The toughest matchup for most defenses when opponents face Florida is the matchup with TE Kyle Pitts and QB Kyle Trask. Georgia coach Kirby Smart said it’s a situation where a defense can’t stop Pitts, but could work to contain him.

“He’s a really great player and anytime you play a great player, you’ve got to have a great game plan,” Smart said. “I don’t think anybody’s stopping him, it’s limiting explosives, matching up, winning some 50/50 balls, that’s what he’s best at. It’s impossibly, people think you just double cover him, ‘Just double cover him,’ you can’t do that. They put him in places where you can’t double him and you’ve got to do other things to other people. They’ve got other players besides just him and the quarterback knows where to throw the ball to give him a shot. There’s not an easy answer to that. There’s not a textbook answer of this is how you stop him. What you do is contain him and hope that you don’t get hit on explosives and the team understands where he is.”

Speaking of Florida, Smart was asked about the fight at halftime of the Missouri-Florida game. Smart said someone texted him about the fight as he came back from the hospital after checking on star safety Richard LeCounte, who was injured in a serious motorcycle accident on Saturday.

“Obviously it’s a teaching moment for all of us,” Smart said. “But it concerns me every time a player gets tackled on the sideline or gets close to the sideline of an altercation of two teams that are heated rivalries breaking out. They all know, Dan (Mullen) knows and Eli (Drinkwitz) knows that you can’t have that, they understand that.”

He said it could happen to any team in the country, and you don’t want that.

Smart also addressed the challenges Trask presents the defense. He said it’s all about his experience, and Trask has seen defensive alignments and blitzes, so he knows how to attack them.

“He’s played in our league now and once you get that valuable experience, it’s hard to trick them,” Smart said. “You have to ultimately be able to defense their people with your people. You’re not going to win a scheme battle.”