‘Response is everything’: Georgia Tech on bye looking to rebound from first loss
For the first time this season, the Yellow Jackets will have to see if they can bounce back.
A 48-36 loss at North Carolina State on Saturday at Carter-Finley Stadium ended No. 8 Georgia Tech’s undefeated run through eight games and its perfect mark in the ACC.
“How do you respond? Response is everything,” Tech quarterback Haynes King said when asked what’s next for the Jackets. “Coach tells us all the time, with the wristbands that we wear, ‘E+R=O.’ Event plus response equals outcome. What is your response? You gotta own your response. Are you gonna come together? Fall apart? I feel like this team’s gonna come together, just because of who we are.
“We don’t play the blame game or anything like that. I expect the seniors, if anybody starts to do that, you’re gonna shut it down. You’re gonna shut it down. It doesn’t matter. We are a team. We are in this together.”
King was masterful again Saturday in running the Tech offense. He threw for 408 yards and two touchdowns and ran for 103 yards and two scores as part of Tech’s 559-yard evening.
Problem was, North Carolina State (5-4, 2-3 ACC) matched Tech’s total and then some en route to an explosive offensive performance of its own.
The Wolfpack had 583 yards of offense, averaged 8.7 yards per play, went 7-of-11 on third down, scored on all six trips to the red zone and on eight of 10 possessions (including six straight at one point). State also had eight passing plays of 15 yards or more and four such rushing plays.
“We expected a lot of what they did — the swizzle plays, the trick plays that they may have ran, we expected it,” Tech safety Clayton Powell-Lee said. “But you just gotta execute and just read and react. Don’t wait for nobody else to make the play; go make the play yourself.”
The Tech defense had been a bend-don’t-break unit all season, but the dam finally burst Saturday.
Playing without defensive backs Ahmari Harvey and Jy Gilmore and defensive tackle Matthew Alexander, Tech had no defensive answers for N.C. State quarterback CJ Bailey (340 yards passing and two touchdowns) or running back Jayden Scott (196 yards on 24 carries and a touchdown).
Bailey completed passes to eight different receivers. He also ran for 34 yards and a touchdown.
“He’s a very capable quarterback. He can make every throw on the field,” Powell-Lee said. “We was trying to mix up the picture, get some guys in his face. It just comes to execution, that’s all you can really say. D-line’s gotta be tied in the back end and vice versa. It just takes all 11 of us to stop a guy like that.”
Offensively, Tech scored on all three of its third-quarter possessions, but two of those scores were field goals, frustrating results in a back-and-forth matchup.
The Jackets started the period by driving to the Wolfpack 2, but then ran three straight plays out of the shotgun formation and got no further than the 1. A false start by right tackle Malachi Carney on fourth down forced Tech to kick a field goal instead of go for the touchdown.
Tech had a first down at the N.C. State 15 on its next series, but a 1-yard rushing loss by King, 4-yard pass and incomplete throw led to another field goal from the Wolfpack 12.
And on its first possession of the fourth quarter, down 41-30, the Jackets went three-and-out and had to punt.
“We weren’t consistent enough in the red zone,” Tech coach Brent Key said. “When we get the ball down to the 1-yard line you gotta be able to put it in offensively. Those mistakes were self-defeating mistakes.”
Key, all things considered, is still the coach of an 8-1 team that didn’t suffer its first loss until November. And it’s a team that saw its own fans storm the field at Bobby Dodd Stadium when it beat Clemson on a last-second field goal, then saw NN.C. State fans rush the field Saturday after the Wolfpack beat the Jackets — quite the turnaround in less than two months.
Now Tech goes into its second bye week of the season ahead of its final three regular-season games. It is still very much alive to play in the ACC championship game in December (Tech woke up Sunday in a five-way tie for second place in the conference standings) and not completely out of the College Football Playoff discussion (the season’s first rankings will be released Tuesday).
Key and his Jackets don’t take the field again until Nov. 15 against Boston College (1-8, 0-5 ACC), plenty of time to rectify what went wrong Saturday when things came crashing to a halt.
“If you don’t get motivated when you lose a football game, you shouldn’t be playing football. You’re not a competitor. And we got a lot of competitors in there,” Key said. “They’ll respond the right way. And that’s what we talk about.
“Our response is everything. That’s what I told them in the locker room. We got our butts kicked. Give credit where it’s due. We can’t do anything about the game that just occurred except to learn from it.”
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