Watching GT Football

smokey_wasp said:
I dont think lack of depth/injuries adequately explain our failures on D/ST. These are still mostly 3 star recruits and legit P5 players. I expect a dropoff, even a significant one. I dont expect them to look totally helpless against a G5 team that lost a lot of experience in the offseason.
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Don’t mind Coit. He is blind to the issues beyond injuries and ejections.
 
ThisIsAtlanta said:
Clemson played a well prepared team full of top 20 recruiting classes and didn't look like clowns.

Georgia Tech did the opposite of that.

Stats can mislead you.
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You're missing my point. I just used last night as an example, but I could have picked just about any game. We've grown so accustomed as fans to having a great offense and horrible defense that we're butthurt and nitpicking offensive decisions despite putting up 600 yards of offense and pretty much completely dominating the USF defense.

And just to be clear, this is no defense of Paul Johnson. This attitude happened under his watch and will probably end up being the reason he leaves, whenever that is. For better or worse, Nate Woody probably has 1 year to make some type of noticeable impact.
 
coit said:
You can’t compare offensive performance late in a game to defensive. Surely you understand that fundamental concept? Defenses have to react to what the offense is doing. We’ve benefitted from a gassed defense many times in CPJ’s tenure. And we had it in hand this time until the fumble.

We definitely missed some tackles yesterday, but the ones that I noticed were not due to tackling technique as much as our guys not being in great positions to make the play. To me this comes from the learning curve of the new defense. I expect those glitches to be worked out over the course of this first season.

And the fact that @beej67 thinks the cause is black magic doesn’t mean his point about our defensive numbers is any less valid. And how do you know it isn’t black magic? Can you prove it?
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I'm not aware of where I'm "comparing offensive performance late in a game to defensive" or what that even means. I seem to have noticed different missed tackles than you did, because I noticed players in positions that were just fine who just flew by the guy they were supposed to tackle or tried to just run into him or do some one armed stuff, way too much of it. I'm not watching this stuff in a vacuum, though, and I'm not under the illusion that we were facing some kind of all-world athletes, as good as any of USF's guys may have been. I may not know the super technical details of how defense works from an X's and O's standpoint, but I watch 20 or 30 games a week, down at FCS, in the NAIA, between G5, P5, and whatever you want, and I don't see a whole hell of a lot of teams that look as bad at making tackles as we did on Saturday. It's not impossible to bring in a new coach or a new scheme and still make tackles, forget whether the players are fully up to speed on the scheme. Arizona State has a brand new DC and HC, both in their first year, and they just held Michigan State to 13 points. Notre Dame's DC is brand new, Vanderbilt's DC is new, Oklahoma State's DC is new, Miss State's DC is new, and UF, Ohio State, and Texas A&M all have brand new DCs. Go watch any of their games and look at the tackling and tell me if that looks anything like ours. It certainly doesn't look that way to me.

If you want to believe that GT is literally cursed and magical forces are responsible for our lack of football success, go on ahead. I can't disprove you, but all our future conversations on the subject are going to be pretty short.
 
johncu said:
You're missing my point. I just used last night as an example, but I could have picked just about any game. We've grown so accustomed as fans to having a great offense and horrible defense that we're butthurt and nitpicking offensive decisions despite putting up 600 yards of offense and pretty much completely dominating the USF defense.

And just to be clear, this is no defense of Paul Johnson. This attitude happened under his watch and will probably end up being the reason he leaves, whenever that is. For better or worse, Nate Woody probably has 1 year to make some type of noticeable impact.
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I don't think I'm really missing your point, I think your point is really missing the mark. It's great that we got so much production and so many points, but we also left a ton of production and points on the field because of mistakes in execution and play calling. We had two outrageously good quarters on offense, and we had two outrageously bad ones. Why the extremes? It wasn't 100% because Charlie Strong made some kind of magic adjustment, a lot of it was just that we can not consistently execute our own offense. And that song is getting tired.

Now, the offense was unequivocally the bright spot on the team, and I don't think anyone is arguing otherwise, but that's not really saying anything, because the defense was a flaming pit for the entire second half and special teams was a literal void for a substantial part of the first. But it's like each of our units only played half a game, all tallied up, offense included. Each of them deserve scrutiny and, indeed, ridicule, because it's ridiculous that we could be fielding such an incomplete team in year 10 of someone's program, even when you account for injuries.
 
I was a manager for the team during Gaileys last three years. The team was fractured then. Offense VS defense. The defensive guys felt they had to hold opponents to 14-20 points to have a shot at winning. I personally saw Joe anoai almost strangle a few prominent offensive guys in the locker room after bad losses.

My point is, I think we're at a point where I believe the same thing is happening only the inverse. The offense probably thinks they have to score 40 to have a chance. That does not bode well for Johnson. The writing is on the wall
 
ramblinwise1 said:
Did you not watch that game last night? CU almost crapped the bed against an unranked team. How far did you drop in the polls?
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Uh, that's kinda my point. Clemson went 3 and out five times last night and had all kinds of OL problems but it's all good because there isn't enormous pressure on that offense to score every time it gets the ball. As a fan I wasn't shitting my pants every time Clemson punted, and I didn't think of it as a personal indictment against Trevor Lawrence that only one of his 6(?) drives resulted in points.

Can you imagine what would happen if GT had five 3 and outs in one game? Blowout loss and epic ööööing meltdown.
 
ThisIsAtlanta said:
If you want to believe that GT is literally cursed and magical forces are responsible for our lack of football success, go on ahead. I can't disprove you, but all our future conversations on the subject are going to be pretty short.
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I haven’t said the first thing about magical forces. I merely pointed out that half of our starters on defense were out or injured by the middle of the 4th quarter yesterday. I think that has to be taken into consideration of the defenses play, it seems that you do not.

Let’s look at the USF drive chart, shall we?

USF 1st H34 15:00 Kickoff H45 14:07 Interception 4-11 0:53
USF 1st V00 07:23 Kickoff V00 07:23 * TOUCHDOWN 0-0 0:00
USF 1st V00 04:38 Kickoff V00 04:38 * TOUCHDOWN 0-0 0:00
USF 1st H33 04:21 Kickoff V01 00:50 Downs 11-66 3:31
USF 2nd H31 14:20 Punt V00 10:10 * TOUCHDOWN 11-69 4:10
USF 2nd V45 08:02 Punt V47 06:02 Punt 3--2 2:00
USF 2nd H43 02:54 Downs V37 00:22 Punt 9-20 2:32
USF 2nd H47 00:13 Interception V43 00:00 End of half 2-10 0:13

USF 3rd H26 11:24 Kickoff V00 08:53 * TOUCHDOWN 7-74 2:31
USF 3rd H25 04:22 Kickoff H41 02:27 Punt 5-16 1:55
USF 4th H24 14:15 Kickoff V00 12:11 * TOUCHDOWN 8-76 2:04
USF 4th H12 07:47 Fumble V00 05:08 * TOUCHDOWN 10-88 2:39

USF 4th V18 03:47 Interception V00 02:13 * TOUCHDOWN 5-18 1:34

Now, in the first half USF scored 3 TDs on 7 meaningful drives, omitting the couple of plays after the interception. I don’t think anyone can have a problem with that performance, can they?

In the 3rd quarter, we held them to 1 TD in two drives. Again, I doubt anyone is complaining about the performance of the defense at this point, which is 4 TD in 9 drives. Less than 50%.

By the 4th, we were gassed, down 4 to 6 players on the two deep, and facing a team energized by a big turnover.

Now, had the defense performed poorly in the first half I would get your point, but from where I sat, they played just fine.
 
johncu said:
Uh, that's kinda my point. Clemson went 3 and out five times last night and had all kinds of OL problems but it's all good because there isn't enormous pressure on that offense to score every time it gets the ball. As a fan I wasn't ööööting my pants every time Clemson punted, and I didn't think of it as a personal indictment against Trevor Lawrence that only one of his 6(?) drives resulted in points.

Can you imagine what would happen if GT had five 3 and outs in one game? Blowout loss and epic ööööing meltdown.
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I really think a big part of the reason you weren't freaking out, whether you would identify it as a prominent one or not, is the expectation that Texas A&M was going to field a good team to begin with. You understand that they do actually have a comparable talent level to just about any of the top teams in the country, and that Jimbo Fisher is an active coach with a recent national championship win, so they were probably going to come to play. When Clemson had a bunch of 3 and outs it's not going to be all that discouraging in part because of what you say, but also in part because it's more expected for a team with great athletes to make it tougher to win. If Clemson was playing USF and had 5 straight 3 and outs, you'd be absolutely pissed, regardless of whether the defense was holding them down, I'll wager.
 
ThisIsAtlanta said:
I really think a big part of the reason you weren't freaking out, whether you would identify it as a prominent one or not, is the expectation that Texas A&M was going to field a good team to begin with. You understand that they do actually have a comparable talent level to just about any of the top teams in the country, and that Jimbo Fisher is an active coach with a recent national championship win, so they were probably going to come to play. When Clemson had a bunch of 3 and outs it's not going to be all that discouraging in part because of what you say, but also in part because it's more expected for a team with great athletes to make it tougher to win. If Clemson was playing USF and had 5 straight 3 and outs, you'd be absolutely pissed, regardless of whether the defense was holding them down, I'll wager.
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How much space is between this team and a great team? Not much in my opinion. Just in a very very weird way
 
ThisIsAtlanta said:
I don't think I'm really missing your point, I think your point is really missing the mark. It's great that we got so much production and so many points, but we also left a ton of production and points on the field because of mistakes in execution and play calling. We had two outrageously good quarters on offense, and we had two outrageously bad ones. Why the extremes? It wasn't 100% because Charlie Strong made some kind of magic adjustment, a lot of it was just that we can not consistently execute our own offense. And that song is getting tired.

Now, the offense was unequivocally the bright spot on the team, and I don't think anyone is arguing otherwise, but that's not really saying anything, because the defense was a flaming pit for the entire second half and special teams was a literal void for a substantial part of the first. But it's like each of our units only played half a game, all tallied up, offense included. Each of them deserve scrutiny and, indeed, ridicule, because it's ridiculous that we could be fielding such an incomplete team in year 10 of someone's program, even when you account for injuries.
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I just disagree about those two quarters being "outrageously bad". We really only had 2 possessions in the 2nd quarter - one was 3 and out and the other we went 45 yards and got stopped on 4th down. We put up 125 yards in the 4th quarter, which probably more than lots of teams had in any quarter at all. It certainly wasn't great, but it was far from terrible. And the fact that so many people are judging it as such proves my point, I think.

But yeah, no disagreement on the last part. Paul Johnson is the head coach, not the offensive coordinator, so he is ultimately responsible for this happening.
 
coit said:
I haven’t said the first thing about magical forces. I merely pointed out that half of our starters on defense were out or injured by the middle of the 4th quarter yesterday. I think that has to be taken into consideration of the defenses play, it seems that you do not.

Let’s look at the USF drive chart, shall we?

USF 1st H34 15:00 Kickoff H45 14:07 Interception 4-11 0:53
USF 1st V00 07:23 Kickoff V00 07:23 * TOUCHDOWN 0-0 0:00
USF 1st V00 04:38 Kickoff V00 04:38 * TOUCHDOWN 0-0 0:00
USF 1st H33 04:21 Kickoff V01 00:50 Downs 11-66 3:31
USF 2nd H31 14:20 Punt V00 10:10 * TOUCHDOWN 11-69 4:10
USF 2nd V45 08:02 Punt V47 06:02 Punt 3--2 2:00
USF 2nd H43 02:54 Downs V37 00:22 Punt 9-20 2:32
USF 2nd H47 00:13 Interception V43 00:00 End of half 2-10 0:13

USF 3rd H26 11:24 Kickoff V00 08:53 * TOUCHDOWN 7-74 2:31
USF 3rd H25 04:22 Kickoff H41 02:27 Punt 5-16 1:55
USF 4th H24 14:15 Kickoff V00 12:11 * TOUCHDOWN 8-76 2:04
USF 4th H12 07:47 Fumble V00 05:08 * TOUCHDOWN 10-88 2:39

USF 4th V18 03:47 Interception V00 02:13 * TOUCHDOWN 5-18 1:34

Now, in the first half USF scored 3 TDs on 7 meaningful drives, omitting the couple of plays after the interception. I don’t think anyone can have a problem with that performance, can they?

In the 3rd quarter, we held them to 1 TD in two drives. Again, I doubt anyone is complaining about the performance of the defense at this point, which is 4 TD in 9 drives. Less than 50%.

By the 4th, we were gassed, down 4 to 6 players on the two deep, and facing a team energized by a big turnover.

Now, had the defense performed poorly in the first half I would get your point, but from where I sat, they played just fine.
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I'm trying to have a discussion about our techniques, you're trying to have a discussion about our results. We're not really on the same page, here.
 
johncu said:
I just disagree about those two quarters being "outrageously bad". We really only had 2 possessions in the 2nd quarter - one was 3 and out and the other we went 45 yards and got stopped on 4th down. We put up 125 yards in the 4th quarter, which probably more than lots of teams had in any quarter at all. It certainly wasn't great, but it was far from terrible. And the fact that so many people are judging it as such proves my point, I think.

But yeah, no disagreement on the last part. Paul Johnson is the head coach, not the offensive coordinator, so he is ultimately responsible for this happening.
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Yards don't really mean much. Auburn and Washington combined for over 800 yards of offense, yet you won't find anyone calling either of them successful on offense in that game. There's a little bit more to football than that. As for only having 2 drives in the 2nd quarter, we only had 3 in the 3rd quarter and 3 in the fourth, if you want to include the last one that didn't matter, where we gained more than half of those 125 yards. Stats can mislead you.
 
ThisIsAtlanta said:
I really think a big part of the reason you weren't freaking out, whether you would identify it as a prominent one or not, is the expectation that Texas A&M was going to field a good team to begin with. You understand that they do actually have a comparable talent level to just about any of the top teams in the country, and that Jimbo Fisher is an active coach with a recent national championship win, so they were probably going to come to play. When Clemson had a bunch of 3 and outs it's not going to be all that discouraging in part because of what you say, but also in part because it's more expected for a team with great athletes to make it tougher to win. If Clemson was playing USF and had 5 straight 3 and outs, you'd be absolutely pissed, regardless of whether the defense was holding them down, I'll wager.
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Going by that post I take it to mean you think our players are much more talented than usf. I would disagree. Without doing the research, I would suspect that they recruit about the same or even better than us. I know Johnson is ultimately responsible for recruiting and I'm not trying to start another debate on why we can't sign 5 stars but I'm betting that we couldn't get most of usf's starters into Tech. Usf is probably more talented and better than half of the p5 schools. Just because they are not p5 doesn't mean they are alcorn stare.
We lost a game we shouldn't have, it's getting old, but it's nothing new regardless of the coach.
 
ThisIsAtlanta said:
I'm trying to have a discussion about our techniques, you're trying to have a discussion about our results. We're not really on the same page, here.
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No I understand that for sure. I just don’t understand what difference it makes. If you were a Clemson fan would you be all mad at how poorly they played or happy that they got a win on the road?

If we had won the game yesterday would you be here complaining about poor technique or simply happy we won and expecting the team to get better next week and onward?
 
Tshirt Man said:
Going by that post I take it to mean you think our players are much more talented than usf. I would disagree. Without doing the research, I would suspect that they recruit about the same or even better than us. I know Johnson is ultimately responsible for recruiting and I'm not trying to start another debate on why we can't sign 5 stars but I'm being that we couldn't get most of usf's starters into Tech. Usf is probably more talented and better than over half of the p5 schools. Just because they are not p5 doesn't mean they are alcorn stare.
We lost a game we shouldn't have, it's getting old, but it's nothing new regardless of the coach.
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I've done the research. They don't recruit better than us, and aren't even averaging inside the top 65 (P5 level) over the last 4 years. Maybe they have dumber kids who have less distraction from football and we couldn't get those guys, but generally our recruiting classes are rated many ranks above theirs coming out of high school. They have some guys they got from transfers who are great athletes, yes, but the overall rosters just do not stack up as comparable, from a recruiting standpoint.
 
ThisIsAtlanta said:
I really think a big part of the reason you weren't freaking out, whether you would identify it as a prominent one or not, is the expectation that Texas A&M was going to field a good team to begin with. You understand that they do actually have a comparable talent level to just about any of the top teams in the country, and that Jimbo Fisher is an active coach with a recent national championship win, so they were probably going to come to play. When Clemson had a bunch of 3 and outs it's not going to be all that discouraging in part because of what you say, but also in part because it's more expected for a team with great athletes to make it tougher to win. If Clemson was playing USF and had 5 straight 3 and outs, you'd be absolutely pissed, regardless of whether the defense was holding them down, I'll wager.
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Yeah, that's definitely a factor, but there's a lot more to it than that. It's about actually having a balanced team where both sides of the ball can rely on each other. I just used Clemson as an example because the difference was so clear watching them play back-to-back. I think Georgia Tech's offense performed much better than Clemson's yesterday (even considering talent and opponent) but respective fan reactions are opposite.
 
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