Dawgnation’s Connor Riley joined Dukes & Bell for his weekly appearance on the show and talked about why we might not see a lot from five star tight end Arik Gilbert on Saturday.
When asked about Gilbert’s standing on the team.
“I wanna be sensitive here because obviously so much of Arik Gilbert’s story is about things away from football and making sure that mentally he is in a good space. Because he did take time away from the team last year and tried to get that right,” Riley said. “We know he was involved in a car accident this weekend, when I saw him at practice on Monday, granted full participant, fully ready to go, he looked a little heavy to me. And maybe that’s just because he’s in a room with Brock Bowers, Darnell Washington and those guys are in the best shape of their lives entering this first game. I found it interesting that Todd Hartley was on him the second he caught the ball and was pushing him, I think Kirby Smart’s press conference answer last night on Arik, might be reading too much into it but I thought it was a noticeable tone shift and the way that he had talked about him and what he had been looking at for him. Kirby’s never obviously gonna trash a player in public but I think he’s used the press before to motivate a player and I wonder if that’s what he’s doing here.”
Riley talked about what to expect from Gilbert on Saturday.
“I’ll be honest, Darnell Washington has had as good a camp as anybody and I think he’s going to be very involved in this offense and Brock Bowers might be your first or second best player on this team. While yes I think a lot of people are eager to see what Arik Gilbert does in this coming weekend, don’t be surprised if he’s not heavily involved and quite frankly doesn’t even record a catch in this game on Saturday because it doesn’t seem like he’s in the best both maybe physical shape and maybe even mental space going into the start of the season right now.”