Georgia Football: Tuesday Press Conference – Offense
By Danny Bishop
Mark Richt and Mike Bobo, photo by Sonny Kennedy, http://www.sonnykennedyphotography.com/
Georgia coach Mark Richt and a delegation of players met with the media Tuesday during the Bulldogs’ weekly press luncheon. They offered the following comments:
Coach Mark Richt
On the talent level of SEC quarterbacks this season…
“You have a great chance of moving the ball and having success when you have a veteran quarterback. We kind of knew as a league going into this year that there would be a lot of guys that could play well. Between Aaron Murray, Johnny Manziel, AJ McCarron and Connor Shaw, you have four of the best in the league, and I think they’re four of the best in the country. It’s harder to defend guys that can’t be affected by the pressure that a crowd will make or the pressure a great defense can make. If they can stand up to the pressure, you’ve got a chance to move the ball and have success. It’s probably a little bit of a cycle right now, and we have some veteran quarterbacks that can handle it.”
On surprising or impact players at this point in the season…
“With Quayvon Hicks, we saw it in the spring. We felt like he was taking the job over in the spring. We saw it as a freshman that he had it physically, but he just didn’t know his assignments well enough to overtake Merritt (Hall). So it wasn’t a total surprise to us because we saw it happening before it happened in the games. We saw it happening in practice. We saw the same thing with Sterling Bailey. Even last bowl practice when we do scrimmages for guys that weren’t getting a lot of playing time, Sterling was showing up and making plays. Those guys are certainly two of the guys that are making some progress, but again, we saw it coming and were hoping it would come through in the game.”
On Hutson Mason…
“We hope he plays. Our goal is for him to play as much as possible. Like I’ve been saying for awhile, he’s more than ready to play.”
On Brandon Kublanow…
“He’s practicing with our offense. He’s not doing any scout team work right now. He’s practicing well, and we’re not counting out his chances of playing this year. We’re not sure if he’ll play, but we’re not counting it out right now.”
Keith Marshall, photo by Sonny Kennedy, http://www.sonnykennedyphotography.com/
Running Back Keith Marshall
On the injury he sustained against South Carolina…
“They just said it was a bruised knee that swelled up a little bit. I felt like I could’ve still played but they wanted to be safe and I wanted to be safe too. I just got hit in the knee. There aren’t any limitations heading into this week. I feel pretty good.”
On what he wants to see out of the offense this week…
“We just want to keep getting better every week in every aspect. We’ve been focusing on a lot of little things. We played a really good game against South Carolina, but there are still a lot of things we can work on so that’s what we’re focusing on.”
On what he is hoping to accomplish coming off of the bye-week…
“Our goal is to win every game and get to the Championship at the end of the year, but we have to take it one game at a time. We’re just focusing on North Texas right now.”
Aaron Murray, photo by Sonny Kennedy, http://www.sonnykennedyphotography.com/
Quarterback Aaron Murray
On sitting at 99 career touchdown passes…
“It’s definitely been a successful three years and two games thus far, but hopefully there will be a lot more to come. That would be great. My first one was to Kris Durham on a little back-shoulder fade. That was exciting. That was a while ago. A favorite one? Not really. I had one to Orson Charles vs. Georgia Tech my freshman year. That was just a big game for us because we had to win to make it to a bowl game. I just remember rolling to the left and throwing it to him. He ran a little in route and broke it back out, so that was pretty sweet.”
On Wide Receiver Justin Scott-Wesley’s speed…
“He’s definitely the fastest, by far. I thought he was caught. I was just thinking ‘okay that’s a nice gain, let’s get going.’ Then he just took off. It was pretty sweet to see him just turn on the after-jets and he was just gone. I have to speed up my footwork [to get the ball to him]. I had to do it with A.J. [Green] when he was here. I had to speed up my footwork a little bit and get the ball out a little earlier and then just kind of throw it as far as you can. For those guys it’s never far enough. They’re going to catch up to it. They have speed and then once the ball is in the air they have another gear and they’re able to catch up to it.”
On his mindset coming into this week’s game…
“We’re excited. It’s hard having a bye-week when you’re feeling good so we’re excited to get back out there and play another game right now. I could care less who we’re playing, we’re just excited to get back out there and play. It’s another home game and, like I said, we’re feeling good right now so we’re just excited to get back out there and play some football.”
Defense on Thursday
Photos are copyrighted property of Sonny Kennedy Photography,
http://www.sonnykennedyphotography.com/