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Saturday, October 13, 2007
Not a win as much as an escape
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
Nashville - There is an upside to mediocrity.
When Southern Cal, Oklahoma and LSU get dropped by perennial conference punching bags, and Michigan falls to an obscurity down from the mountains, people gasp.
When Georgia struggles with Vanderbilt, it’s barely worth a double take anymore.
If you still wondered what this team is and what this season has become, it was on display Saturday. The Bulldogs won. They defeated Vanderbilt. By a field goal. As time ran out.
Traditionalists will cover their eyes. But a football team that has been dropping parts on the highway celebrated like it had just qualified for the BCS title game.
After Brandon Coutu kicked a 37-yard field goal to secure a 20-17 win, several Georgia players ran to the middle of the field and jumped up and down on the star and “V” in the middle of the field.
If this was any other SEC campus, home fans might have taken it as a sign of disrespect. But, like, it’s still Vanderbilt.
“We didn’t mean it as disrespect,” said safety Kelin Johnson. “People don’t know what we go through with our coaches, our fans and at home. And we got crushed last week. We’re just excited to win.”
That happens after you get waxed 35-14 in Tennessee. That happens when you drop to 2-2 in the conference, and extend an illogical SEC East losing streak to six games. How close they came to losing again Saturday. How close they came to losing in consecutive seasons to Vanderbilt - for the first time since the ’50s.
We keep being told how young this team is. The problem is it looks younger every week. How young will they be by Florida week?
The Dogs led 7-0 early and then fizzled. Vanderbilt scored the next 17 points. The Dogs scrambled in the second half to tie it. But Vandy was seemingly driving to the winning score in the final minutes, until running back Cassen Jackson-Garrison fumbled at the Georgia 7 with 2:43 left. The Bulldogs then drove 73 yards in 10 plays before Coutu’s game-winning kick.
It wasn’t a win. It was an escape. But Georgia doesn’t have the luxury of grading wins any more. It just counts them.
“We got a little bit embarrassed last week,” quarterback Matthew Stafford said. “This time we found a way to win. We’re not going to be perfect every week. That’s the way it’s going to be this year.”
Georgia dropped hints at the outset that this would be easy. It drove the ball effectively on its first two possessions. The first drive resulted in a missed field goal (Coutu hitting the left upright on a 49-yard attempt). The second resulted in a touchdown, a 32-yard pass from Stafford to Sean Bailey, two plays after a Vanderbilt fumble. It was only 7-0. It seemed like more.
Then again, after Georgia’s win over Alabama it seemed this team had turned the corner, not preparing to walk into a lamp post.
Vanderbilt scored three times (two touchdowns and a field goal) on its next four possessions. The last two plays of the Commodores’ first TD drive were a 39-yard run on an end-around and a 15-yard run on a reverse. Both plays have been around for decades, but Georgia’s defense reacted like Vandy was practicing nuclear physics.
Georgia’s offense, meanwhile, went nappy time. The Dogs failed to score on their next four possessions in the first half and went three-and-out twice. After completing five of his first eight attempts for 98 yards and a touchdown, Stafford went 4-for-13 for 32 yards.
Imagine that: The Dogs were being punked by the Commodores’ defense.
But they awoke just enough to pull even. Down 17-7, they drove to a touchdown on their first possession of the second half, and Coutu kicked a 31-yard field goal with 6:12 left to tie it.
“Everybody thinks, ‘Oh, it’s Vanderbilt. They’re an easy win.’ But there’s no such thing as an easy game any more. Vanderbilt’s a good team.”
That might be true. But when a team makes every opponent look good, it says something. And when a last-second win over Vanderbilt causes a midfield dance, it really says something.
Permalink | Comments (190) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, UGA / SEC
Tech must be Pro-Choice to win
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Miami — Winning didn’t lift Georgia Tech back among the nation’s elite, not that it has been there lately for long. What winning did was keep Tech from falling below .500 after seven games for the first time under this coach. What winning did was buy Chan Gailey time to right what has gone wrong with his latest curious team.
A loss here and the Jackets would have been 3-4, and their run of bowl appearances — since they can’t brag about beating Georgia or winning the ACC, the postseason streak has become their chief calling card — would have been in real jeopardy. A loss here and Gailey, never the people’s choice, would have begun to feel the big heat. A loss here …
Enough. Tech didn’t lose. It looked flimsy for a half and formidable when it mattered. It stopped outsmarting itself, and that was enough to beat an indifferent Miami team and maybe rescue what has been an indifferent season.
“I was thinking about all of that,” said linebacker Philip Wheeler, meaning the game at hand and its possible ramifications. And then: “There was nothing we could do about [losing at Maryland last week] until we played the next game. This was a big steppingstone.”
Perhaps it was. With Tech, it’s tough to know anything for sure. But this much was clear Saturday: The Jackets are good only when Tashard Choice gets the ball, and in this second half he got it 24 times.
The first half was one of those head-smackers. The Jackets had thrown 21 passes and had run the ball 17 times. The rationale for this incongruity was that Miami had the ACC’s second-worst pass-efficiency defense, but the reality was that the Jackets, who own the league’s second-worst passing offense, were staring at a 7-0 deficit because they’d played to their weakness.
“No question, sometimes you [overanalyze],” said John Bond, the offensive coordinator. “You think about what should look good and what could look good, but with the game on the line you’d better do what you do best.”
Just in time, Tech wised up. Choice, who’d rushed 13 times in the first half, carried on the first two snaps of the third quarter. And then, on the fourth, he ducked into the line and ducked out, and 54 yards later the game and maybe a season had turned.
“When it works, it works,” quarterback Taylor Bennett said. “If we can run the ball, run the ball. There’s no reason to pass if you can run.”
Tech hasn’t been the team it was supposed to be because it lacks the playmakers it was thought to have. It does, however, have a running back of surpassing skill. There’s no reason to get clever when Option A is a new Mercedes and Option B a rusted-out Pinto. Just run the doggone ball. Run it until somebody stops you. Run it even if they do.
Gailey said he whispered nothing in Bond’s ear at halftime: “They [his offensive coaches] saw what needed to be done.” If those coaches have a lick of collective sense, what was done in this second half is what should be done every half of every week.
Tech isn’t going to beat anyone of consequence on Bennett’s arm. Only Choice, who finished with 204 yards on 37 rushes, affords such a chance. There’s no reason the Jackets can’t gather themselves and win four or five more games and buy a trip to a better postseason game than the two that scouted this one — reps of the Emerald and Champs Sports bowls were on hand — if they remember how they beat Miami.
“Every week [the games] get bigger,” said Gailey, who was unusually festive afterward. (Feeling a reprieve, was he?) “The farther you go, the bigger they get.”
By winning here, the Jackets have given themselves a chance to play big games down the road. By winning here, this team has set the template for all its tomorrows. Can the frilly stuff. Be pro-Choice.
Permalink | Comments (47) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Schuerholz is far from done
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Frankly (no play on words here), I don’t see what all the fuss is about. So Frank Wren has the same office with a new title on the door. So Terry McGuirk donates one of his titles to John Schuerholz. Schuerholz then becomes the president the Braves haven’t had since Stan Kasten was here. Instead of transferring, Schuerholz gains power, and instead of the end of an era, it’s the beginning of another one with a four-year contract.
How’s that for putting a spin on non-retirement?
This is known in the business world as a game of musical chairs. In the long run, nothing changes. Frank Wren continues doing what he has been doing, only now he doesn’t have to check with Schuerholz first. Or so it would seem.
Schuerholz has been saddled with a two-horse title all these years, executive vice president and general manager. Put all the titles you want to on a guy, it doesn’t change his daily chores. What he will now be doing that he hasn’t been doing, none of us knows. Nobody seems to know. Just so long as it doesn’t inflict any discomfort on Bobby Cox, that’s mainly what concerns most of us.
Terry McGuirk says that Wren will continue to report to Schuerholz. He says Schuerholz will continue to be his “right-hand man” in all aspects of the baseball business. So, anything new there? Then why all the big, black headlines on page one, as if the world has tilted another quarter-inch? Schuerholz isn’t leaving the building, and more important, Cox remains the solid face of the Braves.
So there is no ending of an era. Eras end when some executive announces that he’s checking out “to spend more time with his family,” or travel the world, or something that hasn’t occurred to him yet. There is nothing more restless than an executive with time on his hands. There is no retirement on Schuerholz’s agenda. He only moves into a position of added power. He expects to be consulted. Don’t all presidents? He expects to be in a power situation. What we all would like to have seen these past 17 years is a few more World Series pennants to go with all those division pennants.
You don’t give Schuerholz all the credit for the cast of players the Braves have put on the field; you give him credit for hiring the guys who mined the playing ore the Braves have given Cox to manage. The scouts who found Jeff Francoeur, who found Brian McCann; the guy who turned Greg McMichael from “non-roster invitee” into one of the Braves’ best relief pitchers; the guy who made the perilous trade of Doyle Alexander for John Smoltz, and others long since woven into the historical fabric of this team. Most of all, don’t ever, ever lose track of what Paul Snyder has meant to this organization.
And by no means, don’t let those guys who gave us Albie Lopez and Russ Ortiz and Dan Kolb and Bob Wickman and a cast of losers off the hook. That doesn’t look good on any man’s dossier.
As it stands, seems that little has changed in the makeup of the Braves. A few titles have been shifted or re-created, the ownership is the same — and when do we begin to feel the presence of Liberty Media, and in what manner? — and are we to expect a surge of prosperity with all this inner-office activity? That’s what fans are looking for. Titles don’t impress the ticket-holder. Standings do. These autumns are mighty dreary sitting outside the action, while out in the wild, wild West they’re having all the fun. Think it over.
Permalink | Comments (32) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Furman Bisher
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