Patenaude

And those offensive players steadily improved under Johnson. Ppg is unscaled and basically meaningless.

If your point is "just wait", ok. But we only saw improvement under PJ for the first two years. There was no offensive regression, outside of a game where we were forced to play Booker.

We had an extremely good offense last year. We don't this year so far. Iiwii and it's part of the changeover, but let's not pretend that these offensive players weren't producing at a much higher level just a few months ago.

We had an extremely good offense in 2018 against the cupcakes, Loserville and VPI. We sure as hell weren't extremely good vs Duke, Pitt, Minn, Clemson nor mutts. We were OK against Miami and good vs UVA. The season as a whole? Any stats were buoyed by the 3 complete routs we had, 2 against a team that quit (Loserville) and another that had our 2015-type injury-filled year (VPI), also with a coach that PJ owned.

In terms of ability to complete passes, this year's kids don't appear to be any worse than the 2017-18 teams.
 
They had the numbers advantage on the left side of the field but instead ran a sweep to the right where they had more guys. Hard to tell if it's a call at the line or a predetermined guess that wound up wrong. Either way it was no bueno

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Yep saw that. Not sure why we ran to the right. We could have easily gotten 5+ yards with the number advantage...
 
I think it's difficult to evaluate the OC, QB's, and outside skill players right now because it's clear the O-line can't hold up in pass blocking yet. That's why everything was so limited to short passes and the screen game all day. You're taking your life in your hands right now if you call an intermediate or a long pass play. The O-line and QB's looked legit terrified anytime USF walked up and showed blitz pre-snap. We just have to trust Brent Key is going to continue developing these guys and they improve week to week and are a much better group by the team we hit the meat of the ACC schedule in a month.

None of this is unusual, really. Folks maybe forget what an ugly thing the 3O was in Paul Johnson's first year before it finally started to click late in the season. Poor Dwyer got his ass kicked on B-back dives all that season, as I recall. Offense takes longer to adapt than defense. It's not shocking.

Folks forget how ugly it was in 2017-2018 and its near-complete inability to complete a forward pass. The past 2 years of 'success' were mostly TQM running endless QB Keepers. Folks forget how it got stuffed more often than not the past 2 years. I don't blame them - I've tried to blot-out what Minn and Duke did to us last year too. It was ugly and boring as hell and that was not a team in its first year in the scheme.

2014 was fun to watch but after that, the 3O was mostly ineffective (barring a few games in 2016 and the cupcakes like L'ville & VPI, who made ODU's offense look like a world-beater).
 
Good for GC. He made our defense better. That’s great. But that doesn’t give him a pass on our offense

Agreed but PJ mostly got a pass for our near-complete lack of a defense, even in year 11. Hell, that was about the only time the words "PJ" and "pass" appeared in a sentence that didn't have the word "incomplete" in it.
 
We had an extremely good offense in 2018 against the cupcakes, Loserville and VPI. We sure as hell weren't extremely good vs Duke, Pitt, Minn, Clemson nor mutts. We were OK against Miami and good vs UVA. The season as a whole? Any stats were buoyed by the 3 complete routs we had, 2 against a team that quit (Loserville) and another that had our 2015-type injury-filled year (VPI), also with a coach that PJ owned.

In terms of ability to complete passes, this year's kids don't appear to be any worse than the 2017-18 teams.

Your brain is addled by triple option derangement syndrome.

From FEI, Miami had the #5 defense last year. UVA was #23.

Clemson and Georgia were #2 and #10.

I'd agree that we underperformed against Minnesota (#33) and especially Pitt (#63).

Overall, though, we had a outstanding offense last year.
 
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An offense's job is to score more points than the other team scores. We scored 14. They scored 10.
I'd much rather have that than an offense that runs up 500 yards rushing and we lose.
Ok. We did that 7 times last year. No excuse to not do that again. We’ve got “the same” offense and a better defense.
 
Your brain is addled by triple option derangement syndrome.

From FEI, Miami had the #5 defense last year. UVA was #23.

Clemson and Georgia were #2 and #10.

We had a outstanding offense last year.

Yours is addled by I-Heart-PJ Syndrome. If the QB "Option" Keeper play was on (Bowling Green, L'ville, VPI), we "looked good". The rest of the season (notable exceptions we agree upon), it wasn't and we looked horrible. Those 3 games with their 170 points and 2000 yards of offense made 2018 look much better than it was.
Miami stats were boosted by 2 TOs by our defense that gave us short fields to easy points. It was a great team victory, much like UVA. Both of these games, I pretty clearly stated that the O was either "OK" or "Good" so not sure why you brought them up. We were very effective vs a bad UNC team too. The rest was mostly stifled QB Keepers and hideous attempts at passing and catching the football.
 
An offense's job is to score more points than the other team scores. We scored 14. They scored 10.
I'd much rather have that than an offense that runs up 500 yards rushing and we lose.
I grew up watching Tech win games 10-3, and loved it. 14-10 is a throwback to days gone by. The win is preferable to losing 38-35, but I think you do not appreciate how bad South Florida is. And it gives me shivers that, at least Saturday, we were right down in ditch with them.
 
An offense's job is to score more points than the other team scores. We scored 14. They scored 10.
I'd much rather have that than an offense that runs up 500 yards rushing and we lose.

This is a failure of critical thinking. “Scoring more points than the other team” is a function of offense, defense, and special teams. This was pretty clearly illustrated by, well, the USF game last year, where defense and special teams both öööö the bed.

There’s some interdependence, obviously, but unfortunately for the point you’re arguing, our old offense actually helped the defense by burning clock and limiting possessions. (Except that when we score as prolifically as we did against USF last year, the offense also exposed some ST weaknesses by giving them more opportunities to fail.)

If you want to actually debate about relative quality or strength of offenses, you can’t just look at “did we win or lose,” you have to look at actual offensive stats. It’s impossible to argue (in any sort of valid way) that this year’s O was as productive as last year’s when you compare offensive stats against USF year-to-year, any more than you can argue that last year’s D was more effective against USF than this year’s.

If you want to compare overall team performance, then yeah, winning trumps everything. But if you’re talking offense, there’s no case for this year’s performance against USF.

JRjr
 
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Needing time to install is a valid excuse. But stop with the personnel stuff. That is absolute bullshit.

TaQuon ööööing Marshall passed for 183 yards on this team last year. Don't try to tell me that he is a better passer than LJ or JG. Our receiving corps is also better than last year, and we have some very good RBs. Yeah, the OL is struggling, but let's not act like we had a bunch of road graders last year. They still helped us rush for over 400 yds on USF.

I'm happy we won, but I'm already tired of the "bad players" excuses. For years I watched GT teams with similar talent to this one put up yards and points every week. We made that USF team look like a sieve last year.

Our defense looks well-coached. I just hope I can say the same about the offense by the end of the year.
You had me at Taquon ööööing Marshall
 
Well, this it is.

All fanbases like to have their in-house villain. No team actually ever loses on merit, it is because someone isn't doing their J.O.B. The fans always do their J.O.B so they can't every be blamed and it is their J.O.B to blame someone.

We all love Collins for many good reasons. He is trying to build GT into something it hasn't been for a long time. öööö like that takes a long time to build. We have all decided to be patient for that (at least until we struggle next year which is likely and reasonable) We really like our homeboy OL coach (even though they struggle) so the culprit has to be the OC. After 2 games, let me repeat, after 2 games some in the GT fanbase have shown they are as patient and thoughtful as a toothless, hillbilly Tenn fan.
 
Ok. We did that 7 times last year. No excuse to not do that again. We’ve got “the same” offense and a better defense.
Well, if returning 5 out of 11 is 'the same', then sure. I thought all Tech grads could do math?
 
Needing time to install is a valid excuse. But stop with the personnel stuff. That is absolute bullshit.

TaQuon ööööing Marshall passed for 183 yards on this team last year. Don't try to tell me that he is a better passer than LJ or JG. Our receiving corps is also better than last year, and we have some very good RBs. Yeah, the OL is struggling, but let's not act like we had a bunch of road graders last year. They still helped us rush for over 400 yds on USF.

I'm happy we won, but I'm already tired of the "bad players" excuses. For years I watched GT teams with similar talent to this one put up yards and points every week. We made that USF team look like a sieve last year.

Our defense looks well-coached. I just hope I can say the same about the offense by the end of the year.
Johnson's scheme was almost always the reason why we looked good. When he had awesome players, like 2008, 2009, and 2014 we did some real damage on the national stage.

But you have to stop pretending that this roster is talented just because last year's offense put up points. Of course they did. CPJ was a genius. If we hired Monken or the Ken N I would expect to be better, because they know his system.

You say the "OL is struggling" which is the understatement of the century. The OL is atrocious. This masks any perceived talent you think we have at QB, WR, RB. The OL wasn't Alabama last year, but we did just lose a grad transfer who is currently starting at Texas.
 
I will say this outside of Play-Calling our Oliver and LJ were just eyeballing WRs and wasn't any progression. The one time I seen that was Graham on the deep cross where he did make some quick looks of course that one pass play was probably the best pass blocking we had of the game. It's hard to evaluate the overall QB play right now because not sure how much of it is by decision just quick no reads, play-calling, and of course bad blocking. In my opinion you got 3 QBs with all unique downfalls it seems so what do you do?

Oliver by far is the best runner but seems to lack much downfield passing ability and mechanics.
LJ is average in terms of running has a better arm and per coaches understanding of offense and reads...but he's been inaccurate at times
Graham in limited play seemingly has been the best of both worlds overall but he must have a limited grasp of offense that they don't feel comfortable with him out there that Sack in the one drive was a bad look but once again no blocking doesn't help

The art of progression takes time to master, even with good pass protection. Similar to a baseball pitcher who doesn't have confidence to throw the change up for a strikeout, so he resorts to throwing a fastball instead. Guys are going to resort to what they know best in the heat of the moment...whether that is staring a receiver down, or throwing the basic fastball. It's just natural instinct.
 
Yep saw that. Not sure why we ran to the right. We could have easily gotten 5+ yards with the number advantage...

Not to mention that on other occasions the ball carrier (QB or RB) didn't make the right decision to cut back to the day light. They ran into the pursuit and were stopped. All viewed from the upper north. Don't get me wrong, there were many instances where I think our guys could have gotten much more than they did, but others where they didn't stand a chance of getting anything positive.
 
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