Kirby Smart shares why it's important for Brian Herrien to be a 'big brother' to George Pickens
After the win over Georgia Tech on Saturday when Georgia WR George Pickens was ejected for fighting Tech DB Tre Swilling, veteran RB Brian Herrien made comments about being Pickens’ “big brother.”
Pickens will be suspended for the first half of the SEC Championship Game against LSU because of his ejection following the fight.
Georgia coach Kirby Smart said what Herrien said he would do is something the coaching staff encourages.
“It’s important to have a big brother,” Smart said at a Monday press conference. “We all have mentors and you grow as a young player. Young players across the country. You have to grow up. When you have an older player that’s able to help you with that, I think it’s always a benefit. We’re always trying to get our guys to help out the younger players in every facet.”
Pickens, a freshman, is Georgia’s leading receiver with 33 catches for 498 yards and 6 touchdowns. He had one catch for a 41-yard touchdown against Tech.
Without another receiver, Lawrence Cager, who’s injured, Smart was asked about his message to the receivers on the field this week.
“It’s very similar to last week,” Smart said. ‘Guys, you’re going to get an opportunity to play, step up and make plays.’ We had some guys do that. We had some guys catch balls that haven’t caught balls in a long time, or very little all year, and they made some good plays. You’re going to get one-on-one opportunities when you play in our offense because of the run game. So you’ve got to win your 50/50 opportunities, you’ve got to take advantage of it.”
After watching the replay several times I can understand how George lost his cool. The Tech defender jabbed him in the throat. Unfortunately he’s a true freshman and has a lot of intelligence maturing to do. I doubt a seasoned Junior takes the bait, but an 18 year old fireball? Pickens will learn from this and his teammates will make sure he does…if not I see another Gatorbaitor transfer, they gotta get their 5stars from somewhere…
I watched the incident several times.
The case can be made that Pickins was punching just to get Swilling off of him, to get free of Swilling.
Swilling was coming at Pickins hard and maintained hands on Pickins until Pickins was able to throw Swilling into the wall. As soon as Pickins broke free of Swilling Pickins got away from Swilling.
Can’t believe the ref didn’t throw Swilling be out of the game as well, that was a crock.
I feel the Pickens ejection was justified, but Swilling should have gotten the boot too, as he was definitely the instigator. Pickens should not have reacted that way regardless.
Swilling was the aggressor and should have been ejected too. Have to admit it was kinda funny when George slammed him into wall head first. Tech kid lucky his helmet was still on.
Just like the rest of the bugs, Swilling got his buutt manhandled and embarrassed.
I still can’t get over the gt coach doing push-ups, that was up there with mullet’s
sis sy boy dance.