He is 7-for-9 in FG this year.
In the first quarter, redshirt sophomore DB Dan Jackson blocked an Arkansas punt, and it was recovered by Zamir White in
the end zone to make it 21-0. Before today, the last time Georgia blocked a punt was against Arkansas last year by Zamir White. The
last blocked punt returned for a TD before today was Eric Stokes at Missouri in 2018. Georgia now has five special teams TDs in the
Kirby Smart era.
* Georgia did not have any first-time starters today. The captains were seniors James
Cook (RB) and Jamaree Salyer (LT) and junior Christopher Smith (DB). Arkansas won the toss and elected to defer the football until
the second half. Georgia took part in College Football Mental Health Awareness Week (Oct. 2-9) by wearing a special helmet decal to
declare #MentalHealthMatters.
*Series History & Up Next: With the 37-0 win, No. 2 Georgia (5-0, 3-0 SEC) now has a 12-4 edge in the series history over Arkansas. This marked the first shutout in the series history with Arkansas and the largest margin of victory with the series going back to the
1969 Sugar Bowl. Georgia (5-0, 3-0 SEC) returns to action Saturday at Auburn.