Georgia Tech center Jay Finch knows his place.

“I’m just a pawn in the chess game,” he said. “I just do what I’m told. ‘Take the bishop.’ Yes, sir. Whatever he asks.”

The “he,” of course, would be coach Paul Johnson. Part of this week’s imperative to Finch and his fellow pawns is to get the interior running game going. Finch said Johnson challenged the line by saying he couldn’t remember the last time a B-back had a 100-yard rushing game.

For the record, it was Zach Laskey against Boston College with 101 yards. In fairness, David Sims has had three 90-plus games in the past six games. It would have been amusing (at least to me) if Finch or someone else had raised his hand to offer up that information to Johnson.

Getting Sims or Laskey a 100-yard game isn’t necessarily an objective against Miami Saturday, Finch said, but “it’s something (important) to us because if we can block inside, it allows us to give (the B-back) the ball more. We give him the ball more, it just opens up the whole offense.”

A year ago, Laskey ran 15 times for 82 yards against Miami. The year prior, one of the poorest offensive games in Johnson’s tenure, Sims had 10 times for 29 yards. Lyons added two carries for nine yards. Last week against Virginia Tech, Sims had 12 carries for 37 yards with a touchdown and Laskey ran seven times for 43 yards. As a whole, Tech rushed 42 times for 129 yards. Most notably, Tech’s longest run was 15 yards.

A litany of mistakes did in the Jackets against the Hokies. Finch said he thought the number of missed assignments (coaches tabulate them on game video) was “an all-time high.”

“It’s really hard to run the option when you’re missing assignments,” he said. “It really makes it hard, especially on the quarterback. He can’t make the right read if we’re not blocking the right people. It’s that simple.”

One reason why I appreciate offensive linemen in general and Finch in particular - they're usually a pretty unvarnished lot. Johnson said Wednesday that the game plan will be simplified with the objective being to play without making mistakes.

“We’re going to run the offense, but what I’m saying is, not have every play with every formation,” he said. “So you pick the plays you want with the formation. Now there’s going to be some plays that we’re going to run with every formation because they’re base plays. But that’s what I’m talking about, not saying, OK, this week, we’re only running five plays.”

Send in the pawns.