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Saturday, October 21, 2006
Puppies in Dogs’ uniforms
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Athens — Fifteen days after carrying a No. 10 ranking into what was billed as a national showdown, unrated Georgia was playing in a game so unpalatable that no TV network deigned to carry it live. That tells us much about how far and how fast the Bulldogs have fallen, but this tells us more:
Eight days after losing to the worst program in the SEC East, the reigning conference champion nearly lost to the worst program in the SEC West.
On the off-chance anyone had failed to notice, Mark Richt admitted it flat-out: “We’re not as good as we’ve been.”
We on the periphery keep waiting for some switch to get flipped, some substitution made, and for Georgia to morph into the colossus it had become. Any such morphing, sorry to report, will have to be deferred until next season. At this moment, Georgia is Georgia in name only.
Bulldogs of recent vintage could win on bad days. These puppies did a lot of things right against Mississippi State on Saturday — “We did a good job on offense,” said quarterback Matthew Stafford — and still were in peril of being overtaken at the end by an opponent that had mustered one offensive touchdown in three previous conference games.
Georgia in general (five turnovers, nine penalties) and Stafford in particular (three interceptions) kept alternating nice moments with egregious ones and throwing the visitors lifelines in the process, and all of a sudden the clock was inside 20 seconds and State was staring at a 40-yard field goal to tie.
Being State, it never reached overtime. Being State, it got weirdly bold at the end, quarterback Michael Henig being divested of the ball by Charles Johnson. (This after the visitors had begun the day by punting — punting! — from the Georgia 30.) Was Johnson surprised at State not kicking with 12 seconds to play? “I was,” he said. “But they’d been driving the field so much.”
Think about that. Mississippi State, owner of the 110th-best offense in Division I-A, had been driving the field against a team that, until recently, had been built on defense. We can write off Georgia’s offensive spasms to youth and Richt’s dithering over personnel, but how do we explain away the dropoff in a defense that features nine starting upperclassmen?
“Maybe we’re in position and not making plays,” said Tra Battle, the astute safety.
To their credit, the Bulldogs made the play they had to make in the dying seconds, but few among them took this skinny victory as a signal that happy days were here again. “Afterward [Richt] told us, ‘We saw the good, the bad and the ugly,’ ” said linebacker Tony Taylor, who also said: “I’m sure it was a lot closer game than everyone hoped it would be.”
If it was, that should be the last time we allow these Bulldogs to fool us. Over its last five games Georgia has been outscored by 11 points — and only one of those games was on the road, only one against an opponent bearing a winning record. It isn’t that Georgia is playing down to mediocre competition; it’s that Georgia, its lofty pedigree and its banner recruiting classes aside, has itself become shockingly ordinary.
That will surely change next season, when these younger Bulldogs start to mature, but there probably won’t be much growth these next five weeks. Stafford is the future, yes, but he’s not yet the present. (On Saturday he kept both teams in the game, offering a case study in why coaches are loath to deploy a freshman at quarterback.) And the schedule, which has been ridiculously soft, is about to become untenable.
Georgia is 6-2, but the cold truth is that it’s lucky to have a winning record. The colder truth is that it’s hard to imagine this team winning twice more before it lands in the Music City Bowl. Or in Shreveport.
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Steelers assistant rose with Yellow Jackets
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
It was Bill Curry’s first season as a head coach anywhere, but this was special. This was Georgia Tech. His school. Bobby Dodd’s school. And so it was that one of his assistants came to him and told him of a prospect from Augusta. “He tore up his knee and didn’t play much last season,” he told Curry, “but he looks like he’ll be fine, and he wants to come to Georgia Tech. He wants to be an engineer.”
So he came to Georgia Tech for a visit during winter practice and was standing beside Curry at Rose Bowl Field. After a little while Curry turned to Ken Whisenhunt and said, “Well, what do you think?”
“Well, I guarantee you one thing, I can help you,” Whisenhunt, the prospect, said.
Now, as Curry remembers it, “Nothing arrogant, no bragging, just quiet honesty out of the mouth of a 17-year-old.
“When I look back on it, he was telling me something I didn’t learn until later. I was a brand new head coach and I didn’t realize what I didn’t know. Eventually I found out that you’ll learn more about being a head coach working at a filling station than playing in the NFL.”
Whisenhunt came to Georgia Tech without a scholarship, a walk-on. He had a scholarship offer at UT-Chattanooga, but, as he says now, “I needed an education, I needed to prepare for a profession, for football coaching never entered my mind.”
It turned out to be the profession he wasn’t looking for, and Sunday in the Georgia Dome you will witness Ken Whisenhunt, offensive coordinator of the Pittsburgh Steelers, at work. This is his third season with Bill Cowher, following victory in the greatest game of the year, the Super Bowl, played in Detroit last winter.
But back to the beginning. What sticks in my mind about Ken Whisenhunt after all these years is one of the most memorable games I ever covered. Georgia was playing Florida in Jacksonville the same day, the BIG game. Everybody wanted to be there. Notre Dame, No. 1 in the country, was coming to town to play Georgia Tech, a slaughter in the making. The No. 1 team in the country at Georgia Tech? Somebody had to stay home, so I did.
In practice, Curry had played Whisenhunt all over the lot. “They didn’t know what to do with me,” Ken says now. He had been a quarterback at Richmond Academy.
“We had two quarterbacks, Mike Kelley and Ted Peeples, but a vacuum after that,” Curry said. “We did give Ken a few snaps during the week, just in case.”
“Just in case” arose in the second quarter. Kelley went down. Peeples was already hurting. Curry had no other choice. He turned to Whisenhunt, the freshman. Without scholarship. Never taken a snap in a college game.
“The ball was on our 4-yard line,” Curry said in recall. “I said to him, ‘Be sure of the snap.’ He looked at me with utter calm. ‘Don’t worry, Coach.’ Facing the No. 1 defense in the country and he says, ‘Don’t worry, Coach.’ That’s the thing I remember most about him, his poise.”
So, in went Whisenhunt, not even listed on the flip cards in the press box. Tech got out of that jam alive. “We had to mix in a pass or two,” Ken said, “so I dropped back and threw one. It was a perfect spiral and I thought, ‘Hey, not bad for openers.’ It was so perfect it landed in the stands.”
As the situation played out, Whisenhunt finally completed a pass for 23 yards that set up a 39-yard field goal for Johnny Smith. On into the fourth quarter Tech guarded its precious 3-0 lead with valor. (“Our kids were valiant,” Curry says. “They played their hearts out. They didn’t know how bad we were.”) Nor did Notre Dame.
Finally, with time running low Dan Devine called on his placekicker, Harry Oliver, and Oliver kicked a wobbler 49 yards that barely crossed the bar and Notre Dame got out with a 3-3 tie. Mind you, this was a Georgia Tech team that had beaten Memphis State, the only game it would win. It had no license to be on the same grass with Notre Dame, but with Whisenhunt’s rifle arm completing 3 of 5 passes for 29 yards, had perforated the Irish’s No. 1 record.
The freshman Whisenhunt never threw another pass that season. As the years went on, he found his natural position as a tight end and ranks 14th in receiving yardage at Tech, was drafted in the 12th round by the Falcons, later traded to Washington, then the Jets. Dan Henning introduced him to the position of H-back with the Falcons, and there got good mileage out of him as a blocker and receiver. Whisenhunt looks back now upon three people who gave him the inspiration to move into coaching, a future he had never ever considered: Curry, his strongest influence; Henning, who drafted him and set him off on an NFL career; and Rod Dowhower, who gave him his first job as an assistant at Vanderbilt.
He had his chance to move into head coaching last winter when the Oakland Raiders came knocking. “I had a talk with Al, Mr. Davis,” he said, representing his gentlemanly upbringing. “I was honored, but it wasn’t the time and the place for me. I like it in Pittsburgh, where things are done the right way.”
Oh, I should point out that after the tie at Grant Field, Notre Dame completed an unbeaten season. So did Georgia, after winning the Florida game (remember “run Lindsay, run”), and they met in the Sugar Bowl for the national championship. The Bulldogs completed the state’s domination of the Irish. It was only a tie for Georgia Tech, but as sweet as any victory could be for Whisenhunt and friends.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Furman Bisher, Tech / ACC
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