The Goose is Loose!

We met his brother while tailgating before the ND game in South Bend a couple years ago...apparently he was not fond of us referring to his brother as the Goose.
 
I'm thinking this was his junior year. The following year his knee was so bad he never would have made that run.
 
Watch the play. It's a motion counter option, almost straight out of PJ's playbook, except we ran WR motion as the pitch guy with double TEs. We ran a lot of neat stuff out of that set in 2000.
 
jacket67 said:
I'm thinking this was his junior year. The following year his knee was so bad he never would have made that run.
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You are correct sir. He tore up his knee near the goal line in the final minute of the LSU Peach Bowl loss.
 
beej67 said:
Watch the play. It's a motion counter option, almost straight out of PJ's playbook.
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I think it was straight from the Fridge's playbook...

I've always enjoyed option football, and now we've got the master of it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the Hamilton/Goose years filled with stuff like this?
 
Godsey referred to himself as Goose in college. He definitely wouldn't be offended by it.
 
Allen Koholic said:
I think it was straight from the Fridge's playbook...
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Well yes, but the Fridge playbook was basically a bunch of stuff stolen from other teams. He sorta amassed plays that worked and crammed them into his system. PJ was at Georgia Southern at the time, btw.

I've always enjoyed option football, and now we've got the master of it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the Hamilton/Goose years filled with stuff like this?
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That particular set - the double TE single back set - was something we ran a lot of stuff out of with Godsey. Not so much with Joe. Probably because we had great TEs while Godsey was here.

We would run several passing plays out of that double TE double wide single back set, but the real lethal stuff was the motion stuff. We'd put Kelley Campbell (fastest guy on the team) into motion towards the QB and snap the ball right before he arrived, and run end-arounds with double TEs for lead blockers. Then we'd do the same thing, but have him motion behind the single back, and run triple option to the strong side of the field, with him as the pitch man. Both of those plays developed so quickly that the opposing safety had to motion presnap over to the strong side presnap to cover our motion.

Which is what makes this play a TD.

Watch the video again, and right before the ball is snapped, after our motion starts, the UGA free safety enters the frame near the top right. He's rolling over to cover the WR on the pitch assuming we'll run the play to the left, and the corner that used to be covering him rolls back to the safety spot. Then we snap it and run the play to the right, away from the safety. We pull the right tackle and use the TE to get blocks on the LBs and run where there isn't a safety, only the old corner back, and we make him our pitch key. He beelines for Campbell, leaving nobody on Goose. That free safety who motioned over thinking the play was going left is one of the 3 guys chasing Goose at the end of the play.

The play is set up by Donnan showing film of Tech running the end-around the previous week to his players and developing a defense for it.
 
Basically we've all been wondering why we quit running the option ever since we quit running it. And we started running it much less under O'Brian, in O'Leary's last year, actually.
 
I was too young and was not schooled on the different offensive styles yet. And to think I was a little worried about an option offense coming to tech. Little did I know that the last time we were nationally competitive we were running the option....

Thank you Drad!
 
Joe Hamilton and the rest of those guys were apparently unusually good at adapting to new plays and offensive concepts. I remember hearing stories about how Fridge would hole up in his office looking at all kinds of pro and college game film from as far back as the AFL days and he would just go down to practice and put new stuff in constantly. Some of those home games in the late 90s, you'd just think, "I know we're going to score a TD on this drive; I just don't know HOW we're going to do it." I often think that Fridge was better suited for OC than HC. Not to say that he hasn't been successful as a HC.
 
I remember hearing an interview with O'Leary that said he'd often eavesdrop on conversations between Fridge and Joe during the game, just to gain insight into football. Supposedly those two guys were completely on the same page with each other.
 
With the exception of the uniforms you could just squeeze that highlight into last year's uga game and no one would know the difference.

Thank god the option is here.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the Hamilton/Goose years filled with stuff like this?
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We also ran a lot of option in 2001 and 2002 with, I think, Jermaine Crenshaw at QB. I am fairly certain he played in the 2001 FSU game, and I also think he competed with A.J. Suggs in 2002, although I may be getting my QBs/years confused.
 
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