Q. I wanted to ask you, how is your knee doing, and obviously in that Alabama game and in the time since then, how has that impacted your ability to play and play at both the safety position and the star position?
CHRIS SMITH: My knee is doing pretty well. I've been working with the training staff a lot to be able to get back going on the field and stuff like that. I definitely had a great opportunity to be able to play in the last game, and I'm doing everything I can to play in this game. The training staff is working with me so much, and I appreciate them for that. I'm putting in a lot of work to be able to get my knee back right, and everything is going to be good.
Q. What percentage do you feel your knee is right now? I know you played a little bit of star late in the season; do you anticipate going back to that position for this particular ballgame?
CHRIS SMITH: I don't really want to disclose that information about the percentage of my knee or anything, but I'm doing everything I can to be able to play, and I'll go out there and fight for my brothers.
Q. I'm wondering with Coach Lanning heading out, Coach Schumann and Coach Muschamp being co-defensive coordinators, has the dynamic changed from day-to-day at all? Can you just describe if it's different or is it absolutely the same, you wouldn't know anything was different?
CHRIS SMITH: No, sir, it's absolutely the same. We've still been running things how we've been running it all season. Obviously Coach Lanning hasn't gone on to his new job yet. He's still with us. Like he said earlier, he's going to play out his role with us the best he can, to the best of his ability. He's been doing a great job of that all year and he's continuing to do so until this thing is over.
Q. We just heard from Nakobe, you guys got to go out on a boat a little bit yesterday, but you look around the NBA, the NFL, this thing is hitting teams. Does Coach Smart say something to you guys? Does Dr. Courson say something to you guys and what do they say about being safe? Is it just stay in your room, wash your hands a million times? What's the message?
CHRIS SMITH: It's really the same thing that they've been reiterating to us all year, just being safe, wearing masks. COVID is definitely going back up right now and it's getting crazy, so they just stress to us to be safe and make good decisions. COVID is pretty much everywhere right now, so you can't really dodge it or anything like that, but the things we can do as players, coaches, as a whole team is just try to be safe because it's getting really crazy out here. They're just reiterating the fact that you need to be safe, wear a mask, wash your hands, stuff like that, to make sure we don't have a breakout or anything like that.
Q. When you guys have 25 days in between games, does the competitiveness in practice change at all? Is there like increased -- does it increase? Does it decrease?
CHRIS SMITH: It stays the same. We always have a competitive environment in our practices and stuff like that, and that's another thing our coaches do a good job of and even the players on our team is keeping up the competitive balance within our team. We always want to go out there and compete and get better every single day, because there's always stuff that we can improve on, and we want to be perfect, but you're never going to be perfect. There's a lot of things we can improve on each and every day, and when we go out there and compete, we're just working to get better.
Q. I wonder if you could explain why the Alabama result did or didn't put doubt in your minds about how good this defense is.
CHRIS SMITH: Well, it definitely didn't put doubt in my mind about our defense. We go in and we put work in every week for our opponent and things like that. Obviously things didn't go how we wanted them to go that day, but we're focused on a new opponent. We're focused on Michigan, and we're focused on being able to get a win so we can move on to the next level of our season.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports