The ACC Coastal has been to the Atlantic as the SEC East is to the West — a pint-sized little brother. That mightn’t be true much longer.
Three Coastal teams just changed coaches. One changed after the 2014 season. That’s a 57 percent turnover in a seven-team division, and a case can be made that each school improved itself. Mark Richt, now of Miami, is better than Al Golden. Pat Narduzzi, the longtime Michigan State defensive coordinator who lifted Pitt from 6-7 to 8-4, is an upgrade over Paul Chryst. Justin Fuente, imported from Memphis, should do better at Virginia Tech than Frank Beamer had done lately. Virginia’s replacement of Mike London with Bronco Mendenhall of BYU could be the year’s slickest hire.
If you’re Georgia Tech, there’s reason for concern. The Yellow Jackets have played for the ACC title three times under Paul Johnson. It might be a while before they do it again. Tech just finished 0-6 against Coastal opponents, and it was a bad 0-6: The Jackets lost to Miami, which had an interim coach; to Virginia Tech, which had a lame-duck coach, and to Virginia, which everyone knew would soon fire its coach.
Yes, Georgia Tech going 3-9 seems an anomaly — not since 1994, the final season under the overmatched Bill Lewis, had a Tech team been so bad. But for everyone who believes Tech’s down season was a function of youth and/or injury and/or a rough schedule and/or bad luck … well, there’s no guarantee a bounce-back is at hand.
It’s not as if the Jackets under Johnson had ever run the Coastal table. They’ve beaten Virginia Tech once since 2009 and Miami once since 2008. They’ve lost two in a row to both Duke and North Carolina. They’ve lost three of eight to Virginia. The reason the Jackets kept finishing above .500 in league play — they were 5-3 or better in seven of Johnson’s first eight season and 4-4 in the other — was because the rest of the division couldn’t get or keep going.
Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech were the only Coastal entrants not to have a losing season from 2012 through 2014, and the Hokies twice went 7-6. Until the 11-3 of 2014, the Jackets were themselves treading water — 6-7 in 2010, 8-5 in 2011, 7-7 in 2012, 7-6 in 2013 — but they played enough bad teams to stay afloat. There might be fewer bad Coastal teams from here on. The only division members to finish under .500 this year were Georgia Tech and Virginia, and one of those hired a guy named Bronco. (That’s not a nickname, either. He’s Mark Bronco Clay Mendenhall.)
The week of the Georgia game, Johnson offered this appraisal: “The biggest difference (from 2014) is we’re not as good on offense, and we haven’t gotten the turnovers (on defense). We’re probably better statistically on defense, although not enough to make a difference. Last year the offense was good enough to carry the whole team. ‘You want a shootout? Let’s go. We’ll play a shootout with you, and you’ll miss your turn before we will.’ This year we can’t. We’re not that good.”
Tech’s defense has rarely been very good. But, as Johnson suggested, his team could win the ACC in 2009 with a defense ranked 54th nationally and go 11-3 in 2014 with one ranked 79th because it could win games 49-44 (at Florida State in 2009) and 49-34 (versus Mississippi State in the Orange Bowl). Only once over their final 10 games this season — nine of them losses — did these Jackets score more than 28 points.
That figures to change. B-back C.J. Leggett, lost in the spring to a torn ACL, should be back. J.J. Green, the Georgia transfer, will be eligible at A-back. Justin Thomas returns at quarterback, and he remains a talent. But when you fall from 19th nationally in total offense to 81st, you can get a lot better without being good. If Tech’s offense isn’t very good, it has no chance.
For the first seven of Johnson’s seasons, the Jackets could count on their offense and the pliant Coastal to prop them up. The offense, however, no longer appears irresistible, and the division stands to get tougher. A rebound might be much more difficult than Tech folks think.
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