Tuesday Press Conference
By Danny Bishop
FOOTBALL
Coach Mark Richt and a delegation of players met with the media Tuesday during the Dawgs’ weekly press luncheon. They offered the following comments:
Head Coach Mark Richt
Opening Statement…
“Good to see everybody, and I’m glad that it’s finally game week. We’ve been waiting a long time, and we’re getting tired, quite frankly, of running into each other. I’m sure every coach in America is saying this, but it’s true. We just can’t wait to play. I guess we’re going to get out there today to practice. The weather is a little bit rough, but I think we’ll be fine unless lightning strikes. We’ll be in our shoulder pads and helmets, which is normally what we do on Wednesday but we’re a day ahead of schedule. The next couple of days will just be in shorts and hats, so I think that will go well, even if we have to go inside a day. We’re far enough along so we’ll be okay.
“To talk about our first opponent, Buffalo, Coach Jeff Quinn is in his third season. He’s doing an outstanding job there, no doubt about it. I was looking at their offense and one of the things that I saw from their first to their second year was that they were really adding their yards per game and doing much better in points per game. Their turnover ratio has improved dramatically from year one to year two and now they’re going into year three with a lot of veteran players. It’s a little bit similar with what’s going on with our defense in that everybody knows what they’re doing. I’m sure they’re in the same situation in that regard. They are a big bunch, and they have three guys that started all 12 games last year on the offensive line, so we’re looking forward to that challenge. With our line against theirs, it will be interesting to see how that goes. I figure they’ll be wanting to run the ball a lot, and it will be a challenge for us to stop it.”
On entering his 12th season at Georgia and the expectations entering his first year…
“I didn’t know for sure what was going to happen being a first year head coach. When I left Florida State I left a great place. I left a great job working for a great man. My family was happy. There was no burning desire to leave Tallahassee, but I knew that this head coaching thing was going to happen if I wanted to take advantage of it. I always felt like from the very beginning if we ever left there we were only going to leave for a place we thought could be our home for a long time, because I enjoyed the stability of being with Coach Bobby Bowden for 15 out of 16 years. It was great for my family. When you’re at a school long enough you get to see the guys come in as freshmen and leave as seniors. You even get to see a guy come back five, six years later after graduation and come back with his wife and kids and just really enjoy coming back what feels like home to him. There is something to that that I was very attracted to. The types of things that Coach Bowden was building in Tallahassee were the types of things that I wanted to build here at Georgia. It’s not shocking to me that I’m still here in that I know in my heart this is where I want to be, but we know that it’s a rough business too.”
On the difference between this year’s season opener and last year’s season opener…
“I think it’s just the media attention. When we played Boise State, it was hyped a whole lot more than this game is. I think because we are a preseason top-10 team, the media will cover this game. Most sports channels talk about what happened in the top-10, so I’m sure we’ll get some attention for that reason. The biggest thing was having two pretty highly-ranked teams or at least two top-25 teams playing against each other outside of the normal area. I think that’s what made it a bigger story.”
On being a top-10 team despite new faces at tailback, punter and kicker…
“The year we were preseason No. 1 (in 2008), that was the year Cordy Glenn and Ben Jones started as freshmen, and it’s hard to think you’re the preseason No. 1 team when you have a lot of freshman linemen starting for you. We have a brand new punter, kicker, tailbacks. There are a lot of question marks, no doubt, but I think everybody in the country have some kind of issue. Sometimes teams look more glamorous when they are far away. You don’t see all the warts.”
On the 2009 and 2010 seasons…
“It’s just a very fine line between winning and losing. There are so many close games that we didn’t win during that stretch. If you go back farther and some of the years that people are saying were more successful or seasons we had more wins, there were a lot of close games we won. It’s really a fine line between success and failure in this business – winning and losing. You have to understand that and know that sometimes when you are winning there are some things that need to be fixed. Sometimes when you are losing there are some things that you probably don’t need to abort. You need to stay with them because you are not that far away from having that success again. If you make too many changes in philosophy or personnel or whatever it might be, then you might be setting yourself up for failure because you forgot what got you there too.”
On Georgia’s depth…
“When you travel in an SEC game you are only allowed to bring 70. I think historically we’ve had a handful of walk-ons that are either walk-ons that earned scholarships or that are just still walk-ons that have been a part of our special teams. We’ve had a great tradition of walk-ons playing big on special teams for us. We’ve probably been averaging about 65 guys on scholarship when we travel to an SEC game. Even all of those don’t get in the game. An NFL team is running around with a 53-man roster and they seem to do okay. The difference is they can make trades and they can do things if guys get hurt. I think right now we have enough guys to go play football and play well. We have been very blessed to get through camp with very few injuries. Hunter Long’s foot injury, which is about a four to six week thing, has been the biggest one to any scholarship player that I can think of.”
On the offensive line…
“It would have been nice to have Kolton Houston as well ready to go. Hunter was making some strides at center and guard before he broke his foot. I don’t know if we would’ve had a situation with two full lines and the one unit leaves and the two unit comes in. There’s been only a couple of seasons that I can remember that I’ve been coaching that we had that type of a line. Mostly it’s one, two or three guys who can go in there and play. Right now it’s good to have those two feeling like they are ready to go. Beard is kind of working his way into that mode, so we’ll see.”
On Georgia’s freshmen…
“You hope when you sign them they are going to come in and help you, and then you start practicing and see these kids need to play. They need to help us on special teams and get as much experience as possible this year because we are pretty senior-heavy on defense right now. It’s good to get those guys as much work as possible.”
On the SEC…
“Our teams have been able to have one make it to the national championship game every year for the last six years and win it. If we were in that game six years in a row and won three out of six, I don’t think people would be talking about the SEC as being a dominant conference. The reality is we’ve won the last six in a row, and with teams that might have had a loss here or loss there. One year there were two losses with LSU having two losses. People are saying a one-loss SEC team may still be the best team in America, or at least still has the right to play for it. Of course Alabama had one loss and they didn’t win the league, but they played for the national championship and won it. I think it’s a tribute to the programs as a whole. When you take the fan bases, the administration, coaches, the players, the talent base that everybody has and the competition level in all areas – that’s what make us better. We compete so hard against each other, and there is a bunch of us that are good enough to beat each other too. Some people think it’s top heavy, but there are some pretty strong teams all the way across the board I think.”