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Saturday, September 10, 2005
Dogs survive game Gamecocks
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Athens â€â€? It was the most deflating halftime score generated in Sanford Stadium since George Godsey got Jim Donnan fired. (Georgia Tech led 27-3 after 30 minutes on Nov. 25, 2000.) The moment Bulldog Nation had long awaited wasn’t tracking its smackdown script. Not only was Georgia not kicking Steve Spurrier’s celebrated backside, the Bulldogs were actually in arrears.
Halftime score: Darth Visor 9, Silver Britches 7.
The Red & Black hadn’t convened Saturday to see a game. These folks were here for a whipping. Their Bulldogs could beat Spurrier only once when he coached the mighty Gators, but there’s nothing mighty about his new team. South Carolina will do well to win five games, and Spurrier’s first loss as a Gamecock figured to arrive by the sort of margin he used to amass against Georgia. Favored by 18 points, Bulldog backers had visions of 38-10, 45-7, 52-0. Then the game began to unfold (and unravel), and after a sobering half it was clear Georgia couldn’t name the score and mightn’t dictate the result.
And then it got worse. Ahead 17-9 with seven minutes to play, the Bulldogs had to fend off a two-point conversion to stay in front; had to convert on third-and-22 to burn four precious minutes; had to snuff a Carolina hook-and-ladder on fourth-and-19 â€â€? one of the Ball Coach’s famous ball plays â€â€? to put down the Gamecocks once and for all. Georgia won by a deuce, not a double dozen. Georgia won and was lucky to win.
“It was there,” Spurrier said. “It was there to be had.”
He ticked off the number of things went wrong - a touchdown nullified by a penalty for illegal shift, a missed PAT, that overthrown two-pointer and finally the third-and-22 that Spurrier kept calling “fourth-and-22.” He ticked off these failings, but in no way was he ticked off. Indeed, one of the SEC’s greatest winners took immense pride in this loss.
“It was fun,” he said. “Except for the end.”
Give the devil his due. Spurrier got five times more from his meager forces than Mark Richt did from the ninth-ranked Bulldogs. Georgia opened the game by trying a play-action pass off a wishbone set, and that goofball maneuver resulted in a sack. Two D.J. Shockley interceptions cost nine points - the six the Gamecocks got off Johnathan Joseph’s return and the three Georgia didn’t get from a cinch field goal - and not until the third quarter did Richt find an offensive rhythm. And by then the Gamecocks had begun to believe they could win.
“We knew we were playing the University of South Carolina, not the University of Steve Spurrier,” said Georgia receiver Bryan McClendon, but for those on the periphery it’s hard to discern a difference. Spurrier has emboldened a middling program just by his swaggering presence, and in his second game he nearly pulled the kind of upset his mighty Gators never could. (The mighty Gators were never 18-point underdogs.)
If one play will cause the Ball Coach to lose sleep, it will be the third-and-22. The chances of making a first down from such a hole? “Normally not that good,” said McClendon, who found himself unaccountably uncovered down the left sideline. Shockley delivered his best throw of the night â€â€? the Georgia quarterback completed only eight passesâ€â€? and the Bulldogs held the ball until 71 seconds remained. By then the goal for Georgia fans had changed completely: There would be no rout, no comeuppance for the man who became the bane of their lives. They just wanted their team to hang on.
And surely, even in defeat, Spurrier took satisfaction in having thwarted the assembled multitude. “No, I really don’t,” he said. “I learned a long time ago that if you listen to the [fans], you’ve got a problem.”
A game supposed to yield sweet revenge garnered only a shaky reprieve. Georgia bettered the Ol’ Ball Coach, yes, but it couldn’t humble him. Couldn’t come close to that.
Permalink | Comments (136) | Categories: Mark Bradley, UGA / SEC
Ramblin’ Wreck continuing to hold
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Frankly, you didn’t know what to make of either of these teams. Sure, Georgia Tech had gone to Auburn and won. Consider it an upset. North Carolina had yet to play a down with a new, yet old quarterback, a senior, like D.J. Shockley at Georgia, who had waited patiently in the wings until Darian Durant had played out his term in office.
Matt Baker had been somewhat more active than Shockley â€â€? 88 passes in three years, 44 completions â€â€? but you had to like how his admirers view his work. “He fashions his game after Green Bay’s Brett Favre,” it is written in the Tar Heel press guide.
It still rankles out here on The Flats that after bringing home a barnburner victory from Clemson last season, legitimately an upset, that the Yellow Jackets drove into Chapel Hill and got blasted. Run out of Kenan Stadium. Embarrassed.
Now, what might they expect from this team that was still learning about itself? Durant’s was a running game. Baker brings the passing game, patiently tuned in since his arrival from Rochester Hills, Mich.
Chan Gailey has a pretty good read on this edition of Yellow Jackets going into his third year of the Reggie Ball regime. A little run, a lot of pass with the expectation of maturity having set in, something that the Georgia Tech coach addressed, in a jocular manner when Ball took his turn in the postgame press conference.
“Come on in, the microphone’s yours, Big Daddy,” Gailey said to his junior quarterback.
“For the first three quarters he was great,” Gailey had said, then the fourth quarter turned into a scrambling imbroglio, both teams trying to put their stamps on the scoreboard. When Georgia Tech led 27-14, an air of comfort fell over the Tech majority among the 46,459 aroused patrons, at one time enthralled with Ball, then grouchy at others. Both teams were hanging on â€â€? Carolina groping for any kind of edge, the Yellow Jackets simply looking for closure. Neither could afford to make a mistake with twilight now closing in on the stadium named for Bobby Dodd and the field for Hugh Inman Grant.
It was a frenetic scene upon which the curtain never fell until Dennis Davis intercepted Baker’s desperation fling and returned it to Tech’s 35-yard line with a minute, 54 seconds left. That was basically all she wrote, as it is sometimes said.
Mainly, what was established in this game is that after all these years, Damarius Bilbo is now, once and for all, a vital part of the battery of Ball and Bilbo. The poor guy has been at one time or another, a quarterback, a running back, a pass receiver, never able to settle into one line of work. Now he has. He takes a lot of the heat off Calvin Johnson, the sophomore with spectacular All-America potential, not that that is the sole purpose of Bilbo’s being here.
Saturday, he caught eight passes for 131 yards, picking up bonus yards on his feet after the catches. Not that his passing game didn’t get a curtain call. It came early after the half, when Ball set out crossfield, Tech’s offense swung to the right, and the Tar Heels lost track of Ball. Ah, there he was, pulling in a pass from Bilbo, advancing the ball to Carolina’s 17-yard line. It set up Travis Bell’s 25-yard field goal, three points that later gave the Jackets a little comfort in the closing minutes.
“He showed us what we thought he could be,” Gailey said of Bilbo, from Moss Point, Miss. As the coach looked at it in the mist, a lot more was made of it all than it really was. The object is to win every game you play, and thus he has two legs up on the season of ‘05.
Permalink | Comments (21) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Tech / ACC
Tech triumphs, but not without some big scares
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
They won. They’re 2-0. That’s all that really matters for those associated with a Georgia Tech team that should move to 3-0 after beatable UConn comes to town next week. Then again, the Huskies ripped Buffalo and Liberty (you may laugh now), and the Yellow Jackets looked significantly flawed on Saturday at Bobby Dodd Stadium against North Carolina (you may stop laughing, especially if you expect Tech to dominate this year).
Suddenly, the cloudless sky and the uniforms of the Tar Heels weren’t the only things blue in this one. Try those associated with Tech, usually into white and gold. Instead, they definitely were blue after turning a blowout in the first half into a squeaker. That the Jackets discovered ways at the end to salvage a 27-21 victory is the encouraging news.
Here’s the better news: The Jackets know they have a ways to go before they actually become good.
“When you know that you really didn’t play up to your potential, I don’t want to say that it’s depressing, but it really is,” said Tech linebacker KaMichael Hall, especially since North Carolina is mediocre and Tech supposedly isn’t. I mean, how can the Jackets follow their opening thriller at Auburn by giving North Carolina even the hint of shocking Tech for the second consecutive season?
Well, glad you asked. Let’s start with the Tech fans. Where were they? The Jackets were playing for the first time since they earned their first national ranking in four years, and only the wide-open gaps throughout the stands rivaled those around Tech’s secondary. Speaking of that secondary, Tech cornerbacks kept chasing the backs of Tar Heel receivers. After getting torched for 342 yards passing by Brandon Cox, Auburn’s first-time starter, the Jackets allowed 280 yards through the air for Matt Baker, North Carolina’s first-time starter. As for the latter, it was enough to turn the Jackets’ 14-0 lead in the second quarter into a fight for their lives before a mostly yawning crowd.
They won, though. Said Tech cornerback Dennis Davis, among those doing much of the chasing instead of tackling before stiffening down the stretch, “The only reason the score was that close was because we kept shooting ourselves in the foot. We had a bunch of missed assignments that easily can be corrected.”
We’ll see, since Tech’s schedule features more than a few opponents (Virginia Tech, Miami, Clemson and Georgia) who can throw a bit. Which brings us to more encouraging news for the Jackets: Reggie Ball also can throw a bit, and he can do so these days without having defenders catch his passes.
Against North Carolina, Ball had two of the most important zeroes of the game, and that was zero interceptions and zero sacks along the way to completing 24 of 47 passes for 320 yards and two touchdowns. “For the first three and a half quarters, he engineered drives and just played really well,” said Tech coach Chan Gailey, who pushed Ball toward a nice evening with innovative playcalling. As a result, Tech was able to survive a slew of missed opportunities in the red zone against what traditionally has been a wretched North Carolina defense.
It all helped Tech make the transformation from blue to yellow again. That is yellow as in Jackets’ yellow as opposed to the yellow that players and coaches turn when they fold during adversity.
This wasn’t the same Tech team that stumbled toward a 34-13 embarrassment last season in Chapel Hill. While Ball was becoming an interception machine (three) back then, the Tech run defense was vanishing (284 yards rushing for North Carolina) into the night. One week, Tech was performing its miracle inside the last five at Clemson. The next, North Carolina was making Tech resemble an absolute fraud. The same thing happened two years ago, when Duke flattened the Jackets after Tech’s gem over Maryland.
Here it was happening again, but only until Tech remembered in the fourth quarter that this was North Carolina. The Jackets grabbed three interceptions, and Ball passed and ran his team to a touchdown.
Too bad much of the Yellow Jacket Nation wasn’t around to see it.
Permalink | Comments (41) | Categories: Tech / ACC, Terence Moore
NFL Predictions: Start season right, take Falcons
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
So the boss comes to me and says, “You know, we need a spinoff of Weekend Predictions for just the NFL games.”
I say, “OK. I’m already pretty busy. It’s my week to feed the dogs. How about six games?”
He says, “How about all of them?”
So we compromised.
I’m doing all of them.
I’m not getting paid any extra. But the really good news is I look like a team player, just like T.O. (Hello? Is this mic on?)
I figure, it could be worse. I could be working for the NFL and promise everybody a tasteful and understated warm-up for the opener Thursday, only to come back and hit them over the head with Ozzy Osbourne, Santana, Green Day, Rolling Stones videos, everybody on cable channels 49 through 72, the King Family, the Brady Bunch, the Iron Chefs, Sponge Bob (Kraft), all of the players to be named later, all of the Marx Brothers (Yes! Even Gummo!), Topo Gigio and Señor Wences.
Any way, NFL games will be given a bag-of-chips rating. I know my audience.
FOUR BAGS
• Eagles (1-1/2) at Falcons: Terrell Owens says he’s going to make amends with Donovan McNabb, but of course he does this not by simply walking over to McNabb’s locker but by announcing it to ESPN. Brian Westbrook says he’s being “disrespected” and is tired of making “chump change.” Well. Nice to know we’re all focused. Andy Reid, your gurney is ready. Take the Falcons and the 1-1/2.
THREE BAGS
• Cowboys at Chargers (4-1/2): Hey, look! Peerless Price just made a play! Made you look. Chargers win this easy.
• Saints at Panthers (7): I know there’s going to be coast-to-coast applause for New Orleans all season, and that’s great. But it can’t change the simple fact that Jim Haslett still stinks. Seven’s covered.
• Packers at Lions (3): So is it just me or was Brett Favre a lot better when he partied? I got your cheese. Punt the points.
• Colts (3) at Ravens: You say, “Indy’s defense scares me.” I said, “Baltimore’s offense makes me laugh.” Which is amazing, considering I hear Bill Belichick actually invented the forward pass. Pick: Colts.
TWO BAGS
• Jets at Chiefs (3): The over/under on Chad Pennington’s next injury is 27 minutes. Give the three and take K.C.
• Bucs at Vikings (6): Anybody who really believes it’s possible for a team to become better without Randy Moss must have forgotten THAT HE SCORES TOUCHDOWNS! OK. I feel better now. But Minny covers.
• Broncos (4-1/2) at Dolphins: I know. And now you’re going to tell me that Randy Moss and Ricky Williams are the only two NFL players who get high. I wonder what Paul Tagliabue would be like with a buzz. Never mind. Take the Fins and the points.
Titanics at Steelers (7): Time to build up Pittsburgh before the inevitable playoff descent. In September, they cover.
TIME TO FOLD SOCKS
• Bears at Deadskins (6): Seventeen inmates on death row were being given an option this week to watch this game in exchange for a lighter sentence. Fifteen chose the chair. Skins cover.
• Rams (5-1/2) at Phoney Niners: The Thrashers are giving away cars to draw fans. Maybe the Niners should give away Bay Area real estate. Rams cover.
• Texans at Bills (4-1/2): I’ll see your J.P. Losman and raise you a Dom Capers defense. Gimme the Texans and the points.
• Seahawks at Jaguars (3): Matt Hasselbeck was on my fantasy team last year. Did I mention that I hate Matt Hasselbeck? Jax covers.
• Under Class at Giants (3): Arizona opens on the road for the 17th time in 18 years. The lone exception was when a scheduled road opener was pushed back because of 9/11. Feel the NFL love. Take the Cards and the trey.
• Bengals (3-1/2) at Browns: Pick against David Pollack in his first NFL game? Look, I get enough hate mail. Bengals cover on the road.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
