Big kudos to Hollings. RB situation is great.

G

GT Ace

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Hollings was terrific & his vision to veer off into open territory is superb. It's the veering off that poses the possibility of breaking it each run. Past RBs would follow OL & fall forward for 3,4 or 5 yds. Hollings TRIES to break each one. Can't wait to what he'll do on swing passes & screen passes. Man, what an RB. 17 carries for 153 yds (9.0 ypc) & 2 TDs
The reports were that Ford was pushing Hollings hard before his concusion last week. How good is Ford? Real nice to see Clinkscales get a coupla carries for 11 yds (5.5 ypc) & be playing in the 1st qtr. 1 KO return for 23. If O'L still here, Gordon doesn't play at all. GC also has the speed to take it home & would also like to see him on swing & screen passes.
Hatch was running exclusively with the 2nd string & got positive yds on each carry. Straight ahead runner that does not, yet, break off toward open field. He may not be pushing the turns because of his knee, but he sure gets yds(Burns style) 13 carries for 66 yds (5.1 ypc). RFr P J Daniels is still developing & must be tickled pink to get 9 totes for 26 yds (2.9 ypc). Bilbo gets 15 yds on 3 runs (5.0ypc)& a 5 yd dash to paydirt.
All-in-all: 51 runs for 279 yds (5.5 ypc). DYNOMITE! We ran 66% of the time. We may not run this many times @ UConn, but expect to see plenty of RB action & some more big yardage from our RBs. I honestly believe the team (includes coaches)will help Clinkscales get his 1st Ga Tech TD this week.
 
Very nice break down exactly how it happened Sat. night!

I don't care if we were playing South West Kentucky Community College. We ran the ball well.

Give Hollings a little slim hole and "BOOM!" he can be off the the races in a hurry. Still have visions of him putting it in another gear leaving the DB around the corner. That DB had a great angle on him. Didn't matter!! That was impressive.

Thought all the the running backs ran hard. Dixon looked to be really taking pride in hammering someone in the hole every time. He explodes when he blocks.
 
for Tech to be successful we HAVE to have a solid running game. This allows our line to blow doors and wear the team down.

I think this is going to be our best running attack since in 3 years. This will be the difference. If you have a solid rushing attack then the DLine cannot fast rush your QB.

We will not know what we have until we play Clem's son but it looks good so far.
 
I thought Dixon played well at fullback. He played most of the game since some of the backup fullbacks are still injured.
I thought we missed a good opportunity to let Dixon have a few carries and see what he could do running out of the fullback position. He did not get a single carry. I think this was an opportunity lost. No need to wait until a big game to let him get a few carries out of the fullback position. He could be an impact player like Ed Wilder was.
 
Good thread...

Like everyone, I was really impressed w/Hollings speed to the corner. If the o-line can consistently give him a crease, he will rack up a lot of yards for us this season.

It will be interesting to see how Ford does this week w/Uconn. I expect to see a similar vanilla game plan of toss sweeps left and right since it is doubtful that Uconn will be able to stop much of that. Getting Dixon a few carries as well is sure to be in the gameplan since we want him to feel comfortable before we roll into the Clemson game.

Nonetheless, I feel a lot better about the running game. I feel confident that Hollings and Ford will give us two quality options at that position. Hatch and Clinkscale add some pretty good depth as well.
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Think about this: if the Old Regime (O'Leary) was still present on the Flats I' ll bet you that Hollings would still be wasting away as a special teams player and more than likely would have remained there for the rest of his career at GT
 
Originally posted by 83jacket:
Think about this: if the Old Regime (O'Leary) was still present on the Flats I' ll bet you that Hollings would still be wasting away as a special teams player and more than likely would have remained there for the rest of his career at GT
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<font size="2" face="Arial, Verdana, Sans-Serif">There is no way to know if that is true or not. Last year we had Joe Burns and Sean Gregory along with all these other backs....there was no place for Hollings. But with Burns and Gregory gone this year, it is very possible that Hollings would have asked O'leary/O'Brien for a shot at running back just like he asked Buck/O'Brien for a shot. It is very likely that he would have gotten the same shot at it as he did now based on need and performance.
 
"But with Burns and Gregory gone this year, it is very possible that Hollings would have asked O'leary/O'Brien for a shot at running back just like he asked Buck/O'Brien for a shot. It is very likely that he would have gotten the same shot at it as he did now based on need and performance."

Thats your opinion.

As you said there is no way to know if your opinion would be true or not. What we do know is that O'Leary and his staff essentially wasted (did not even redshirt him) two years of eligibility for Tony Hollings as a special teams player.
 
Special teams are very important...so important that Buck has a full time special teams coach.
Hollings or Rhino or anyone else that plays or have played special teams are important, and certainly not wasted.
You are obviously entitled to your opinion but your opinion just sounds like the oh so typical petty little sour grapes towards Coach O'leary.
It would be more productive to be grateful to Coach O'leary for the absolutely incredible amount of talent he left for Buck.
 
Beeware..it goes both ways:

You are obviously entitled to your opinion but your opinion just sounds to me like petty little sour grapes towards Coach Gailey being selected as the GT Head Coach over your favored candidate.

It would be more productive to be grateful to Coach Gailey for having the good sense to move Hollings to running back than to continue to cut the man down and take pot shots at him at every opportunity
 
While I don't seem to agree with Beeware very often - I feel compelled to come to his defense in this instance.

None of us really know what Hollings' status would be if GOL had stayed -- after all it was GOL who moved CJ Williams from defense to TB also. Who can say with authority that he would not have done the same with Hollings?

Unlike many I think you can be happy to have Chan as our coach and also appreciate what GOL did for us. Personally, I'm tickled to death to have Gailey as our current coach - but I also appreciate what GOL did and part of that was to leave Chan a full cupboard.
 
This is a message board. People post opinions, rarely do they post facts. My opinion is that George (BTW I liked George a great deal) would have left Tony on special teams. Thats my opinion. What I don't like is Beware making genralizations that I must be "a sour grapes guy" just because of my opinion about what O'Leary would have done with Tony.
 
Just for the record, GOL did not move CJ to RB. CJ was moved to RB when Lewis was in command. I believe he moved to RB the week of the UVA game.

GOL did tell CJ that if he didn't start holding on to the football he could join the FS competition.

Bottom line, is someone missed the boat big time. For some reason Hollings really had a hard time playing DB and he wasted 2 years trying. There is no doubt in my mind he would have been a major factor at RB last year if given the chance.
 
Originally posted by 83jacket:
This is a message board. People post opinions, rarely do they post facts. My opinion is that George (BTW I liked George a great deal) would have left Tony on special teams. Thats my opinion. What I don't like is Beware making genralizations that I must be "a sour grapes guy" just because of my opinion about what O'Leary would have done with Tony.
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<font size="2" face="Arial, Verdana, Sans-Serif">You sir are correct - it is a message board and facts rarely appear.
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I think you have a sound basis for your opinion - look at Gregory, etc. But I also think there is another side of the story - CJ Williams for example.

I think the important part of it all is that GOL is not the coach now so what he would or would not have done is not very relevant. What is important - is that Gailey did switch Hollings (as you so rightly pointed out). How much talent GOL left here, while an important issue, is a different issue.

BTW, (again as you have pointed out) none of the above should ever be confused with facts.
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Axe,

Thanks for the correction (I think). Not being one of the "in-towners" I only started hearing about CJ after O'Leary took over, I guess. But I thought I had heard somewhere that it was O'Leary who made the switch.

Be that as it may, the key part of your post were the last four words - if given the chance.
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Beeware,

I'm not giving Coach Gailey any credit. However, GT has not had a RB as physically gifted as Tony Hollings in a long long time. He would of added a lot to our offense last year as we haven't had a back that can pressure you on the edge in a while now. Considering how much he struggled trying to play defense, it really makes you wonder what could have been. After about 5-6 practices, you could really tell that he has a lot of natural instincts for the position.

I can tell you GOL looked at the box score and wondered what he was thinking. Not a knock on GOL or his staff, but somebody missed the boat on this one. Nobody's perfect, even GOL can make a mistake.
 
Didn't Ford win the first string job over Hollings at one time during the Fall? I thought he was the leader until his previous injury. Gailey had stated, at one point in the Fall, Hollings had fallen behind Ford.

I am curious to see how Ford performs against UConn. Maybe, Ford is as good as Hollings. Maybe, we have two good backs with speed and quickness.

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Sidney's curse is that he seems to take on tacklers head on so he really takes a beating. Hollings looks a little more like Jerry Mays or Robert Lavette in that tacklers do not seem to get a good shot on him
 
Sidney was out for basically the entire spring. Gailey said that when fall camp started Hollings was not playing as well as he did in the spring and Ford jumped ahead just as he got hurt. However, Gailey said Hollings made a big jump again after Sidney got hurt.

So if you ask me it sounds like they are close to even, but it's going to take Sidney some time to get back to where he was a couple weeks ago. Sidney looked very good to me the first week of practice. He was running very hard and finding the holes. Tony's speed is what really makes him special. I'm very excited about the guys we have back there.
 
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