Tuesday Press Conference

FOOTBALL

Coach Mark Richt and a delegation of football players met with the media during the Dawgs’ weekly press luncheon on Tuesday afternoon. They offered the following comments:

Coach Mark Richt

Opening Statement…

“We have been getting ready the past couple of weeks for Kentucky. We’re looking forward to going to that ballgame. We haven’t had the best of luck out there in Lexington with some very close ballgames. I have a lot of respect for Coach Phillips, and he really does a great job. We also have a lot of respect for what Coach Sanders does offensively.

It’s been tough for them going through two or three quarterbacks. I can’t imagine what that would be like.

Kentucky’s always done a great job on special teams and they’ve always had some outstanding blocking schemes to block your punt, so we’ve got to make sure we’re ready for that. We know we have a lot of big challenges in that area, as well.”

On the team’s mentality moving forward after the South Carolina game…

“We need to beat Kentucky right now. That’s really all I’m worried about right now, and then the next week we’ll worry about that game. We’re a pretty good team, and we thought we could beat anyone we play when the season began, so that hasn’t changed.”

On letdowns in the first half this season…

“I think everyone will have things you didn’t prepare for and things that catch you off guard. Sometimes you just get overaggressive when it comes to wanting to stop the run and be physical. All that’s good, but you have a certain area of responsibility that you have to take care of.”

On recent offensive and defensive miscommunication issues…

“I know we’ve given up some big plays off not communicating well in the back and making mistakes and being over-aggressive on play-action fakes. I don’t think there’s been a ton of missed assignments offensively, but when you do have negative yardage plays, a lot of times it is a guy turning someone free rather than getting whipped. But I don’t want to talk about South Carolina anymore. They beat us soundly and congratulations to them, but we’ve moved forward. Every game you’ll have miscommunications, and we’re not going to sit here and make excuses other than that we didn’t do a good job and we have to get better.”

On the team’s cohesion…

“When you have a group of linemen or the defensive backfield, communication is very important, and the more reps you get with the same five, they tend to communicate well. The more they play together, the better chance they have of not making those mistakes.”

On whether or not anyone is looking ahead towards NFL draft projections…

No, not at all. I think there are a lot of guys that have an NFL future, but I think they know that the better we play as a team, the better everyone looks. I don’t think you can play in such a way that it wouldn’t benefit the team if you did well. I think everybody knows that every goal we’ve set for ourselves, other than winning every game, is still a very real possibility.”

On sympathizing with Kentucky and their share of injuries and struggles this season…

“Well people have asked me those types of questions before, and especially last season when we go 0-2, so I think somebody addressed that question in regard to me and how we’re doing at Georgia. My answer was that I don’t expect anybody to feel sorry for me. I expect everybody to hook it up and play the very best that they can play. I expect everybody to watch film and get the best plan possible and try to exploit whatever can then be exploited and play 60 minutes as hard and as fast as you can play against anybody you play. So I’m sure that’s how all of the coaches feel in the league.”

On Kentucky’s recent pile-up of injuries…

“They have had a lot of injuries. No coach wants to make any excuses for anything, but there’s no question that if you’re playing a bunch of true freshman on your team and in the back end of your defense, that’s tough. I think they’re almost all true freshmen playing in the back end, so it’s tough. Those guys all want to play SEC ball, but if you get too many of them playing at the same time, you’re going to have some problems. So how many guys will be back healthy, I don’t know. If you watch them play us last year, and a lot of those guys are back, and if you watch the first half of their South Carolina game, you see what you could be in for. Some teams, especially young teams, play better at home than away, and we’ll be at their home and they’ll have a comfort zone there. We just have to get after it because we have our own problems. We have enough problems of our own.”

On recruiting Kentucky wide receiver Demarco Robinson...

“I remember him being in our camps and being a guy we liked. He’s a good football player. Kentucky’s always done extremely well recruiting our state.”