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Home > Terence Moore > Archives > 2008 > August > 20
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Tech’s success will be later rather than sooner with Johnson
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In the long run, Georgia Tech will be just fine with Paul Johnson as its head football coach. You’ll continue to see bowl games for the Yellow Jackets, but more along the lines of the Gator instead of the Emerald. You’ll see division titles and maybe even an ACC championship or three.
You know those things are in the Jackets’ future, because the equivalents to those things were in Johnson’s past. There were his two Division I-AA championship teams at Georgia Southern, and then there were his six seasons of making Navy relevant again for the first time in decades.
As for the short run involving Johnson at Tech, well, uh, hmmmm.
That’s a tough one.
The Jackets are exactly a week from opening their Johnson era at home against Jacksonville State, and they’ll have only a few certainties. They’ll have a magnificent defensive line. They’ll have as many as 15 freshmen and sophomores among their 22 starters. They’ll have Johnson’s rarely used triple-option offense that may scare Tech players more often in the beginning than their foes. They’ll also have new uniforms.
This means what for Tech? Nobody knows, not even Johnson.
“I think I have a feel for what the team is athletically, but how we’re going to react in situations, and how we’re going to do things, I think those things are still in the flow and in the mix,” said Johnson on Wednesday from his office beyond the north end zone at Bobby Dodd Stadium. “We’re not going to find out much until we get thrown into that mix. Once the bullets start flying, the leaders will emerge, and then we’ll have a better idea of all of that stuff.”
Stuff like whether the Jackets have a grasp of Johnson’s triple-option offense that gave them fits in the spring. It always will be about that offense this season.
During the spring, by the way, players were going left when they were meant to go right, and turnovers were an epidemic. In fact, just getting the quarterbacks to keep from fumbling the snap from center was a major task. That has remained a task, but it has become a minor one. The bobbling also has decreased overall these days.
That said, Saturday’s scrimmage still had a slew of players treating the football as if it was sizzling to the touch.
“Some days, it looks like we’ve got things down, and the next day, it looks like we don’t have a clue,” Johnson said. “The thing about the offense is that we have a large part of the base of it in. And the neat thing about it is, it’s not going to change. We’re going to practice it every day, and we should get better as we go along. We should be better at it in October than we were in September. Hopefully, as they play, they’re going to find little nuances that help them out, and they’ll see different things they can do.”
Until then, the Jackets will struggle on offense to keep from embarrassing themselves, especially early.
After Jacksonville State, Tech will play consecutive ACC road games against Boston College and Virginia Tech. Johnson eased into a smile that suggested he knows something we don’t. “This team could be vastly underestimated or all the pundits could have it right, because the kids who are going to play haven’t played,” Johnson said, before suggesting his smile really was only a smile. “Quite honestly, I don’t know what to expect, either.”
Permalink | Comments (46) | Post your comment | Categories: Tech/ACC
The Falcons can lose without them
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Now Joe Horn is gone, courtesy of the Falcons cutting the four-time Pro Bowl wide receiver on Tuesday. This follows the forced exits over the last few months from Flowery Branch of veterans Warrick Dunn, Rod Coleman, DeAngelo Hall and Alge Crumpler.
Good moves, all.
In the eternal words of Branch Rickey after he traded future Hall of Famer Ralph Kiner from the woeful Pittsburgh Pirates during the early 1950s, “We can finish last without you.”
Here’s the point: With most of those guys, the Falcons spent the last three seasons going from mediocre (8-8) to bad (7-9) to worse (4-12). With any of those guys still around, the Falcons would continue to go through this year as the antithesis of a Super Bowl team. That is to say the Falcons aren’t going anywhere great for a while.
So, if you’re in charge of the Falcons, featuring a new general manager and a new head coach, why not switch to younger players? If nothing else, why not just get some different players?
Let’s say the Falcons had kept Dunn, an NFL dinosaur at 33, but a nice ambassador for this Michael Vick-damaged franchise. With Dunn, the Falcons wouldn’t have gotten Michael Turner. Not only is Turner seven years younger, but he is flashing signs of being more than just the backup running back that he was to LaDainian Tomlinson with the San Diego Chargers.
Hall? Too much yapping and not enough starring. Coleman and Crumpler? Highly injury prone. The same goes for Horn, who says he is healthy now after missing much of the Falcons’ workouts of spring and summer with a hamstring problem.
So, if you’re in charge of the Falcons, you clear your old (as in age and otherwise) roster as much as you can, you cover your eyes, and then you hope 2009 will be better than your upcoming woes of 2008.
Permalink | Comments (60) | Post your comment | Categories: Falcons/NFL
