Kirby Smart reacts: What went wrong in Georgia’s ‘sloppy’ first vs. Razorbacks
There are first-game rust and jitters ... and then there’s No. 4 Georgia’s first half against Arkansas on Saturday.
Coming in as a heavy favorite, the Bulldogs instead shot themselves in the foot time and time again on their way to a 7-5 halftime deficit. Even with the caveat of being the season opener, it ranks as one of the worst halves the Bulldogs have played under head coach Kirby Smart, who called the performance “sloppy.”
“You’ve got to be efficient, you’ve got to execute, you’ve got to be clean,” Smart said after the game. “We did not play clean today.”
The miscues at the forefront of Smart’s mind were penalties. The Bulldogs committed 11 penalties for 98 yards in the first half, more than doubling their average number of infractions per game in 2019.
Some of those were at least relatively acceptable in Smart’s eyes. He didn’t loathe the two personal foul face mask penalties in the first half, for example.
The other undisciplined penalties, however, drew Smart’s ire.
“You can’t line up in the backfield, you can’t have silly penalties, have guys flinch, grab a guy that’s not going to make the play,” Smart said. “That would be the number one thing to me, to clean up is just to take away some of the silly penalties.”
The lack of discipline, which is usually a hallmark of Smart’s teams, showed up in other areas as well.
Receivers didn’t run the right routes according to the defensive coverage. The Bulldogs didn’t line up correctly. The defense had a communication breakdown that led to a 49-yard Arkansas touchdown pass.
“It’s something that’s going to happen when you’re playing a lot of football,” senior safety Richard LeCounte said. “Anything that you do, you’re going to have mistakes. The best thing that we were able to do was correct our mistakes, get our communication back together and got this defense back on the road.”
At the center of the offensive struggles was redshirt freshman D’Wan Mathis, making his first start at quarterback. He didn’t have it from the get-go, completing just 6-of-14 passes for 37 yards before being pulled in favor of junior Stetson Bennett. He also threw an interception in the red zone on a bad throw that missed an open receiver.
Smart acknowledged after the game that Mathis didn’t play great, saying he put Bennett in to change things up and give the offense a spark. However, he repeatedly emphasized postgame that the blame for the poor first half didn’t rest solely with his starter.
“It’s the most criticized position there is in all of sports, along with the head coach,” Smart said. “That’s tough for a guy like D’Wan who’s given everything he can to this program. He’s worked his butt off. Today wasn’t his day; he didn’t have a great day. Some of it was what they were doing, some of it was what we were doing. Not all of it was his.”
Despite the rough start, the Bulldogs regained form after halftime. The defense suffocated Arkansas and the offense got in a groove, with Georgia eventually pulling away for the 37-10 victory.
LeCounte and the rest of his teammates hope these mistakes will be much less prevalent next week against Auburn. Under the lights at Sanford Stadium, the Bulldogs will see if the rust has indeed been fully knocked off.
“This is our first game since the bowl game, so we expect some mistakes,” LeCounte said. “We’re here to wake up tomorrow, go get those mistakes handled, get ready for our next opponent. I’m not worried about anything that happened on any side of the ball because I know these are the best players we have here in the nation.”