ATHENS, Ga. — Georgia head football coach Kirby Smart and CJ Allen, Raylen Wilson, and Earnest Greene spoke with the media on Tuesday to discuss spring football practices.
They offered the following comments.
Head Coach Kirby Smart
Opening Statement:
“Welcome back, guys. We've got a lot to go over. We probably have a little bit of time. I know you guys probably have a bunch of questions, so I want to try to get all the information I can. We're getting ready to start spring practice today. I'm excited. This group has worked really hard since the end of the year last year. We've had lots of time to spend together as coaches, staff, our school systems have started. We've got a lot of new players. It feels like more new players than ever before, which I think I say that every year. But the numbers don't say that it's more new guys, but it certainly feels like that. We're averaging about 33 percent new per year, which you'd like for that number back in the old days to be 20-25 percent new every year. But it's turning over more and quicker, which we have less turnover than most places. We pride ourselves on retention, stability. The foundation of this program is built through high school programs and bringing good kids into the program that can become good football players. But as we do every year, I want to try to make as many announcements as I can quickly. Colbie [Young] is with us. Colbie is going to be practicing with us. He's cleared. So, he's practicing. He's been working out with us. Guys that are out for spring, I think we have nine total guys. I do a year-to-year average. I think 2024, we had 12 outs. 2023, we had eight outs. 2022, we had 14 outs. I think we're at eight or nine, depending on how you classify a couple guys. We've got five shoulder surgeries that happen at the end of the year. Those are all rehabbing right now. They're in really good progression in terms of getting back. Monroe {Freeling], Gabe [Harris Jr.], Colton [Heinrich], Christen Miller, and Jaylan Morgan all had labral repairs, which is very common. I had it when I played here. That's, I think, five of those. We've averaged five to six every spring. Then we've got Ryan Montgomery, who has the ACL repair, Branson [Robinson], who had the PCL repair, Rod Robinson, who had the ankle repair, and then [Brett] Thorson, who you know had the ACL and MCL repair. Those are all guys that are working through things. They may be available for maybe some things in spring, like walk-through type things, but not in-practice spring. And then limited, Joseph Jonah-Ajonye, coming off the foot navicular surgery he had. He looks great. He's working out, running. He'll be limited to start spring and try to get to work his way back. That's kind of where we are from a medical standpoint. We do have some soft tissue injuries coming out of the offseason, but nothing substantial there. So, I'm excited where we are in terms of guys being able to be out there because we've got a lot of healthy guys that can get reps. So, I'm excited about where we are for the spring. Looking forward to getting out there and kind of seeing our guys. You guys will have a lot of questions, I'm sure, about new guys. I don't know because I haven't got a chance to really see them. I can tell you what they look like in shorts and running around at workouts, but we haven't done a lot of football work until we start up today. So that's what we'll be doing moving forward.”
On assessments made for improvement heading into the spring:
“I mean, you do it every year regardless of the year. I'm sure the outside world thinks if you win every game or you win a national championship or you lose every game, the sky is falling or everything is hunky-dory. For us, it's always an approach of how do we get better? How do we improve? The first way to do that is through recruiting, through the transfer portal, through talent acquisition. The next is through looking at other things people do. Special teams was a big emphasis for us. We spent a week really on that in quality control. We spent, each side of the ball had two full weeks in, and then the week before spring break. We got really three weeks, 15 days of work on each side of the ball to look introspective and out to see what we can do to be better everywhere. Some of that is utilization of your personnel, which you don't actually know that yet. You're still trying to figure that out. We've got new players coming in on both sides of the ball. We'll find out a lot about them this spring. We do a very, very intensive study of not only ourselves but other people. When you go back and you watch everything you watch, you're taking into account who are you playing against? What is the caliber of the opponent you're up against? What did we do well? What did we do poorly? What do we have to do better? There's just a lot there. I could sit here for days and talk about that.”
On the additions of Noah Thomas and Zachariah Branch:
“I'm excited about both those guys [Thomas and Branch]. Both really good players. Both have been successful in their organizations where they've been. They're both talented pass catchers, which seems to be the largest turnover position there is. Outside of quarterback, there's only one. That's the one that has the most transfer at his position, receiver is probably next. Both those guys are high-caliber athletes, but they're high-caliber people. I've enjoyed working with them. The Branch brothers have been a great kind of injection into our off-season energy and workouts. They love working out. Their father trains guys. They love training. The culture and work ethic that it requires to be successful here, they jump right in and done a great job of that. Noah has, too. He's played in the SEC. He's been successful. So, you know, we've still got to go out and do it on the field, but I'm excited about who they are.”
On outside criticism of his coaching staff:
“Yeah, to be honest with you, I don't get into it much. I worked in a place for ten years before I came here, and it's my tenth spring. So, that's 20 years that I really don't pay much attention to anything outside. I've got a lot of confidence in this organization, the foundation we've built. I've got the best staff in the country, and I have no doubt about that. I've got one of the most experienced SEC staffs there is. To be honest with you, there's a lot of confidence in that, and I have a lot of confidence in it.”
On what he’s seen from Gunner Stockton since the Sugar Bowl:
“Yeah, he's a tremendous leader, but that's nothing I didn't already know. I mean, I would be remiss if I said, well, he's done this or that. He's done everything right since he's been here. That's really kind of what he embodies. He's a tough kid that loves football, that loves his teammates. You're not going to get a lot of rah-rah out of Gunner. I feel like that's his role. He earns people's respect by how he works and how he carries himself. He's got a tremendous amount of confidence in his ability. He's got a lot of knowledge of our system, and I think that kind of resonates with the other players. They rally around Gunner because they have a lot of respect for him.”
On having stability on his coaching staff from year-to-year:
“Well, I could be sitting here before you last year on this exact day and have four new coaches, and there's a lot of positive about that. There's a lot of positive about having everybody back. I think we've built our program around retention. I think we've got the most stable not only staff but stable organization in all of college football.I think that's what we've hung our hat on is we have stability. We have retention. We have a great foundation.We're built to last. We don't have to worry about year in, year out, tons of change. I think this league will chew you up and spit you out. This league is brutal when you look across. I'm sitting in an SEC head coaches meeting, and there's [Mark] Stoops and I, the most tenured guys, and there's a lot of guys that are in their first three or four years. Then you look at their staffs, and there's tremendous amounts of turnover. Then you look at their rosters, and there's even more turnover. Who does the best job retaining their players and coaches? I take a lot of pride in that, and I think that's one of our weapons.”
On players competing for snaps after losing starters:
“Yeah, it's going to be interesting because there's a ton of snaps there that were lost, a lot of guys that have started games and played, which that will be evident tomorrow in the Pro Day. I think we've got a chance to get four guys drafted, which is unusual. You have four draft picks on the offensive line, meaning four guys leaving. That's hard to replace, but we've kind of had this coming for a while, so it's been an anticipation of how we can create depth in our signing classes. We've got a lot of young offensive linemen who haven't played who need to grow up and play. To be honest with you, it's a problem across the NFL where they don't have enough offensive linemen. I know nobody in the country right now in college football is saying, well, we've got enough linemen, we're good. There's not enough quality offensive linemen out there, and you're trying to build depth across the board in position. What helps with that? Mid-years, sometimes transfers, but the offensive line aren't your most transfer portal type player positions. Not a lot of people get success through doing that. We've found success through developing guys. This group that's about to take the field or get their opportunity, a lot of them have been on that scout team for two years. They're not where they need to be, but we're going to push them and do the best combination to get eight to ten guys that can play winning football for us, which is our goal every year.”
On assessing the difficulty of SEC scheduling moving forward:
“Yeah, absolutely. I think you hit it dead on. I think the mature view of this and the 10,000-feet view of this is we're in a different climate than we were previously. We're in a different scheduling model than we were previously. The addition of Clemson on top of the people in our league, on top of the schedule that we had, I don't make any excuses about it. It's going to be really hard. I mean, we repeat that schedule next year with the exception of Clemson out-of-conference game, so it's not going to get any easier. The norm is it's going to be challenging for everybody. I mean, the two, three, four, five power conferences, you're going to play better and more competition, which is going to make things more challenging. I don't run or shout from that. I think that is very true that it's going to be – there may be an outlier. There may be a team out there that has the right mix and does it exactly right. But you're going to see teams that we thought going into last year that we would have to deal with more adversity, more failures, and how we dealt with them would indicate our year. I was very pleased with how we responded to losses to keep ourselves afloat and to win the SEC championship. So that's not going to change over the years to come.”
On Daylen Everette’s status, additions of Jaden Harris and Adrian Maddox:
“Yeah, so Daylen will be limited for the spring. He's not out, but he's out there working out now, doing things and coming back from a sports hernia, a sports kind of a growing repair. But prognosis is great. He's doing things limited. He's moving around. He's being a great leader, all the things we expected. And then, you know, we had Dan [Jackson] and Malaki [Starks] leaving with a tremendous amount of snaps there with those guys going out. We needed to make sure we got depth at the secondary and growth. You know, we signed some good young ones who are here now, and they're working with us. Some of them were here in December. I think we were able to get the two guys out of the portal that we think are going to help us as well.”
On Andrew Thacker’s role:
“No, his role has changed. He's taking on a position job. He's going to be working almost primarily with the secondaries, specifically the stars. He'll be with those guys, the Nickels and Help Coach. Those guys are kind of a quasi-position now. They're half outside linebacker. They're half linebacker. They're half DB. They're a little bit safety. They're special teams players. But he'll take on a role with those guys and spend time with them.”
On Will Muschamp’s role with the program:
“We'll probably decide that at a later time.”
On quarterback competition, NIL legislation and rules impacting roster management:
“Not specifically. We've got a lot of people in charge of roster management, including myself, including our football office staff is involved. Our operations slash player development, player personnel staff, everybody gets involved in that. It's a team effort. So, we reorganize and restructure some things in terms of what falls under whose duty and whose aspects. But at the end of the day, I'm not ready to run off and go hire somebody that's just going to make all the decisions for what goes on the football field. I think I've got to stay involved in that heavily. We've got the capacity and the quality of people in the areas that I think we need. So, I think we'll be fine in that world as it changes. As far as quarterback, it's just like every position, guys. I mean, every day you're competing and fighting and doing the best you can to compete with every guy. I mean, you think it's redundant or coach-speak, but there really isn't a depth chart. There's just reps. And in the spring, we're giving reps out. We're getting four reps with four groups at some positions. And we want to see all those guys compete and get better.”
On his availability at Pro Day:
“Yeah, I don't know where you guys are. I'm not going to be at the pro day to be able to the media. So, I wanted to give you guys an opportunity if you wanted to. I'm going to be here tomorrow for most of the day, but I've got to leave at some point. So, I won't be out there for the pro day during it. And if there's any questions you guys have about the pro day or those guys, feel free to ask. I'm really concerned with my team, not concerned with the pro day. But the pro day is certainly important to a group of players who have been tremendous for Georgia. And, you know, we all have talked about the accolades they have and the winningest record in the history of the school. They've done a lot of good things. And I know a lot of them will do well tomorrow. But I'm not going to be out there the whole time for that.”
On keeping G-Day in the spring:
“Yeah, first of all, I think there's a lot of – everybody wants to talk about that and make it about the portal and make it about this decision to not ever have spring games based on the fluidity of players. I don't know that that's every coach's reason. There are a lot of coaches who didn't like the spring game before the portal ever came about. Everybody has different approaches. My approach has been I like to have spring football games. But that's – every year we make that decision based on where we are. We haven't even practiced yet. So, you know, it would be remiss if I said 100 percent I'm dead set we're having a spring game. I leave every option open. That's my 15th practice. So, we can do what we want to do. We're planning to have a spring game. I've talked to Josh Brooks about it several times. We've had a conversation. But that doesn't mean it can't change. Last year, I think Kentucky didn't have any defensive linemen healthy. They weren't able to have a spring game. So, there's – I mean, we don't know. Like I can't forecast the future to know exactly what's going to happen 15 days from now. I do know we have to get better, and we've got to practice football. So, when that happens, as it goes, we spread things out over more time than most people. We have five weeks, and we have three practices a week. So, we want to try to get recovery and stay healthy so we can have really good practices. But I like spring games. I want to have a spring game. I think it's important because you allow kids to play that don't typically get to play. You sometimes allow fans to enjoy an experience in Athens that they normally wouldn't get. But I'm not ready to say that it's 100 percent.”
On Malaki Starks and Mykel Williams:
“Yeah, Malaki is a very, I guess, futuristic safety. He can play nickel. He can play man-to-man. More and more, the safety is not what the safety was. The safety has evolved in the NFL because they're in open sets. They're playing more middle field club coverage. He has to be able to play man-to-man. He has to be able to cover people, matchups on tight ends as they bring more and more tight ends to the league. He fits what teams want to do. So, he has a lot of value in the National Football League in terms of match-up and cover because every game comes down to matchups in their league. So, everybody's asked about that, and more teams are intrigued at his versatility. As far as Mykel, he's a warrior this whole year. He was dead set. He wanted to play in the Alabama game and pushed so hard to come back, and he wasn't 100 percent then. There's a lot of games he only played a few snaps in because he wasn't 100 percent. If you go back to the Auburn game, he was jumping and tearing at the bit to get in those games. I think when those teams look and they see how you create value for yourself, there's more of a time in National Football League where people have to play at 80 and 90 percent health because they don't have another option. Their 80 and 90 percent is better than the guy that could get off the streets 100 percent. So, they want kids that have toughness and can play. I think Mykel battled through that all year, and it was really tough on him because he had one of the best fall camps that I've ever seen. The good news is all the scouts saw that too, and I think that will pop up where he gets drafted at because for a guy that's going to get drafted really high, he wasn't 100 percent all year. But they respect the fact that he pushed through and competed.”
On what he expects to see in the spring:
“Yeah, I want to see the fire. I want to see the passion, the energy. I want to see who wants to be a good football player, who really cares about this game. They care more about the game than they do about their NIL revenue stream. If you really, really, really care about the game and you want to be good, it doesn't matter about any kind of money. It matters how I play the game. More and more, we're seeing across college football, the purest, the ones that care about the game the most, play the hardest. Usually the team that plays hardest wins. I know everybody thinks it's just we're more talented, but there's a whole lot to how hard you play and how much you care about it. My goal is to find out how hard do you want to play, how much do you really want to be great, because if you do, it will show by how you practice.”
On Dan Jackson and Chaz Chambliss not receiving NFL Combine invitations:
“I can't really speak on that. I can only defend my players and the character that those two have. They're tremendous football players and even better people. Do I think they were deserving? Absolutely. But do I know what goes into it to sit here and be critical of an organization that runs one of the biggest businesses in all the world, one of the most successful businesses in all the world? They have a limited number of spots. They have to base that on some criteria, and I'm sure they have a rhyme or reason for what they do in terms of getting looks at people. They also get lots of looks at our guys because they are open to come here every single day. They get a lot of opportunities to see our guys. They got to see Dan at the senior bowl. They got to see Chaz at the other bowl, which he got injured at. So, I don't know what all goes into that. I'm not here to be critical of some people who make those decisions. I think they know what they're doing when they make them. But I can certainly tell you those two players are going to make somebody's team a lot better in the National Football League.”
#3 CJ Allen | ILB | So.
On what it’s like being an upperclassmen on the team now…
“It's definitely a blessing to be one of the older guys in the room. I’m coming from being a younger guy, so I kind of have the experience of being a younger guy and know what they're going through and things like that. So it's definitely a blessing. I wouldn't say it came fast. We feel like it came fast, but you're just trying to meet those guys in the room and lead the team.
On how things have shifted with the team with 14 players leaving…
“I think just them, it's always gonna be them, no matter who's here and who's left. Those guys, they're going, they can't help us with what's going on, so we're trying to focus on who's here and who's on the field with us now.”
#5 Raylen Wilson | ILB | So.
On areas of improvement...
"My main thing is probably tackling and just knowing where everybody is and knowing where my help is at in the defense."
On what was working towards the end of sophomore season...
"I got to give credit to really the play calling. Schumann, I feel like he does his best to put us in a good position to make good plays out there. So, I feel like that credit goes to him."
On being a leader in the linebacker room...
"With us, we try to lead by example, but you got to be vocal as well. So that's the main part we're improving on, being more vocal with others and pulling everybody along."
#71 Earnest Greene III | OL | R-So.
On being one of the oldest offensive lineman and what is the mission for spring practice…
“Definitely, you know you always have to approach everything every day, one day at a time, to get as good individually as you can possibly be. Just taking every day with that approach. You know, everybody's going to be back to square one, you know, stay one step up.”
On replacing four starters from last season and what younger guys he expects to step up…
“Well, you come to the University of Georgia, you know, to compete. So if competing is one of those reasons, then as far as competing, there goes depth. And with depth, there goes ability. Obviously, everybody here is talented, and they're here for a reason. So it's honestly just about maxing everybody's potential, whether it's, you know, in the weight room or on the football field.”
http://accesswdun.com/article/2025/3/1289077/football-smart-players-discuss-spring-practice