KIRBY SMART

It's always a danger when you've got a great quarterback that throws the ball well, that scrambles well. You may push him into his asset. You may force him to do what he does best. So you've got to be able to throw curveballs and stop the pass as much as stop the run.

When you step out there on the field as a corner in our system, you have to be ready to play because humility is one week away.

I think it's what's best for that kid. Are you going to teach that kid a lesson for 10 years down the road by suspending him a game?

Change is uncomfortable.

Let's be honest. Georgia, if you get the best players in this state, you should be winning championships.

To me, personally, my development to become a head coach will be much better working for Coach Saban than necessarily going somewhere else because you learn every day that you're in there.

The only thing that matters with my kids are them graduating and playing well, and I try to do my dangedest to get them to play well.

I think in order to push kids and coach kids the way we want to coach them, we've got to have their trust.

A team is a group of young men playing together. The program is the entirety of that.

To be honest, it makes you a lot better coach when your boss is in the meeting room. You're a lot more driven every day.

I might not have a conference championship or a national championship as a head coach, but I had the recruiting factor.

Every kid I've been around as a football player, they want their coaches to make them better as men and as players.

I don't recruit against Nick Saban. I recruit for the University of Georgia.

At the end of the day, if you're not beating the teams on the road recruiting that you have to beat on the field, then you're probably not going to win many championships.

There's nothing worse than recruiting a player and then leaving the player.

A lot of people have said, 'Why not take a smaller school head job?' I honestly feel my growth was better being in a large program, being around Coach Saban, and learning how to manage a lot of the tough situations you deal with in the media.

It's hard to say that it gets any better to be at your alma mater and run a major college football program.

The amount of pressure that I've put on myself as a defensive coordinator for the last 10, 11 years, I really believe there's a lot more decisions that go into that position than the head coach.

A lot of people think our standard is to be first in the SEC, be first in the country, first in our red zone, and run defense. We really don't go by that motto. We go by, 'Be the best Alabama defense there's been.'

If you chart SEC champions over a 20-year period, the one consistent thing to me is you're not going to win if you don't have a quarterback. It's too critical of a position. He decides something every play.

I moved seven times the first seven years I coached.

It's never me against Saban, and I have too much respect for him to say that anyway. I never felt that way.

Welcome to the world we live in as coaches. You've got to figure out what you can do best and better to get these kids a chance to be successful. I think that comes through a lot of things - confidence, improvement, recruiting.

Our personalities are the not the same, Coach Saban and I. And I have the utmost respect for what he's done and what he's done for me and my family.

What I'm worried about is our team and our players developing and getting better. That's the most important thing.