Coach Mark Richt
Opening statement…
“Okay. Good to see everybody today. It's good to be
home. It's good to play between the hedges. We are excited about playing in
front of our fans. We actually tweeted out a little something yesterday about
asking our fans to wear red and to be ready for the Dawg Walk at 4:25 and for
our students to be in place by the time pregame warm-ups start, which is about
an hour before the kick. Just create the atmosphere that motivates our players
and our staff and myself, but also can become a factor in the ballgame if we do
it right, which we do here at Georgia. I've said it many times, no one does it
better than Georgia in my opinion.
“Another couple of items that are interesting. We are
honoring (former SEC) Commissioner Mike Slive, as he did battle some prostate
cancer, and it's Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. We will have a sticker on our
helmet and he will be at our ballgame. We are excited about that.
“I guess in regard to the prostate cancer awareness,
Coach Mark Fox and I, Coach Scott Stricklin, all three of us got together
on a little promo. We show it on the video board during the game. It's pretty
corny but hopefully everybody gets the word to get checked because we know
early awareness of these types of things can make all the difference in the
world and we just want everybody to be healthy and want everybody to be safe.
“Okay, get ready for South Carolina. A team that's
always well-coached by Coach Spurrier, we know that. They have got 27
players from the state of Georgia, which is pretty typical in our league. Just
about everybody's got a bunch from our state. We have such a great state for
football. Our coaches, high school coaches are really tremendous. Coach
Spurrier is obviously one of the winningest coaches in the history of the
league and a great coach and will provide a great challenge for us as a staff
to get our guys ready as he gets his ready.”
On the rivalry with
South Carolina…
“We're not thinking much about the rivalry. We're not
thinking much about what happened last year or in the past years as much as
really are trying to focus on getting better. There's just so many areas we've
got to get better. We knew when that game was over against Vanderbilt, there
were some things we did really well. We had a team meeting in here. I showed
three plays, offensively, things that we did extremely well throughout the
season so far and three things that weren't so good. Same thing on defense and
same thing on special teams, just kind of challenged the guys that when we do
it right, we're pretty good. When we don't, we put ourselves at risk as a team.
So our focus is trying to improve, trying to know what to do, know how to do it
and add a lot of energy to that. That's really all we can ask of our guys. But
as far as what we might learn, any time you're in games that are highly
contested and are usually close games, you learn a lot about guys in crunch
time.”
On if players have more
energy for opponents like South Carolina…
“I don't know if they do or not. They know it's South Carolina, Florida,
Tennessee, Georgia Tech, I mean, whoever you want to say, Missouri already.
They get jacked up for all those games.You go to Kentucky, you're in a
barnburner every time just about. We know the margin for victory is slim and
that's why we've got to have attention to detail in what we do and just believe
in each other, trust each other to take care of business. That's the thing we
focus on the most. Because if you focus on anything other -- just like if you're
going to take a math test and you're thinking about, well, my last math test, I
got an F. If that's all you're thinking about, what's the chance of succeeding?
You've got to be thinking about, how do I do this formula, how do I do that
formula. You've got to focus on your job. That's what we try to do, focus on
the job.”
On South Carolina’s
offense…
“Starting on offense, they have six returning starters.
I guess you would start with the quarterback. No. 10, Perry Orth is a guy who
apparently got a scholarship going into this season, was a walk-on. But you
heard Connor Mitch got hurt and you didn't really know what happened from
there really. You just got word of it.Then you watch the film and both those
quarterbacks actually played pretty well. But Orth came in, hit 13 out of 20
for about 180 yards and hit 65 percent of his passes and he looked good doing
it. Athletic guy, tough guy. A guy that we'll have to contend with as far as a runner.
He's got some good wheels on him and will provide a great challenge for our
defense at the quarterback position.”
On how South Carolina’s
quarterback situation affects their game plan…
“I’m sorry the young man got hurt. But he did get hurt early enough in
the game where the other guy got to play. Perry Orth got in there and you got
to see him throw it, whatever it was, 20 times. Got to see him execute under
pressure. So you got to learn something about him. What I learned about him is
he's tough, very accurate passer. Looked like a great competitor. He didn't
look shell-shocked in any way, shape or form. He looked like he was ready to
play. I'm glad we got to watch a little film on him.”
On the targeting call
vs. Vanderbilt…
“I just think the targeting rule is one of the toughest
things to officiate and one of the toughest things to coach. I thought Lorenzo Carter was in a pretty good posture. He was wrapping up. He had his eyes up.
He was doing a lot of things that we tell him to do as far as form tackling.
The problem was he was tackling the quarterback and he wasn't in throwing mode.
Although he started out as a passer, began to scramble a little bit and then --
or at least started to move to the left, I think it was, his left. And he ran
for 66 yards last week. But when he struck them, there was helmet to helmet contact,
there's no doubt about that, and as the rule was written, if you go by the
letter of the rule, then he did. But he didn't lunge. He didn't launch at the
guy. He didn't go at the top of his helmet or anything like that.It was really
a good face-up tackle, but when you're tackling a quarterback who is in a
throwing posture, that's when things get changed. They consider him a
defenseless player, so that's what happened with him. The good news is he'll be
able to play.The other one, I think anybody that watched the game or watched
the tape knew that I think there was just a mix up on who the penalty was on on
the one you're talking about, hands to the face.”
On coaching longterm…
“I don't know. I don't feel good today, but most days I
feel pretty good. I think the older you get, the more you realize
you've still got some juice. Coach Spurrier still doing a great job. I
don't want to even try to predict what's going to happen down the road. I do
enjoy what I do and I want to continue to be influential in the lives of these
young men and also win, win ballgames for Georgia. So how long, I don't know.
I've always been real open to what I feel like the Lord's got to say to me on
subjects like this, and if I feel like in my heart there's some things He wants
me to do, I'll do it. I'll try to be obedient. But right now, I think I'm
exactly where He wants me and I'm enjoying it.”
On SEC teams scheduling
tougher opponents…
“No, I think everybody has a choice. The way we do it
now, you have a choice. If you want three like that, go ahead and do it. If you
want one, two, whatever you choose to do, I think each team in the league can
make that decision for them and what's best for their program. I think only
time will tell if it becomes problematic for somebody to get into the playoffs.
But we're all, you know, we're pretty confident that if you win the league,
you've got a pretty good chance, not a guaranteed chance, but you've got a
pretty good chance of getting in there. If you get a one-loss team and a
no-loss team at the end of the year, you've got a chance for two.
“I don't know how people rate schedules as far as power ratings, but the
bottom line is, let's say you schedule a team that's not an FCS team or however
you want to say it. Well, you can go four FBS teams, and then play those teams
that you're still probably favored to win every one of them, and you could say
you did this or that and then you play your regular season schedule. I mean,
how does that compare to the games we play? You lose one or two, you could be
done. We play at least -- you know, we play a bunch of teams that can beat us
and we can beat anybody we play, too, on any given day. I think our schedule is
plenty tough enough, I do.”
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