TUSCALOOSA, Ala.– The No. 4-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide held off the No. 2-ranked Georgia Bulldogs 41-34 on Saturday night in a game for the ages.

The Bulldogs erased a 28-0 deficit and even took a 34-33 lead with just over two minutes left in the fourth quarter. However, Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe’s connection with freshman phenom receiver Ryan Williams for a 75-yard touchdown just 13 seconds later ended Georgia’s hopes of completing the miraculous comeback.

Here’s everything Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said after losing to Alabama for the sixth time:

Opening Statement:

“Well, of course a great game. Great atmosphere, a lot of respect for the Alabama team, their fans, the venue, it was a great game. A tale of two halves. Obviously we weren’t really prepared, and that’s on me We didn’t do a great job in the first half, especially defensively, but we also gave them a short field, and the short field in a quarterback like Milroe creates a lot of difficult times. I was very proud of our team that our coaches had made good adjustments. Everyone was positive. I told them, ‘Look, guys, I’ve been in the stadium as far as Texas A&M, probably just as bad, and came back to make it. had a chance to win the game and didn’t play anymore. So high praise for them and for us, humility is always a week away, we have to get ready for another strong opponent to come to us so I can open it up.”

On what went wrong in the first half and how it was resolved in the second half:

“Well, we probably weren’t as aggressive. We were more aggressive in the first half and took some risks and probably got hit with some of the things they did well running and passing with him, and you know he’s tough. ” to defend. But when he was 28 out of 31, he was what he was. There weren’t many incompletions. He’s really hard to defend. So you have to choose your poison Do you want to play loose cover and try to keep an eye on him so he doesn’t leave. He ran the ball well on the perimeter, and we lost the ball it was really tough. We played a little tighter in the second half. We made a few stops. We had the ball in attack.

About Ryan Williams (and also a little snippet of Jalen Milroe):

“Great player. I mean, I was asked by the GameDay crew before the game, what are you going to do special for Ryan Williams? I said, ‘We can’t do anything special.’ They have a guy there at quarterback who can be the best runner in the country, and he throws the ball. So you can’t put two people on Ryan Williams. You have to force him to throw visiting us several times He’s such a great kid He’s got great ball skills double move he made on top of Malachi If I had to do it again we would challenge him more and come at him Okay giving that up, that’s tough, but we’ve caught that ball now, check the tackle, we’ve got to get them on the ground, let them break again, and if we have momentum, let them drive through that’s the biggest fatal mistake of that piece.”

On the confrontation with Jalen Milroe:

“I was surprised that we turned the ball over, I don’t know how many times, two or three in the short area, the short field, and they did a really good job in the red area. We wanted Milroe to throw the ball.” in the red area to beat us. That wasn’t necessary. He ran around us. We had our best player on fourth down, and he beat him to the sideline, and then showed up walked outside a blitz defense where we have more people than they can block there, and they ran out what we call a moon sweep. He is a very good football player. So if you could just stop for a moment I think you could, but if he throws well and they catch him better, it’s very hard to stop.”

On the message to Georgia at halftime:

“Get stops. We’ve got to get stops. You know what I mean, play by play. You’ve got to do a better job. You’ve got to settle down. You’ve got to communicate well. If you go back to the first drive or the third… and seven, and we’ve been working on this all week. They’re going to get to third quickly. They’re looking to see what you’re in. And we’ve been practicing that all week had to jump. We jump off the side and they’re deadly on third and two. They’re hard to stop on third and two. So we have third and seven, three-and-out, that’s what we’re going to do. The ball happens not, and they score, and then they score, and then we turn around and they score. It was definitely tough sledding and I give them a lot of credit. They did some different things, very similar plays, but they also looked different , also with their backs out of the backfield.”

On quarterback Carson Beck in the first half vs. what he could do late:

“I don’t know if there was a big difference. We had four downs to do everything in the second half. So the four downs made a big difference. When you got four downs, there was some waste in there. We We came up the point where we had to be aggressive and go fast, which opened up some things. I was really proud of the way he played, you know, some of the interceptions weren’t his fault what he was supposed to do, and the fumble was probably the one he’ll look back on and say, “It’s first and ten. Throw it away.” We don’t have to make any plays there because we’ve had four downs. We’ve gone second, third, fourth, and that fumble, when we go back to the red zone, makes it very difficult.”

On his assessment of Alabama as a team:

“I think they’ve got some really good players. They’ve got a great program. I have a ton of respect for them. They’re doing a great job. I mean, they’re bringing in some pretty good players. Kalen (DeBoer’s) has brought in new players here .” It’s an uphill battle. Two of them have been here, you know, and it’s been some really tough fights. So respectful.’

On what he said to players as they left the field:

“Well, there’s no greater response from a leader than to be with the guys who went to war with you and those kids went to war tonight. But make no mistake, that group we got there, man, they’re with connected.” They are proud. They are proud. And I told them, ‘Guys, I don’t know what the second half is going to look like, but I do know this: If we watch it, we’ll find out. a lot about ourselves. We’ll see what kind of character we have. And I’ll be honest, I thought we were a team that was in really good shape. In the situation we were in, we only had to take one moment at a time, and I didn’t want to leave the field without telling each of them how much I appreciated how they responded to those real, difficult adversities there.

If there’s anything different from what he heard before about Alabama that tonight’s loss showed you:

“We can’t turn the ball over and win games. I mean, we know that. We’ve been one of the few teams that haven’t done that, but we’ve flirted with it, you know, and we had several times tonight where we turned it around. And we were more explosive, but so were they, and they’re an extremely explosive team. I mean, they’re going to be explosive all year because they have a group of explosive playmakers. You know, I know the team that I have, never. I didn’t learn anything tonight that I didn’t already know, because they’re fighters.’

On the late touchdown that gave Georgia its first lead:

“Great play design from Mike, and we thought it was there all week and had to have the right look. And I thought it was a great call. I didn’t even know he mentioned it at the time, but it was one of those where we thought we could take advantage of their aggressiveness. They got some really aggressive safeties, and he bit it, and it was a great throw by Carson, a great play.

On his evaluation of Georgia’s offense:

“Well, tonight is difficult to judge because the third down was the second down. I can’t say tonight, I mean, we were behind so early, this was a difficult game to judge from an attacking point of view, when it is like that. ” Quick. Do you understand what I mean? And I think we need to communicate better. And that was one of the things we said when we came from the Kentucky area. I’ve been playing in this league for a long time. You call a play and try to get eleven people on the same page and execute it without being vanilla we have to execute a high clip better. I mean, we get a maximum Blitz. We check on a screen. It’s a great thing to do, and a man misses it, and he doesn’t. I don’t see the signal and we throw a pick, you know. So it’s like, at the end of the day, you can’t do those things against good teams.”

On the reason for Carson Beck’s turnover:

“Pressure. Carson just didn’t protect the ball. He had one hand on the ball. You know, you can point at anything, and they had turnovers too, you know, because it was very important that you didn’t turn over.” passed the ball, but we also had to take risks. So every time we had a fourth down, it was a potential turnover. They had a fourth down that we stopped, so it was a lot of big plays That play. A lot of big plays moving forward.”

On how the players were able to stay motivated and not get down on themselves during the deficit:

“We’re not built like that. We’re not going to do that. I mean, that’s not who we are. We fight too much out of training every day to sit down and quit. I mean, they had a great response in During I loved the peace and quiet, the way they dealt with it.”