Kirby Smart not pleased with defensive performance in G-Day game

ATHENS -- After each of the first two scrimmages of the spring, Georgia football head coach Kirby Smart took issue with the way his defense performed.

After Saturday's G-Day game, Smart still wasn't happy.

"No, no, I wasn't pleased with the way the defense played," Smart said. "They didn't play with enough toughness; they didn't play with enough effort; they didn't get turnovers; they didn't get balls out."

The first-team offense, on the Black team, put up 331 yards of total offense, including 270 yards through the air on the first-team defense. The second-team defense didn't do any better, allowing 394 total yards of offense, including 387 through the air.

While Smart said that the Bulldogs didn't show very much of their playbook because the game was televised, he still expected his defense to rise to the challenge and show "not what they know but what they can do."

With this, he was especially disappointed with his first-team defense, which he felt showed complacency.

"A lot of the guys with the ones, I think, get out in the game and get comfortable, and we've got a theme around here, there will be no comfortable," Smart said. "I think that's a disappointment. We've got to show improvement. We've got good enough players on defense to be successful, but we've got to have total buy-in to do exactly what they've got to do and execute, and we didn't get that (Saturday). Not in my opinion."

One of the most noticeable deficiencies of the defense comes in who the team lost from last season. Without Jordan Jenkins, Leonard Floyd and Jake Ganus, the team is struggling with leadership.

"We need more leaders to step up and pretty much guide everybody and pretty much protect people, like on and off the field," junior safety Dominick Sanders said. "Just staying focused and grinding in the offseason, and that's going to take leadership for a couple people to step up and just let the team know that we've got a lot to accomplish before the season starts."

The defense Saturday brought back shades of the 2013 Georgia defense, the last of the Todd Grantham era, which featured young defensive backs such as Brendan Langley, Shaq Wiggins, Tray Matthews and Quincy Mauger all in significant roles.

With that team, one of the big sticking points was communication, and when there are issues in leadership, that's not uncommon.

"We definitely need to communicate better," junior defensive back Aaron Davis said. "I think when we get the signals, we need to be able to communicate them across the board, and I think that'll probably solve a lot of problems."

The fundamental difference between that 2013 defense and this one, however, is that this defense has plenty of experienced players, like Davis, Mauger, Sanders and outside linebacker Davin Bellamy.

And this is a defense that ranked in the top 20 nationally in total defense each of the past two seasons. Bellamy said that the problem isn't so much execution as it is mentality.

"The performance that we put out there, it wasn't the best," Bellamy said. "It's still kind of new to a lot of the guys out there, but I have confidence in those guys. A lot of those guys made big plays last year, big plays last year. We had one of the top secondaries last year, also. I just thing we've got to get our swagger back."

If it's confidence that the team is lacking, maybe Smart's third challenge will be enough to ignite something to help generate positive change during summer workouts.

"Whenever the head coach says he wasn't happy with the performance, you're going to take it personally," Bellamy said. "I think right now, including myself, we just have to get our swagger back on defense. We was one of the top defenses in the country last year, and it's about time we start carrying ourselves like that."

This story was originally published April 16, 2016 at 8:58 PM with the headline "Kirby Smart not pleased with defensive performance in G-Day game ."