Questions about Georgia’s offense dominated the conversation with head coach Kirby Smart during Monday’s press conference to preview Saturday’s game against Kentucky (6 p.m., ESPN).

Among them: Why not let quarterback Jake Fromm go more tempo when it seems that’s an area he’s very comfortable at doing?

“Yeah. We tried to do that several times Saturday, and when we did that, didn't feel like we were very effective,” Smart said. “No. 1, they played us differently when we tried to go faster.”

But as far as that being one of the main reasons for Georgia’s loss to South Carolina, it’s not even close to Smart’s main concern.

“Probably the toughest thing for us is, No. 1, turnovers. In the SEC, do a study, four and 0 in turnover margin, you're not going to win, period. I mean it doesn't happen. So, let's start with that,” Smart said. “No. 2, a lack of explosive plays, which we've struggled with a little bit. We're not getting explosive plays. Even our runs, we're getting runs, good runs, 10 yards or more. But we're not getting explosive runs, which are longer, because there's a lot of people in the box. We're not getting explosive passes. We had a few, but not enough.”

Smart did concede the two-minute issues that occurred against South Carolina are ones that can’t continue.

“We didn't win two-minute before the half twice, and then we didn't win two-minute at the end of the game. So, there was three two-minutes in that game, which is very unique,” Smart said. “We really didn't win any of the three of them. And that's one of our big goals—to win two-minute. Every game up until that it seemed like, we had either won defensively before the half or we'd won offensively, and we didn't do that. So those are the three biggest things that we gotta improve on, and we'll continue to work on.”

Seven times Dominick Blaylock went back to field punts. Seven times he called for a fair catch.

Although coverage, hang time, and field position will dictate whether or not a return is attempted, there were a couple of occasions during Saturday’s game when it appeared the freshman had daylight in front, but did not make an attempt.

To the untrained eye, it appeared that Blaylock was perhaps under instruction not to return, although Smart insisted there’s a lot more than meets the eye.

“Good question. We don't do that, but unfortunately, there's times where we play it safe, where we play in a prevent mode of fake alert based on who they send in the game, or based on the down and distance in the game.He has to fair catch it, and we had several of them that we were in safe the other day where he's not protected, meaning we're not holding people up for him, and so he can't just abandon it and try to return it on his own,” Smart said. “So, we weren't able to set up a lot of returns, which goes back to our third down. Defensively third down, we won third downs, statistically looks great. We had really good success on third down. We made our goal, 70 percent, but we didn't hold them to third-and-long long enough to where we got to return the ball on fourth down.

“There's a lot of times they were in the 50-yard line range, that they're in fake mode, and we want to be as safe as we can, to get possession of the ball and not be able to return it. And that had a lot with Dom having to fair catch it. It's not a matter of him wanting to.”

“I know our guys are excited to get moving forward and get to work on Kentucky, which has a physical football team. I thought they did a really good job the other night in their game. A lot of our guys have reached out to me, and looking forward to getting together and making sure we have the right kind of practice moving forward. We have really good leadership on the team, and I know they're prepared for that. And there's no time sitting back feeling sorry for yourself, because you've got good teams each and every week. This is a solid football team that was playing for the [SEC] East last year. They've had some injuries that have affected them, and they've done a tremendous job of running the ball, finding ways to move the ball with different people doing it, and they've got a big front on defense. They had the same thing last year, and they've got a lot of guys back. I know our guys will be looking forward to it, as I am, and with that, we'll open it up for questions.” – Kirby Smart on getting back to practice.

“It goes into effect on this game. No. 1, you can't turn the ball over. We have to correct those mistakes, and our guys have to focus on Kentucky. The most important thing for us is Kentucky. And that's us getting better. And a lot of it has to do with us inherently looking at ourselves and saying, okay, what can I improve upon, but a lot of the things we can improve upon are based on what Kentucky does, offensively, defensively, and special teams, and that's where our focus will be.” – Smart on not letting a team beat you twice.

“Well, the similarity in LSU is the four turnovers. I mean, you turn the ball over four times, and you get zero, which is just as big of a concern as turning it over four times. is getting zero. You gotta find a way to get tips and overthrows when the ball is in the air. You gotta find a way to knock a ball off somebody, to get a strip-sack fumble. You know what I mean? You gotta get some turnovers, and we learn from those lessons each and every time we have them. I feel very confident in the leadership of this team, that they'll respond the right way. They did that in the locker room the other day. And they'll handle that the right way.” – Smart on drawing lessons from previous losses.

“Absolutely not. Has nothing to do with it. Has to do with normal football. No coach in his right mind with eight seconds thinks he can't get another play off. We do it every single Thursday, every single Friday. We script it. We've done it with seven seconds. We've actually done it with six ever since the Florida halftime deal, where we had a chance to get another play in, Florida with it being a really short, condensed area, because that was like on the goal line. And, plus, we're going to trust our quarterback to make a good decision there and allow us to have a field goal to kick afterwards. So no doubts, no questions. Nothing there.” – Smart on if the Auburn Kick-6 against Alabama influenced his decision not to let Rodrigo Blankenship try for a long field goal in regulation.

“I think it's always a combination of both. You're looking for man-to-man to stay on the run. Can you get off press coverage? Can you separate? What kind of style defense are you going against? Is it more zone or more man? And each one of those is really important, and it's important for our wideouts to be able to create separation for Jake. It's important for Jake to see separation, to feel confident, and to be able to throw it.” – Smart on wide receivers getting open.

...Announcers for Saturday’s game will be Jason Benetti, Rod Gillmore, and Quint Kessenich.

…Dawg Walk is set for 3:45.