The penchant for Georgia Tech and Vad Lee to get off to slow starts caught up to them in Thursday’s 17-10 loss to Virginia Tech.
The Yellow Jackets trailed 14-3 at halftime and have been outscored 27-10 in the first quarter of ACC games this year.
“When the offense struggles, I put it on me,” Lee said.
Lee has been a notoriously slow starter this season. In last week’s win against North Carolina, he started 0-for-3 with a fumble. Against Duke, he started 1-for-6 with an interception.
Against Virginia Tech, Lee fumbled on Tech’s first series. Virginia Tech recovered on the 27-yard line and the Hokies scored on a 21-yard pass from Logan Thomas to D.J. Coles two plays later to take a 7-0 lead.
Lee threw an interception on the second series on a diving catch by Brandon Facyson on the Hokies’ 13-yard line.
Lee completed five of his 14 attempts in the first half for 98 yards. Tech’s offense totaled just 160 yards, including 62 rushing, but trailed 14-3.
Lee usually heats up as the game progresses and it looked like he was going to once again get hot in the third quarter.
Lee bounced back on first drive of the second half with a 40-yard pass to Robert Godhigh on third and 8 at the 20. Lee actually threw the pass off his back foot as he moved to escape pressure that came on almost every snap.
Lee later added runs of 9 and 8 yards before fumbling on 1st and goal at the 2. He recovered the fumble but lost 4 yards. The next play, a toss to Godhigh, lost two more yards. However, Lee was bailed out when Virginia Tech was flagged for pass interference on third and goal from the 8.
David Sims plunged in from the 2-yard line to cut Georgia Tech’s gap to 14-10 with 3:16 left in the third quarter.
But that was as hot as Lee and the Jackets got. Just like the first quarter, neither the passing game nor the running game could find a rhythm.
Some of that had to do with the pressure that Virginia Tech’s defensive line applied no matter the situation.
The defensive tackles consistently dove through gaps and disrupted the handoff to B-back. The Jackets finished with 129 rushing yards, far less than the 345.3 they averaged coming into Thursday’ game.
With the run game not working, Lee attempted 24 passes, completing seven. He was sacked two times as the Hokies consistently brought pressure on the left side of Georgia Tech’s line.
Johnson didn’t put all of the blame on Lee for the offense’s woes and said he didn’t consider bringing in back-up Justin Thomas. But after saying that the team hasn’t been good at running the option all year, he fired this salvo:
“I’m confident that we’re going to get better at it,” he said. “We’re either going to get better at it or we’re going to have other people playing.”
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