Kiante Tripp came to Athens as a defensive lineman, practicing there during his redshirt freshman season.

Then he spent the last two years as part of a young Georgia offensive line, seeing some playing time at tight end in 2008.

And now Tripp has returned to his original spot, becoming a vital cog of a depleted defensive end position for the Bulldogs.

Defensive end Jeremy Longo left the Bulldogs’ Monday scrimmage with a shoulder injury, just a few days after Georgia lost Demarcus Dobbs for the remainder of the spring with a foot fracture.

That leaves Tripp and redshirt sophomore Justin Houston as Georgia’s only two healthy scholarship ends. For a team that struggled to pressure opposing quarterbacks last season, the pursuit of a more present pass rush has gotten a whole lot tougher.

“Longo got banged up today, which made it even tougher on that position,” head coach Mark Richt said. “By the end of the day [defensive tackles] Geno [Atkins] and Kade [Weston] played a little D-end. We’re not quite sure how we’ll proceed from here, but we’ll just have to find a way to keep going.”

Richt said he didn’t know how serious Longo’s injury was, but, with or without him, the Bulldogs’ ends are getting a lot of reps and trying to lay the foundation for an improvement on a 2008 season that saw the defensive front tally just 14.5 sacks.

“We really just can’t complain too much, there’s no time for complaining with two D-ends now,” Tripp said.

The ends will have NFL-caliber defensive tackles Atkins and Jeff Owens, back from an ACL tear, to help them out, but the pass rush undoubtedly will be under close scrutiny in the fall.

“Pass rushing is an art,” Owens said. “It has to be taught. It’s not something that you can just go out there and think you’re going to be a great pass rusher.”

Said Dobbs: “It’s all about technique and having a bad attitude to get to the quarterback. Just having a malice in your heart that you need to get to the quarterback … That’s what I think will eventually separate this group of D-ends from last year’s group, even though we’ve got a bunch of the same guys.”

That bunch of guys won’t be completely healthy until the summer, when Dobbs, Neland Ball, Rod Battle and Cornelius Washington all return to practice. But Tripp finally appears to be at home on the defensive line, if for no reason other than necessity.

“We don’t have a choice but to get better,” he said. “We’re the only ones out there.”