It wasn’t pretty, but Georgia did enough things right to beat Vanderbilt, 31-14, in Saturday’s SEC opener for both teams in Nashville.

Tailback Nick Chubb rushed for a game-high 189 yards and a dominant defense did the rest as the Dawgs improved to 2-0 going into next week’s SEC East showdown with visiting South Carolina. Vanderbilt falls to 0-2.

Here’s what coach Mark Richt had to say after the game.

Opening statement:

“We’re 1-0 in league play, which is great. I’m very thankful for that. Hard fought battle against a team that was really ready to play. I was very impressed with the job that Coach Mason did. There were so many things that went well and so many things that didn’t go so well, a lot of things to learn from, but a lot of things to be thankful for. I felt like there were enough good things on offense, defense and special teams that we deserved to win. When bad things happened, we certainly could’ve lost it. To get out of a game like this with a victory and still being able to learn from it is going to be very valuable to us, and that’ll be our goal.”

On Jordan Jenkins’ 5.5 tackles for loss:

“Jordan just played with such a great edge. Jordan decided to come back for his senior season, it was something that he felt strongly about. He felt like he just had to get better, there were some things he thought he could improve on. That’s what I like about him. He’s not a guy who thinks he hung the moon by any stretch, but he came back, he worked his tail off, and he’s been playing excellent ball. He’s been named a captain for game one and game two, and he’ll probably get named captain for game three considering what he did this week.”

On quarterback play and usage:

“We just didn’t throw-and-catch well in the first half, a little bit of decision-making but we mostly just didn’t hit our targets. One ball got tipped at the line of scrimmage. We didn’t attempt many balls, period. We didn’t move the chains, we didn’t get any third down conversions in the first half. We have to be more balanced than we were today in order for our offense to really move well. We were gonna play Brice [Ramsey] in the first half, and we did, but even when we took a knee at the end of the first half Greyson [Lambert] was in there and we wanted to finish it that way. Greyson, I think completed 11-out-of-16 or something in the second half; much better performance in the second half which is good to see.”

On success running the ball in the first half and the effect on the passing game:

“I look at that one drive way back inside the five where we tried to get big and they got big and put everybody in every gap, and then some. You’re just so tempted to pick it up and launch one because it’s single coverage and nobody deep, everybody’s on the line of scrimmage. No matter how well you run the ball you won’t be able to run the ball into that. Every once in a while you’ve got to pick it up and throw a pop pass or a slant or take a shot to back people off of you a little bit. Overall, we ran the ball well, but a lot of it was in big chunks, and a lot of it was grinding for that two or three yard gain, and that’s how it goes sometimes. We did have some big runs, my guess is the receivers did a good job blocking downfield for those.”

On Vanderbilt recovering a squibb kick at the Georgia 20-yard line in the fourth:

“That was aligned the way we wanted to, they took advantage of the alignment. There are a lot of guys who have a responsibility on that hands unit, and that is to block the defenders coming down the field. They’ve got to block and give that returner time to gather the ball in. I’m going to spend some time seeing just exactly what everybody else in the country does in that situation and find out if there’ s a better way, but if everybody did what they were supposed to do, there’d have been a lot more time and opportunity for him to get on the ball safely without the drama. That’s one of the things that could’ve cost us. We’ve got to make sure we’re doing the right thing, first of all, then make sure we can execute it.”

On if his team beat themselves at times:

“We’re all perfectionists. We all want to do it just right. We know that, when we don’t, it bothers us. I talked to the team after the game and said we’ve just all got to look within ourselves and say, `What did I do that I could’ve done better?’ We’re in a business of correction. We’re in a business of watching the film and critiquing what we do and being gut-level honest about what we see to make it better, and that’s what football is all about. We’ll have a good hard look at the tape, a good hard look at our strategies, and make sure we’re doing the right thing. Our players, I’m sure, will look within themselves too to see what they could do better. Obviously, there were some momentum shifts and things that looked ominous there for a minute. We could’ve folded, but we didn’t, and that’s a good sign too.”

On his special teams in the win:

“We did some really good things on special teams. [Kicker Marshall Morgan], I’ve got a lot of faith in him. He’s a very talented kid and he’s kicking the ball well. It’s hard to say when you miss kicks, but when you start duck-hooking them and when you start just pulling it, then you get nervous but, right now, he’s striking the ball pretty good.”

On his team’s recent history playing at Vanderbilt:

“I don’t know. I think Vanderbilt’s a good football team. They’re tough to play at home, and we just haven’t been able to finish it very often. We’ve had one game out of the last five times we’re here where we didn’t have drama. We’ve had drama here just about every other time.”

On new offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer’s first time calling plays on the road:

“I think he called a game that was just fine, we’ve just got to execute a few things a bit better at times. Some of the things, like the decision to run the ball three times deep in our own territory and not throw, were my decision. I was trying to chew up as many timeouts as possible and hopefully knock it out of there. Some of those things had to do with me. Towards the end, when we were trying to use as much clock as possible and huddle instead of going no-huddle, a lot of those were my calls.”

On multiple dropped interceptions:

“We did drop a few picks, didn’t we? It might’ve been less dramatic, but I’m glad we caught the ones we did, and we’ll just have to work on the jugs machine a little more.”

On his reaction after Vanderbilt recovered the muffed kickoff:

“Well, I didn’t say anything out loud, but if anybody could record my thoughts, my pastor wouldn’t have been happy with me.”