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Saturday, October 25, 2008
This Tech loss was uncharacteristic
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This was not exactly what Paul Johnson had in mind for his first homecoming day at Georgia Tech. Virginia was surely no cup of tea, but Johnson’s first season with the Yellow Jackets had reached a pivotal point. Beat the Wahoos, and his personal brand would be stamped on football on North Avenue with the stands full of whooping patriots. Lose, it would be a bitter taste of gall.
This is not an old rivalry. Georgia Tech and Virginia only began to date each other regularly when they became fellow members of the Atlantic Coast Conference. Tech had learned that Johnson’s style could cut the mustard in this league when they played Virginia Tech down to the wire, a game Tech could have won. Of course, you throw out the Gardner-Webb debacle, a game this team sleepwalked through. But this one, this one was key. This was one not to lose.
Virginia had been humiliated by Southern California, on its own soil. And, you could include Connecticut on that list. Even Duke pitched in, and everybody had been beating Duke until David Cutcliffe came to town. But when Maryland, East Carolina and North Carolina fell in a row, there was something astir in Charlottesville. So, for Johnson to win this one would indeed let the rest of the ACC know there was a new boss in town.
Paul Johnson had established his style, the triple option, or whatever, and he was getting rave notices. And for the first quarter, all was going swimmingly. After that, it wasn’t easy to put your finger on something to brag about. For that matter, no one expected to see him resort to as many pure drop-back passes, and to see his players make as many errors, lose the football, dig enough holes to bury themselves, and in the end, the man from Newland — that’s in the Blue Ridge — confirmed it: “Turned the ball over … make enough mistakes in every area to lose the game twice over.”
OK, enough whining and blame-dispensing. It might have been noticed that the Wahoos did a few things right. That fellow Cedric Peerman, a senior running back from the town of Gladys, Va. — I swear by it — took charge of the offense. He is the first back to roll up 100 yards rushing on the Tech defense this season, with 127, to be exact. He was a whirling dervish. And the quarterback, Marc Verica, a redshirt sophomore, ran the offense like a coach on the field.
You check the scoring and you see something warped about it. The Jackets scored two touchdowns in the first quarter and must have felt rather pleased with themselves, for they never scored another. Somehow, it seemed the fire ran low in their furnace, and they just sort of snoozed into the intermission. There was a lot of unhappiness among the 47,416 paying customers, both with the home lads and the men in stripes. So to leave you with a sweet taste in your memory box, let me remind you of a game in 1990, when Virginia was ranked No. l in the nation, and Georgia Tech waltzed into Charlottesville and ruined the mood on the way to its own national championship.
Then, of course, the Hoos will remind you that they have won four of the past five games they’ve played, and this made five. Hang the other four goose-eggs on Chan Gailey.
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