Kirby Smart summed up the feeling of many a Georgia fan when asked about the offensive confusion right before half that likely cost the Bulldogs a third touchdown right before half of Saturday’s 48-7 win over UT-Martin.

After Carson Beck completed a 25-yard pass to Dominic Lovett to the 3 of the Skyhawks, the Bulldogs hurried up to the line.

No timeouts remained, but instead of attempting a pass, Beck checked into a run, only to have Cash Jones knocked back for a 2-yard loss. The play forced Beck to spike the football to save a play, before throwing incomplete on third down, forcing the Bulldogs to settle for a short field goal by Peyton Woodring.

“Bad deal, man, bad deal. To be honest with you, it was just a miscue, not knowing how close it was to the goal line, and probably by making a decision too fast,” Smart said during Monday’s press conference. “We spend a lot of time on those moments like that and I take a lot of pride in those moments. They should never happen, should never happen. But making a decision really fast sometimes you don't make the right decision. We had enough time. We actually got the ball snapped without losing any time on the clock, but the decision was thinking it was probably closer than it was, and it cost us at least one play.”

Smart said all his quarterbacks have the freedom to make checks at the line of scrimmage, so the fact Beck decided to make the call he did was not unusual.

“There are parameters you give them. There are runs that have checks and runs that have checks from run to run. There are checks that have checks from run to pass. There are certain looks you're allowed to check to the pass,” Smart said. “Every week we package those, but not every play has those. There are sometimes you're going to sit back, as you can do and we can do as coaches, second guess and say, he should have thrown that ball because it had an option to throw.”

Per Smart, Beck did exactly what he was supposed to do.

In this instance, it just did not work out.

“It’s complicated and elaborate, but he did what was coached to do and did exactly the things we wanted him to do. They got two outside, we're checking this. Okay, they got this, we're doing this. He followed those, and he's already done that. He did that all last year under Coach [Todd] Monken. He did it in practice because he had to be ready to play,” Smart said. “If they got this ready, we can't do this play, so we’ve got to go over here and do this play. Not every play has that. Some plays are fast ball. Some plays are peed break. Every play has its own identity. (Beck’s) very bright and understands it, and we're lucky we can do some of the things we can do because he's like Stetson in that way that he's been in the system long enough to handle the volume.”

Otherwise, Smart had nothing but praise for Beck, even showing exasperation over a question prefaced whether or not the junior making his first career start might be feeling any nerves.

Beck’s first start saw the Jacksonville native complete 21 of 31 passes for 294 yards and a touchdown. He also scored Georgia’s second touchdown on a 4-yard run.

“I thought Carson played really well, composed. I'm trying to think of the throws that you thought were just awful or erratic and I didn't see that. The one third down he admittedly threw the ball a little bit behind Dom (Lovett) thinking Dom was sitting down and Dom broke in, which Dom was correct, and he missed him on that throw,” Smart said. “Outside of that, there will be incompletions in games. There will be looks that maybe they fool you with, that you didn't see in the scouting report. But his run check game, his carrying out his fakes, his decision in the pocket, him throwing the ball away, I thought the guy for a first start, played really well.”