With spring practice over with Friday night’s spring game, Georgia Tech’s coaches soon will be on the road recruiting and players will finish the semester and prepare for the start of summer workouts.
“There’s always things that you’d like to do better, but I think we had a good spring,” coach Paul Johnson said following the scrimmage at Bobby Dodd Stadium.
Here are four observations from the game and spring practice as a whole:
Experiment with the no-huddle offense: In the second quarter, the first-team offense played one drive without huddling, a break from the Yellow Jackets' standard. Johnson has not been a no-huddle proponent in part because while it can score a lot of points with a sped-up tempo against worn-out defenses, it also can backfire with short three-and-outs that quickly return the defense to the field.
However, new quarterbacks and B-backs coach Bryan Cook ran it as co-offensive coordinator at Cal Poly. Cook acknowledged the pros and cons, but said that it can suit the pounding style of the spread-option offense.
Provided that the offensive players are “in good enough shape to do it that it’s not having a negative effect on the offense, then it has a crippling effect on the defense,” Cook said.
On Friday, under instructions to stick with the triple-option play, quarterback Vad Lee signaled the direction (left or right) at the line, and the White team went 63 yards in five plays. After a huddle, Lee finished the drive with a 17-yard touchdown pass to A-back Deon Hill that was a play-action off the triple option, the White team’s only touchdown of the game.
“Pretty much, I was out there doing my thing,” Lee said. “I kind of liked that.”
Andrews shines again: A-back Dennis Andrews followed an impressive showing the previous Saturday with more playmaking Friday night. Playing for the Gold team, he had three carries for 37 yards, with another catch for 17 yards. A-back Synjyn Days also had plenty of touches, with four carries for 33 yards and three receptions for 33 yards. They are two of a slew of contestants for playing time at that position, where Robert Godhigh returns at one spot, and Orwin Smith has vacated the other.
“(Andrews) has got to be a better blocker, but he’s done some really good things with the ball in his hands,” Johnson said. “I think he can help us.”
The void left by Smith, one of the most prolific ball carriers in Tech history, is considerable.
“What I’d like to see is for one of those guys to just jump out and just be kind of a go-to guy right now,” Johnson said.
Successful toe-leather connections: The kicking game looked little like the liability it often has been in recent seasons. On their only field-goal attempts, kicker Justin Moore hit from 43 yards for the White team, and David Scully made good from 46 yards for the Gold. Scully was wide on a point-after try, but had his timing thrown off by a high snap.
Punter Ryan Rodwell averaged 41.0 yards on four punts, and Sean Poole’s average on three punts was 43.0 yards, though they didn’t face a live rush. Perhaps more noteworthy, nearly all of the punts were struck well, producing high, spiraling arcs.
This spring, his second at Tech, special-teams coordinator David Walkosky has emphasized perfection on the snap, hold and punt or kick.
“We have to do it every single time,” Walkosky said. “It can’t be one out of five.”
While Tech will be a rarity with three kickers and two punters on scholarship when kicker Harrison Butker enrolls in the summer, it at least should create competition for playing spots.
With the kickers, Johnson said, Butker’s arrival “is going to ratchet it up, way up.”
D-line looks improved: A new scheme and a new position coach appear to be the right combination for the defensive line. Nose tackles Adam Gotsis and Jimmie Kitchen and defensive tackles Euclid Cummings and Patrick Gamble were among the more noticeable defensive players Friday, with a combined 18 tackles. As Tech has shifted from a 3-4 defense to a 4-3 scheme that calls on the linemen to be more aggressive, the line has made obvious strides with new line coach Mike Pelton, who worked for new coordinator Ted Roof at Auburn.
“I think the defensive line, especially the defensive tackles as a whole, they’ve had a pretty good spring,” B-back David Sims said. “They were able to penetrate, they were able to cause a lot of havoc that we haven’t seen in a while. That’s something that’s going to be pretty interesting going into the year.”
It bears mention that Friday’s first-string offensive line was short two likely starters and the second-string line had only one player who has game experience.
“The thing you’ve got to be careful in these games, and these things is don’t read too much into stuff,” Johnson said. “A lot of it is matchups, too.”
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