AJC > Sports > Tech > Blog > Archives > 2008 > December > 03
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Looking ahead
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tech’s football team is poised for a pretty nice run over the next few years.
As you all know, 16 of 22 starters are freshmen and sophomores.
Let’s look at the backfield. On Tuesday, CPJ was talking about why B-back Jon Dwyer deserves to be named the ACC’s Offensive Player of the Year. (The winner will be announced today).
He said Dwyer’s durability was critical because backup Quincy Kelly was unavailable much of the time and Richard Watson was redshirted.
So think about 2009: Dwyer and Kelly will be juniors. They’ll be joined by Watson, a 6-1, 225-pounder from Tallahassee who was the third or fourth-best fullback recruit coming out of high school.
Roddy Jones, Lucas Cox, Embry Peeples and Marcus Wright return as A-backs (Greg Smith didn’t see any action the last couple games).
Throw in Louisville transfer Anthony Allen, another combo of power and speed. The 6-foot, 225-pounder played in all 12 games last year for the Cardinals, running for nearly 700 yards and seven TDs. He averaged 4.8 yards a carry and caught 21 passes.
That’s a loaded backfield.
Here’s what CPJ said Tuesday about the state of his offense:
“We can get a whole lot better. We can get better at almost every area offensively in terms of execution. We can get better at our reads, our steps and fundamentals. We will get more of it in and understand our schemes better. We have to be able to throw the ball better, and that goes back to protection and route-running. We will have a spring to work on that stuff. I would love to get some of the run-and- shoot stuff in that we didn’t have a chance to get in. So, as you can see, there are a lot of things we can get better at. I feel like we have only scratched the surface on offense. I didn’t think we were very good on offense this year from my standards and I think we can do better.”
Georgia Tech averaged 26.2 points this year, which ranked fifth in the ACC.
What do you expect in 2009?
