Dawgs need to get physical
Kirby Smart wasted little time after Georgia’s win over Vanderbilt to offer a subtle message to his defense looking ahead to Saturday’s game at LSU.
It’s time to get physical — more than the Bulldogs have been this season.
“We’re a physical football team but we’ve got to play physical and I haven’t seen this team play with the physicality, at least defensively, that I think it needs to,” Smart said. “At times we do offensively; we’re big, especially when we’re healthy. But defensively … I don’t know.”
Smart knows the Tigers all too well.
LSU is known for being as physical and hard-hitting as any in the SEC, and Smart just wants his Bulldogs to understand what it’s going to take to earn a win.
“They better knuckle up, because it’s going to be a physical, tough, hard-nosed football game. They have a big offensive line. They have big fullbacks. They have big tight ends. They have big backs. They have big people, and that’s the way LSU is built,” Smart said during Monday’s press conference.
“They’re physical, tough … I mean across the board. When you look at their wideouts, their wideouts are huge. They have big, athletic wideouts. They have always been that way. That’s the tradition of LSU — to have really good wideouts and be physical and tough, and that’s really who they are.
“So as far as the questions that our defensive line and our defense had, they’ll be answered this week for sure when we go out there to play these guys.”
Defensive end Jonathan Ledbetter is glad that Smart is putting the onus on the defense, especially the front seven, who will have to control quarterback Joe Burrow and LSU’s power running game.
“Personally, I like that. He essentially is putting the game in our hands. We just have to come out and be physical. It is going to be a tough game. It will definitely be a fourth-quarter game,” Ledbetter said.
“They have a great football team. We are excited to tackle the challenge like always. …This is my kind of football game. It is tough, it is physical. That is what you love to see in SEC football and it will be like that on Saturday.”
Burrow, a grad transfer from Ohio State, has given the Tigers a dimension they haven’t had for a couple of years — a quarterback they can depend on.
He’s the only LSU quarterback in history to have a pair of Top 10 wins during the first month of his career. He also threw a school-record 158 passes without an interception before being picked for the first time last week against Florida. With 176 yards rushing, that’s another aspect of Burrow’s game that the Bulldogs will have to be aware.
“We certainly have some ways to break the pocket and get guys out of the pocket and make them run. And other guys you want to keep them in the pocket and make them throw the ball from the pocket,” Smart said.
“But ultimately a lot of that’s controlled by how well are they able to run the ball, how much are they throwing it, how are they protecting it. And they’ve got a lot of different protections; they’ve got a lot of different run game, probably the most run game we’ve seen.”