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Home > Terence Moore > Archives > 2008 > October > 25
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Tech tackled itself
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So this was another test of adversity for a ridiculously young football team. No school in the ACC has more underclassmen on its roster than Georgia Tech. That means the Yellow Jackets still have much to learn despite streaking into Saturday’s game against Virginia with just one loss in seven games under a new coach.
You can make that two losses in eight games under that new coach.
Courtesy of mostly self-inflicted wounds, Tech suffered a come-from-ahead loss of 24-17 that now has the Jackets pursuing the ACC championship game from afar instead of up close and personal. They have nobody to blame but their sloppy themselves.
Where to start? How about the ability of Virginia’s offense to convert on third downs virtually at will throughout the chilly afternoon? In the end, with much help from a slew of missed tackles by the Jackets, Virginia was 11-for-18 in that category. “Pretty good, wasn’t it?” said Paul Johnson, that new coach, delivering most of his post-game analysis of the Jackets through clenched teeth, and for good reason.
Before a relatively lively homecoming crowd of 47,416, the Jackets suffered a positively deflating loss, which brings us back to their latest test of adversity.
This time, they flunked. They passed other such tests earlier this season after surging from the rear to win conference games on the road against Boston College and Clemson. They flunked against Virginia because they couldn’t discover ways to overcome themselves.
In addition to those missed tackles, the Jackets’ normally aggressive front seven on defense barely touched Virginia quarterback Marc Verica, who regularly picked apart the Jackets’ injury-depleted and inexperienced-filled secondary.
Before we continue, let’s get this youth excuse out of the way regarding the Jackets’ inconsistency at times this season. “We know we can’t use youth as an excuse, because when it comes down to it, everybody is a football player who has to do their job,” said Morgan Burnett, Tech’s gifted safety, who nevertheless was as shoddy as many of his teammates in tackling (or the lack thereof) against Virginia. When it came to running back Cedric Peerman alone, Johnson estimated his defenders “missed 10 or 15 tackles.”
That said, the Jackets have a bigger issue to overcome. They’ve yet to discover an answer to keeping the butter fingers away while running Johnson’s triple-option offense. They entered the weekend tied for third in the nation in lost fumbles with 12.
They now have 14.
The problem on Saturday? Well, Josh Nesbitt just had one of those days as a sophomore quarterback starting his sixth game in Johnson’s triple-option offense. He was responsible for both of the fumbles, and he contributed to several other Tech problems, too. Like a couple of the four times he was sacked after holding the ball too long and a costly interception.
As for Nesbitt’s first fumble, it came from a dropped snap from center. Said Johnson with a sigh, “I mean, on this level, you’d like to think that you could get the quarterback-center exchange.” Then he described Nesbitt’s fumble at the Virginia 5-yard line in the third quarter with Tech trailing 17-14. “He just fumbled the ball,” Johnson said, shrugging.
“Then there was the interception at the end there [with Tech driving],” Johnson added. “That was a poor decision, and we actually had a chance there during the second play of that series. We had Correy Earls there open, if he had thrown the ball.”
Nesbitt didn’t. A lot of things didn’t happen for Tech against Virginia.
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