In a question about his tight ends, offensive coordinator Todd Monken was half-jokingly asked if he’d ever had four tight ends in the game at the same time.

Georgia’s talent and depth at the position has been duly chronicled, and Monken could certainly do so if he desired. But will he?

“Well, if you run it too often, you get every wideout in the portal,” Monken said to a background of laughter. “We do have great players at that position. You do have to utilize their skillset, but you also have to balance that, because there is a cost to that.”

For example.

According to Monken, he can go out and draw up all the plays with the tight ends that you want. However, that’s just the beginning. There’s the not-so-small matter of executing those plays in practice before you deem it proficient enough to be inserted into a game.

“It's one thing to say we're going to utilize three-tight personnel, four-tight personnel, then it is like, ‘Ok, what are we going to do out of it to execute?’ That's probably the toughest thing is how do you get through practice and execute how you want it to look once you get to the game,” Monken said. “That happens a lot in offense and defense meetings, when a defensive coach will say, ‘Boy, that really gives us problems.’ It only gives you problems if we can execute. If it gives us problems as well, it's really not worth anything. We do have good players there. We do have to find a good way to get them on the field and use all of our talented players.”

Between Brock Bowers, Darnell Washington, Arik Gilbert, Brett Seither, Ryland Goede, and freshman Oscar Delp, not only is Georgia's tight end room a deep one, but each player brings a little something different.

That includes Gilbert, now back with the team after sitting out last year for personal reasons.

The former LSU player opened eyes with a pair of touchdowns during G-Day, and thus far in fall camp appears ready to make a big impact.

But how different is he from Bowers, who set a Georgia tight end record with 56 catches for 862 yards and 13 touchdowns?

"Well Arik, a lot like Brock, is a unique talent. Arik is a little bit different in that Arik has wide receiver background in route-running,” Monken said. “He's good with the ball in his hands after the catch, whereas Brock's background is more get the ball in his hands, H-Back, fullback, run after the catch. That's probably the difference.”

However, the differences don’t stop there.

While Monken said Bowers still needs to develop as a route runner, that’s an area where Gilbert already excels.

“(Brock) is one of those guys whom you just have to get it in his hands. And he has better catch radius than I thought,” Monken said. “Arik is more of a route-runner. He's been in that, in terms of what he's developed, it's almost like an air-raid Y. So that's been a part of that. Both have unique skill sets.”

So does Washington, who at 6-foot-7 and 275 pounds adds another unique dimension that Monken plays on utilizing as much as he can.

“We need to keep all those guys healthy because they're different. Who are your unique skillsets that you can take advantage of?” Monken said. “Wes Welker at one time was an X for the Dolphins, and trading him to the Patriots turned him into a Hall of Famer playing the F position. There are certain guys, certain backs who, if you can utilize some of their skill sets, you are going to enable them to excel, and that's what we want to do."