Field Street Forum

ATHENS – Head coach Kirby Smart, running back Cash Jones and defensive lineman Jordan Hall preview the upcoming season opener against Marshall. They offered the following comments.

Head Coach Kirby Smart

Opening Statement…
“Yeah, we’re opening up with Marshall. Our guys started our prep last week. Coaches kind of started on Thursday, Players kind of started on Friday. SO we’ve got two practices in towards that goal of playing these guys. I’m excited for a home opener. We get sometimes the neutral site, sometimes on the road. But this home opener, I know I’m excited. I’m excited about this weather for our fans. Looks like it’s going to  be a great weather day in terms of not catching some of the August, September heat we get sometimes. A lot of respect for this head coach and his program. When I look at the similarities between, he’s been a defensive coordinator for a long time, a very successful one, Coach Tony Gibson. He’s also coming kind of home to West Virginia. And he’s got a staff that’s very passionate about Marshall. You know when someone is passionate about the place they coach, they’re going to do a tremendous job, and his staff reflects that. Marshall’s got a tremendous history of a lot of good football players, a lot of good teams. To look and see what they did last year in a really, extremely tough Sunbelt Conference, it kind of speaks for itself. So our guys are excited to go play. We always say the game’s about us, and it’ll always be about how we play. And we gotta go play our best, so that’s the next step for us.”

On preparing for Marshall’s overhauled roster…
“You start with yourself, right. You prepare yourself by how you run to the ball, how you strike people, how you move people, how you run the ball, throw the ball, don’t turn it over.  A lot of sloppiness in first games, penalties, so it starts with that. You’re asking about the opponent, the opponent is us, and it’s going to be us every week this year. It is important that we know what they do, and sometimes that’s less information than others. They’ve got an interesting roster makeup of guys from all over, some of which they couldn’t control because they had a lot of guys leave after the head coach left. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a roster that when we write on the depth chart transfer, it’s three deep transfer, four deep transfer, all these spots, a lot of transfers. But that’s more and more evident all over. Probably the first games all over the country this weekend will be a lot of guys figuring out who’s in that spot, who’s in that spot. Nobody has a clue who’s in those spots. The less teams are in the spotlight, the less you’ll know. But again, it’ll be probably more of an adjustment from the kickoff to the first quarter than most games, but it’ll also be about us.”

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