Georgia Tech prevails over Colorado with the aid of a trusted staple
BOULDER, Colo. — With a little less than 1:20 left in the game, an old friend made an appearance.
With the season opener’s outcome not yet decided, Georgia Tech’s fake-toss run play worked as it always does. With the Colorado defense biting hard on quarterback Haynes King’s feint, King had the opening he needed to squeeze through the defensive line, break into the clear and run for the Yellow Jackets’ game-winning touchdown, a 45-yard dash.
In the final from Folsom Field on Friday night — Georgia Tech 27, Colorado 20 — Buffaloes defenders were still looking for their jocks 3.
“Automatic 5 yards,” said running back Jamal Haynes, the object of King’s fake lateral, of what he thinks when the play is called. “That’s one of our favorite plays. Just really like calling it, honestly.”
Colorado joined a legion of Tech opponents bamboozled by the play, which looks like Haynes is going to take a toss and run to the perimeter but ends up with King running through the interior behind collision-seeking blockers.
The Buffaloes defenders’ steps toward the sideline to chase down the running back Haynes, along with a withering point-of-attack block by tight end J.T. Byrne and left guard Harrison Moore, provided King enough of an opening to wiggle through the Buffaloes defense and onward to the end zone for the last of Tech’s 320 rushing yards.
“It’s a complement,” coach Brent Key said. “It’s a play off of a play.”
When defenses are facing a steady diet of actual toss plays, the fake “opens up a huge seam inside for the quarterback, and that’s what happened,” Key said.
As can be expected in a season opener, Tech made its share of mistakes, most notably turnovers on each of its first three possessions. There were communication lapses on defense in defensive coordinator Blake Gideon’s debut. The Jackets were on the road in a noisy stadium against a team coming off a nine-win season and playing more than 5,300 feet above sea level.
In a 20-all game in the final minutes, Tech had a second-and-6 on the Colorado 45-yard line when offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner dialed up his ace in the hole.
“When we hear that play called, we just know what to do, we know what to expect,” Haynes said. “Honestly, it’s the way we prepare, it’s the way we train, it’s the way we do things in practice, day in and day out, that gives us the confidence to go in and make that play.”
This doesn’t mean Tech is going to win the ACC. But it does reinforce the advantage that it has with a deft playcaller in Faulkner, a potent running back in Haynes who commands defenses’ attention (65 yards on 16 carries) and a tough quarterback in King who is quite unopposed to sacrificing his body to pick up a few yards. King finished with a game-high 156 rushing yards and three touchdowns on 19 carries.
“It was as simple as your number gets called, I do my job, I follow my blockers. It busted open, and the rest is history,” King said.
Remembering the past
Thousands of Tech fans delighted in the first-ever meeting between the Jackets and Buffaloes, a matchup that would have been much juicier 35 years ago, when the teams shared the 1990 national championship, but still was plenty juicy Friday night.
After the game, they roared their delight when King, after completing an on-field television interview, headed to the visiting locker room.
“HAYNES KING! HAYNES KING! HAYNES KING!”
Members of that 1990 team were on hand, including star running back William Bell.
Now in his 50s with a trim silver beard, Bell came to Boulder not interested in trying to belatedly determine the rightful champion, but just to support his team.
“We’ve already been crowned national champions,” he said before the game. “I don’t know what else to do.”
But for those who do want a debate, Bell does come armed with talking points: The Jackets had the better record, beat the teams’ only common opponent (Nebraska) more convincingly and also beat a team (Clemson) that demolished the only team to defeat Colorado that season (Illinois). Bell, who coaches and works in information technology at Whitefield Academy, prefers to rely on facts to remove biases. After all, he noted, he is a Tech product.
I asked him if his former teammates were like him in not having any investment in Friday’s outcome beyond what it meant for this year’s team. He corrected me.
“Well, I didn’t say it doesn’t mean anything,” he said.
Bell spoke at a tailgate party in a remote university parking lot. Overhead, gray skies threatened. The Flatiron foothills rose in the distance.
Around him, friends laughed, talked and enjoyed a catered tailgate. They were a group of African American graduates of the institute, many of whom met as freshmen and are now in their 40s and 50s. Men and women bonded not only by their alma mater but by being on a campus where not many people looked like them, many have remained in close touch over the years, traveling together to Tech road games, bowl games and on their own vacations. A number of their children have gone to Tech, eager for the experience their parents enjoyed.
“Life is short,” said Larry Brown, one of the members of 9-Quad, the name a nod to the year they enrolled (1994). “We’ve had a lot of classmates, unfortunately, pass away. It begins to put things in perspective. When you’re able to have this kind of gathering and enjoy each other, it means everything.”
Hail the return of college football, enabler of reunions throughout the autumn and a stage for unstoppable fake tosses.
On Friday in the Rockies, the 9-Quad crew and many more Tech alumni and fans celebrated a noteworthy win far from home.
The Jackets are 1-0. On to September.
About the Author
Ken Sugiura is a sports columnist at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Formerly the Georgia Tech beat reporter, Sugiura started at the AJC in 1998 and has covered a variety of beats, mostly within sports.
