Richt Sunday teleconference

Here's Mark Richt's complete Sunday Q/A.

Oh and while I'm thinking about it, I saw Nick Jones on the sidelines yesterday and spoke with him for a second. He's looking to catch on with a team right now. Said he started out with Seattle and got cut before camp in a numbers move and then signed with the New York Giants and got cut there as well. Said teams have told him to stay ready and you never know what might happen. It's a tough game. I like Nick, so here's hoping he catches on with somebody for a bit and makes some money. Just thought I'd drop a quick update on him...

Anyway, here's Richt:
On Kelin Johnson's status and thoughts on Saturday's missed opportunities:
Kelin, he's questionable right now. He took a good rib shot. Don't know if he's probable. I'd say he's questionable right now for the game...Yeah, missed opportunities, no doubt. That was I'd say the No. 1 thing in that ballgame. Certainly could've blocked better early on and there's a lot of little things that need to be better. You're gonna win some battles and lose some battles in any ballgame. But the opportunities were there to make a big play. It didn't have to be a spectacular play. It was just either hitting your target or catching the ball. I think that hurt us more than anything. But I think South Carolina did a nice job.

On talking to team about loss and how it affects SEC race:
I'm not gonna talk much about the conference race this week especially because we're not playing a conference game. We're just gonna work on continuing to improve, I think is the main thing, just playing hard-nosed Georgia football, really. We'll work more on just getting better. I won't talk much about the conference right now. Maybe the week after that when we have a conference game I'm sure it'll come up.

On whether last year's lessons can help this year:
I think so. I don't think there's any doubt about it. We're certainly not in the position right now that we were a year ago in that streak of five games. But I certainly don't want this one to last that long, that's for sure, and I think our guys gained resolve (?) from that.

On whether he'll talk to Bobo about the criticism he's facing:
No, I don't think we need to say anything. I think it's what coaches call an occupational hazard. It's just a given. Anybody who's in a playcalling responsibility, he's gonna get criticized and critiqued. It's just human nature. It's part of the business. I don't think many guys...I don't think Mike is naieve enough to think that was never gonna happen, so I don't think we need to talk about it. He knows I've been there. Gosh. It's just part of the job.

On whether he thought plan was sound:
Oh yeah. I thought we had plenty of opportunities to score touchdowns. There's no doubt about that. Again, we've got to execute. I can think of one, two, three, four for sure plays that could've easily scored if we just threw better or caught the ball better.

On whether the receivers will rebound or whether this could snowball:
They should rebound. They need to. I'm not gonna predict a snowball effect. I can't do that. They've just gotta concentrate. It's not just one guy. It's a physical game and you've gotta catch the ball knowing you're gonna possibly take a shot too and we made some. Mohamed made a beautiful grab in traffic and took a hit on that one third-down play. That was a great grab. We've seen a lot of good things happen, we've just gotta be more consistent. South Carolina dropped a couple balls too and if we woulda won the game, they'd have been looking at that probably a little harder than they are right now. Blake put it on the money a couple times and they dropped it and coulda kept drives going, things of that nature. And again they had a couple of really great stabs and snags. Not many teams have a group of receivers that never drop the ball.

Update on A.J.?:
A.J.'s gonna be out a little while. When I say that, I'm not exactly sure how long, but it won't be this week for sure and it may be longer than that.

Cartilage issue?
Yeah. There might be some bone bruise issues on it too. It could set him back even longer.

On whether Massaquoi's not getting the ball enough because he's lining up inside:
Well, he's playing both inside and out. A lot of times it's just...it's not so much luck of the draw, but it's just a reaction to a coverage. We have certain progressions in our system. If a safety rolls strong, we're gonna throw weak. If he rolls weak, we're gonna throw it strong. Sometimes reads are our high to low reads or inside to outside receivers. As we progress through our reads, if he happens to be the one who's open, he'll get it. But it's not like we're not trying to get it to him.

On whether Kade Weston had his best game at Georgia:
It could be. I did like what I saw. He really asserted himself and played as big as he is this last game. I really like what I saw from Kade.

How he'd assess the defense's play:
I thought it was pretty good overall. The only disappointing thing, that last drive, for them to run the ball as well as they did was pretty disappointing. But again, we did make the stop. We did get the stop, we got the ball back with a minute, 20, whatever it was, 80 yards to go. We were on about midfield with 50-something seconds to go after Mohamed's catch. We had plenty of time to get it in the end zone. Our defense did the job getting one more stop. The decision to kick a field goal on fourth-and-15 down there was one I made because I was confident that our defense would get the ball back to our offense with enough time to win, which they did. Overall I thought the defense played pretty good.

On explanation on flag was waved off after low block on Dannell Ellerbe:
What I was told was one official, from the way Dannell landed or whatever, he maybe assumed or saw the end of it, and he assumed it was a clip or an illegal block. Another official saw it from the very beginning and didn't agree with that and called it off. He said he saw it and told the other official he saw it from the very beginning and didn't think it was a foul. That's what they said and...we've been doing a little recruiting this weekend and I haven't really seen all the film that I'd normally see by now. I just finished with the offense and I'm getting ready to look at the defense here when I hang up.

On possible personnel changes:
I haven't really sat down with the defense yet. Offensively we talked just a little bit about who ought to play maybe a little bit more. I don't know if anybody knocked anybody out of the box.

On Ramarcus Brown's role now and whether Donavon Baldwin will play corner or safety:
Good question. I would say right now with Kelin out, I think Donavon may have to be a safety. But I have not talked to coach Martinez about that. Ramarcus will certainly help us with corner and special teams.

On whether he considered playing Joe Cox Saturday and how much he'll play this week:
Well, I didn't really think about getting him in the game. We were just going, trying to win the darn thing and believing in Stafford that he could get it done. As far as this week, who knows? It would be nice for Joe to play, but there's no guarantee of that.

Was there a set number of drops you saw after looking at the film?
Well, the one drop that Tony Wilson had, I guess that would be considered a drop pretty plain and simple. Michael Moore's was a tough catch. He had to lay out to go get it. He made a similar catch like that in one of our scrimmages. Almost identical. He was actually breaking in the other direction, from left to right instead of right to left. But just about made the exact same catch on the same type of route and actually landed in the end zone. But I think it was catchable. It was a little bit of a tough catch.

Did Tripp have one too?
It was behind. It would have been a tough catch. Tripp also had kind of a high and hard one at him. It could have been caught, but we thought it was pretty hot. A little high and a little hard, but probably could have been caught. If you get your hands on it, you've got a chance to catch it.

On illegal shift call on punt:
Well, it was close but I can see why he called it. When they double up your gunners, like I mentioned last night, you want your gunners to get to that punt returner to force him to fair catch it. If they're gonna double them up, it's very difficult to get off, but if you put a guy in motion, then it's tougher to jam a guy and it frees him up to get out underneath that return man. That was our strategy -- to get him in position, but when we were shifting one guy back and one guy up to allow the guy who went back to go in motion, Mikey Henderson, they didn't feel like we were set at least one full count after the shift. It was close.

How deep is too deep to not return a kickoff?
There's no set rule on how deep really anymore as much as do we think the ball...you've gotta kinda gauge a little hangtime issue there. If a kicker kicks a line drive, he can kick it farther. So if he kicks it farther, does that mean you should still not return it? Well, no if you think it's flat enough and not enough hangtime to get the coverage team down there, then you can still take it out of there. It used to be, you'd probably say x amount of yards and then you wouldn't take it out. But I think you've gotta gauge the hangtime a little bit. Now Succop's hangtime was pretty good, but Thomas was just bound and determined to make a play. And he did, I think he got past the 20 every time. You take a risk when you go back there. I'd say at the end of game if you're looking for something big to happen, you might say all bets are off when you catch it eight yards deep, you can go. You might just need something big to happen on the return. So there's some times you just say you return that sucker if at all possible.

On inexperience working against them Saturday night:
We knew that we just don't have a lot of experience to draw on in some areas. We're playing some guys that are living through those types of games for the very first time. Sometimes that's just enough to get you beat. But I do believe we've got the right guys in there and I know we're gonna improve in a hurry. Young guys that are as talented as the guys we have, they get better in a hurry. We're gonna hit our stride here pretty soon, I would hope, to where everybody's got enough experience under their belt to where they're ready to play these types of battles, these types of wars, and I think we'll fare a lot better when that happens.

On whether missed tackles are a concern:
Well, you're always concerned about that. There weren't just a massive amount, but there was enough. That touchdown run, we had an opportunity to make a tackle in the open field. There was space enough to where he had the ability to go either way, a two-way go like we say, and it's very difficult to hem that guy up with that much space. But we've just gotta do a better job of not allowing the back to get through there with that much of a head of steam and that much space before the safety fills in there and they'll make the tackle. But overall, when didn't tackle that poorly. Where we struggled was in the space issue. We rarely made a hit on a guy and didn't bring him down. Most of it was just an issue of a guy making them miss ... out there rather than getting all locked up on a guy and him just breaking out of your arms. There wasn't much of that going on.