SWC75
Bored Historian
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2011
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- Because they are Georgia Tech. We’ve played them three times. The first was in 2001, when we had a team that would go 10-2 against everybody else and they had a team that was 7-5 against everybody else. But they won, 7-13. In 2004, we had a team that was 6-5 against everybody else. So did they. But they crushed us in the Champs Sports Bowl 14-51. It was the death nell of the Coach P era. In 2013 both teams were 6-6 against everybody else but they again crushed us, 0-56, possibly the most one-sided football game I have ever watched. That’s a combined score of 21-120, an average of 7-40. And their teams weren’t any better than ours! It doesn’t matter how good we are and how good they are. We are the soda can and they are the foot.
- And they may be the better team. They struggled last year making the conversion from Paul Johnson’s triple option offense to Geoff Collins “more conventional”, (as described by Street and Smith’s) attack. But Collins brought in a top 25 recruiting class, (wouldn’t we love one of those), including one of the top dual threat quarterback prosects in the country. They’ve beaten Florida State at Florida State and were in the game in the fourth quarter against powerful Central Florida before the Knights pulled away. They’ve scored 38 points, which seems a luxury to us with our pitiful 16 points.
- This has been described as a ‘winnable game’. I hate that term almost as much as I hate the term ‘moral victory’, (what is an ‘immoral victory’?). All games are winnable, as we proved three years ago against the mighty Clemson Tigers. On top of that, if you categorize games as ‘winnable’ and ‘not winnable’ it increases the likelihood that you are underestimating the opponents in the ‘winnable’ games, which makes them less winnable.
- Even if the Yellow Jackets represent a lesser opponent than UNC or Pitt, an inferior opponent is not the cure for the problems of a team that isn’t playing well. A victory over them may not mean the problems are over and it may be hard to come by if they aren’t. The cure for not playing well is playing well, nothing else.
- Coach said that we are “very close” to success- just a few things have prevented big plays. We are averaging 8 points a game, 50th in the country and 186.5 yards per game, (52nd). Those rankings would normally be good but only 52 teams have been playing college football this fall. There must be a whole bunch of big plays to be had out there if we just did a few little things better.
- After these first two games, It’s hard to imagine our strategy of running up the middle with a 172 back into a patchwork like or throwing it down the sideline to a 171 pound receiver is going to produce results any different than we’ve seen. Supposedly we are stretching the defense horizontally and vertically with the long sideline passes and then exploiting the gaps that must necessarily appear in the defense with our quick little tailback. But the gaps aren’t there. And we don’t use the tight ends because they are covered by safeties and nickel backs. So we are letting the defense dictate whether we can use them or not. We have a gun-shy quarterback and for good reason: a line that has given up 14 sacks. Will our injured linemen come back at this point? (Dino suggested the end of the month – did he mean this week?). Will they be 100% and ready to take over? What kind of difference will they make? Stay tuned- sort of.
- And they may be the better team. They struggled last year making the conversion from Paul Johnson’s triple option offense to Geoff Collins “more conventional”, (as described by Street and Smith’s) attack. But Collins brought in a top 25 recruiting class, (wouldn’t we love one of those), including one of the top dual threat quarterback prosects in the country. They’ve beaten Florida State at Florida State and were in the game in the fourth quarter against powerful Central Florida before the Knights pulled away. They’ve scored 38 points, which seems a luxury to us with our pitiful 16 points.
- This has been described as a ‘winnable game’. I hate that term almost as much as I hate the term ‘moral victory’, (what is an ‘immoral victory’?). All games are winnable, as we proved three years ago against the mighty Clemson Tigers. On top of that, if you categorize games as ‘winnable’ and ‘not winnable’ it increases the likelihood that you are underestimating the opponents in the ‘winnable’ games, which makes them less winnable.
- Even if the Yellow Jackets represent a lesser opponent than UNC or Pitt, an inferior opponent is not the cure for the problems of a team that isn’t playing well. A victory over them may not mean the problems are over and it may be hard to come by if they aren’t. The cure for not playing well is playing well, nothing else.
- Coach said that we are “very close” to success- just a few things have prevented big plays. We are averaging 8 points a game, 50th in the country and 186.5 yards per game, (52nd). Those rankings would normally be good but only 52 teams have been playing college football this fall. There must be a whole bunch of big plays to be had out there if we just did a few little things better.
- After these first two games, It’s hard to imagine our strategy of running up the middle with a 172 back into a patchwork like or throwing it down the sideline to a 171 pound receiver is going to produce results any different than we’ve seen. Supposedly we are stretching the defense horizontally and vertically with the long sideline passes and then exploiting the gaps that must necessarily appear in the defense with our quick little tailback. But the gaps aren’t there. And we don’t use the tight ends because they are covered by safeties and nickel backs. So we are letting the defense dictate whether we can use them or not. We have a gun-shy quarterback and for good reason: a line that has given up 14 sacks. Will our injured linemen come back at this point? (Dino suggested the end of the month – did he mean this week?). Will they be 100% and ready to take over? What kind of difference will they make? Stay tuned- sort of.
