Head Coach Kirby Smart
“We came out and played with a lot of toughness. Our mantra all week was discipline, discipline, discipline. I thought we executed pretty well.” On the first offensive play of the game: “I had gone to Jim Chaney and told him I’d like to open with that and he said they had been talking about the same thing. We felt like there would be some players peeking in the backfield, and Terry Godwin got behind them.”
On the defense:
“We finally had a couple of turnovers. It’s been a long time coming. I can’t say enough about our defensive staff. They have worked really hard with the defensive group.”
On Jake Fromm:
“The kid is stepping up. He’s starting to play. He’s always had that in him. He’s a good leader. He did a good job managing the game.”
On Tennessee:
“Humility is a week away. Whether we’d won or lost this one, we’d have to refocus and concentrate and get ready to do it again.”
On being physical:
“It’s important to be physical. You can’t fake physical. You have to live it, breathe it, eat it.”
On the fans:
“The crowd was electric. The students were awesome. They were there in pregame warm-ups and that was really good to see. We need to keep doing that.”
Junior Defensive Back DeAndre Baker
On recording the team’s first interception of the season and the third of his career:
“It felt good. It came from a good rush from the D-line and the linebackers dropping in their zones, so [MSU quarterback Nick Fitzgerald] had to put a little bit of air on it. I thank those guys… We knew it was coming eventually.”
On Dominick Sanders’ 13th career interception — which tied the school record and the record among active FBS players — which came right after:
“We have a saying in the defensive back room that “turnovers come in bunches”. So I knew it would eventually come sooner or later.”
On the early 14-0 lead surmounted by the Georgia offense:
“That was big. That gave the defense a little cushion, but we don’t really worry about the offense. We want to make sure that we stay focused and worry about our defensive assignment.”
Senior Outside Linebacker Davin Bellamy
On holding the Mississippi State offense with no touchdowns:
“That was big, big. We wanted to make a statement. This team that we have is a very humble team and we’re very disciplined. We knew that would come down to the winner of this game, and we wanted to make a statement with our helmets instead of our mouths.”
On the confidence level among the defense after the win:
“It’s the same that it was last week, just with how we practiced. We practiced physical every day, full padded-up. You saw the results of it. The team right now… in this league you’ve gotta be ready every week. We can’t be too high on this win, because we’ve got to go to a tough environment next week and play some football.”
Senior Tailback Nick Chubb
On what this win means for the program:
“It’s a great win. Every win is great, but we’ve got to enjoy it for tonight and prepare for next week.”
On playing at Tennessee for the first time since a season-ending knee injury in 2015:
“Yeah, I’m ready for it. It’s a blessing. Last time I went up there, all that happened. It’s a blessing for me to go up there and be able to run like I always have been. I’m looking forward to it.”
On achieving offensive balance with 201 yards passing and 203 yards rushing:
“[Balance] is pretty much always the game plan. We take what they give. I thought we did a great job with that. We just look forward to carrying it on.”
Mississippi State Head Coach Dan Mullen
On his impression of the Georgia team:
"They've got a ridiculous amount of talent, that's evident."
On the caliber of the Southeastern Conference:
"The great thing about the Southeastern Conference is you usually end up playing a better team the next week. It's not always about the one game in this league. It's multiple games. Can you get through? They said we had one of the toughest schedules in the country to start out the season, and on the road against a top-10 team this week, and on the road against a top-10 again next week. Kind of funny to hear about how down the SEC is. Everybody talks about how down the SEC is, well we're playing our third straight top-15 team, all conference games. I don't know how down the league is, not in our schedule."
On the overall Mississippi State performance:
"Two interceptions hurt us, those are drive killers. You know what you need to do, you come on the road against a great team, and you got to win, and you lose the turnover battle, you don't tackle extremely well, the first half they won the kicking game, with the punt yardage early in the game. It's all the little things that you need to to win on the road that we didn't really do today."
On taking advantage of opportunities:
"We know they have excellent running backs, and they're all top running backs. So we know they have excellent backs coming in, and I don't think we capitalized as well as we have been the past couple weeks. Just little things like that we'll get fixed up and coached up from our guys and refocus."
On the team's response to the first touchdown:
"We had poor communication in the back, and we didn't get in the right coverage."
Junior Quarterback Nick Fitzgerald
On the game:
“I think we came out with a good attitude. We played hard, there’s no doubt about [that]. We didn’t go out there with a bad attitude, bad mindset. We just have to execute.”
On the lack of execution:
“I saw it throughout the week at practice, having to redo a lot of plays a lot of stuff, missing a block, it rolled over into the game.”
Adjusting to Georgia’s speed:
“We knew they were going to be fast and we knew they were going to be physical just like last week. We just have to execute. They’re fast, physical, and they’re a very good defense and they executed very well. We just didn’t go out and play a good game.”
On playing at Sanford:
“Growing up, you know hear the fight song all the time. I’m pretty sure my alarm clock was part of the fight song. So it kind of just brought me back to when I was younger but I mean, I said all week its another game that I had to come out and win and it just didn’t happen.”
On the interceptions:
“Good defense. They made a good break on the ball on the first one and threw it a little wide of the receiver on the second one and popped up in the air and intercepted it.”
Defensive Linebacker Braxton Hoyett
On the game:
“We just didn’t get it done up front tonight. I feel we came out a little flat. We were ready but I just feel like we’re a little complacent at times. It led to this loss but we’re going to bounce back and go to practice on Monday.”
On the first defensive play of the game:
“It’s just something we should have expected honestly. We knew coming up the game they were going to try something. I felt like we were prepared for it, [but] it happened. I can’t even make an excuse for it. They came out with a trick play and they were gone.”
Complacency in practice:
“We were trying to get ourselves together and I felt toward the end of the week we got ourselves together. I feel like we came with a game plan and if everyone would have done their jobs we would have won this game. Everybody didn’t execute like we needed them to today.”
On playing today:
“I feel like we played hard, we played well today, some unbelievable effort today, but I feel like it came down to execution and just the middle part of the game.”
On the Georgia backs:
“Their backs were good, we knew that coming into the game we had to tackle their backs and we just didn’t do a good job with that tonight. Basically our job was to make the quarterback throw tonight and he really didn’t have to anything much because we were missing tackles so it’s something we have to work on in practice.”
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