Georgia football fall camp will come to an end on Saturday with intra-squad scrimmage No. 2 serving as the culmination of the Bulldogs efforts. With classes beginning for the student-athletes, the practice schedule will be condensed, essentially ending training camp, and the pressure will be on the players to perform on Saturday because Kirby Smart wasn’t happy with scrimmage No. 1.
“Progress has been good,” Smart began a midweek press conference, “I wouldn’t say that the first scrimmage was really up to the standard or expectations. We did not have a lot of enthusiasm, didn’t play to the level that I think we need to play to.”
Smart went on to praise the effort of his players and the discipline throughout fall camp, but his strategic shot at their effort ahead of the final scrimmage wasn’t the only one he’s taken at his team through the media this camp.
“We are nowhere close to where we need to be, I feel like we have less depth than we’ve ever had and that’s kind of a common theme talking to other coaches,” Smart continued in the same opening statement of his press conference. “I call it the deterioration of football because every year we’ve been here, I feel like we’ve had more players capable of going in and playing winning football and I feel like every year that goes down.”
He ended his statement with a message not only to the media, which recently ranked his team No. 1 in the preseason AP Poll but to his players, inevitably riding high off that distinction. “We’ve got to keep working to increase that number.”
Smart wouldn’t tell the media that his team lacks depth for no reason. If there was real concern, it’s not likely he’d reveal the chinks in his armor to the rest of the SEC. No, this speech was for his players, the ones who aren’t yet “capable of going in and playing winning football,” because to navigate the gauntlet of a schedule laid out before his team, Smart is going to need more than just his Heisman Trophy candidate quarterback.
Carson Beck is coming off a year with 3,941 passing yards and 24 touchdowns with just six interceptions and is arguably the top returning quarterback in the country. Last season he racked up those numbers throwing to, when they were healthy, Brock Bowers and Ladd McConkey, but now, only one of his top 5 receivers from last season is back in Athens, so in a way, Smart decided to challenge the new group of pass catcher, and challenge Beck.
“There’s not the depth around Carson in the skill positions that there’s been in the past. It probably puts more pressure on him. He probably feels like he’s got to be perfect,” Smart later said.
Despite Smart’s concerns about the “deterioration of football” Georgia still has, if not the best, than one of the three best rosters in the country. Even without Bowers and McConkey, Beck has Oscar Delp, Benjamin Yurosek, Colbie Young, London Humphreys, Dillon Bell, and Dominic Lovett to throw to. That’s not to mention Trevor Etienne in the backfield. If that group steps up, which they almost certainly will, then Beck doesn’t need to be perfect, he just needs to be good and the Bulldogs can win their third national championship in four years.
Smart knows his team is one of the best, he’s just sending them a message because when you’ve gone 42-2 across the past three seasons it’s hard not to get a big head. If the rest of the college football world can’t humble the Dawgs, Kirby will do it himself.