James Cook: ‘Just beating Alabama is special to me’

A sampling of what was said following Georgia’s 33-18 victory over Alabama to win the College Football Playoff national championship Monday night:

■ Jamaree Salyer on returning for his senior season: “It’s probably one of the most special things I’ve ever done in my life. Just understanding the work that it took, honestly, it’s kind of one of the crazy things, just understanding how much work, man hours and how many reps. It’s kind of crazy to look back on it. I only got this opportunity once in four years, so it’s even more special to me to be a senior and to be able to do it that way, too. It’s just a lot of things make it very special to me, but God is good.”

■ Travon Walker on winning the championship by beating Alabama: “It’s just the fact that we won the national championship, we beat Alabama, and we really did it for all the people who doubted us. We worked all years for this. We knew how good we were. We just had to prove it to everybody else. But it really didn’t matter what everybody else said because we always came to work. We knew how hard we worked.”

■ Jordan Davis on bouncing back after a slow start: “Definitely our mindset was just even keel, play the next play. Everything is not going to fall our way, and it’s going to be a lot of adversity in the game. Bama is a talented team. They have great players and a tremendous team . ... It’s just the way things fell. At the end of the day, we just had to keep chopping, and that’s what we kept preaching on the sidelines, just keep chopping, keep going, don’t stop, keep the foot on the gas.”

■ James Cook on finally beating Alabama: “For me, just never beating them (before Monday), it was just special to me. I mean,so many games we had them down to the wire and they just came clutching in every moment. I mean, yeah, just beating Alabama is special to me because they’ve got a great coach, great team . ... Just winning the national championship period is special.”

■ Nakobe Dean on the defense coming through: “We talked about putting it on our shoulders and it being on us. We knew when we took the lead, we knew that if they don’t score no more, they don’t win. That’s the only thing that was going through our mind. We took the challenge, just like every time they got to the red area, we knew we were going to bow our necks, do what we had to do.”

■ Stetson Bennett on responding after a fumble: “I knew that once I fumbled the ball, I was not going to be the reason we lost this game. Coach (Todd Monken) dialed up some awesome play-action. We had been running the ball a lot, and I think we went three straight play-action and then one deep ball. Then we got them to jump offsides because they’d been timing up the snap a lot. But it’s the thing coach (Kirby) Smart and the whole team has been preaching all year, resiliency, toughness, composure, connection. I knew those guys beside me had my back, and I had their back, too.”

■ Smart on Bennett going from scout team to national championship quarterback: “Five years ago, he was delivering passes like Baker Mayfield (former scout team player for Oklahoma), against the (Georgia) scout team. There’s a lot of guys who saw him on the scout team make plays with his feet, his arm whip and decision-making, and we were very impressed. But again, to think it would have come this far ... man, what a story.”