Georgia Tech was 10-3 in 2009. Over the next four seasons, the Yellow Jackets were 28-25. When it was suggested that his program had declined from its ’09 peak, Paul Johnson would say, “They haven’t won 10 games around here very often.”
Last season Johnson led Tech to an 11-3 season, marking the eighth time in Institute annals the Jackets won 10 or more games. Given that Tech has been playing football since 1892, this seemed to underscore the sentiment expressed in 2005 by then-athletic director Dave Braine: “Georgia Tech can win nine or 10 games, (but it) will never do that consistently.”
We’re about to see if Johnson can do what only one Tech coach — and Tech has had some superb coaches — has done. Tech has won 10-plus games in consecutive seasons once in its history. Bobby Dodd followed the 11-0-1 season of 1951, which culminated with a victory over Baylor in the Orange Bowl, with a 12-0 season in 1952.
Johnson’s Jackets are coming off a season capped by an Orange Bowl dismissal of Mississippi State. That made two 10-win Tech seasons for this coach, which pulls him within one of Dodd. Of the seven Tech coaches between Dodd and Johnson, only two — Bobby Ross in the national championship run of 1990 and George O’Leary in the ACC championship season of 1998 — won 10 or more games.
Even as Johnson has staked a claim as the second-best coach this proud program has known, he’s bucking a history he himself has acknowledged. And the trouble with winning big is that you’re expected to keep winning big.
For ESPN Insider, Phil Steele offered his prediction as to how the preseason Associated Press poll will look. (Yes, Phil Steele is in the habit of predicting predictions.) He has Tech No. 17, which is one spot off the No. 18 offered by this correspondent in his long-distance Top 25 of January.
Asked Friday after another in the series of waterlogged Tech spring games about the possibility of being ranked, Johnson said: “We should be. We’ll see. It’s really a beauty contest. I don’t think teams should be ranked until after their fourth game, but if you’re going off what we did last season, we should be in the top 10 or top 20. … It’s crazy how teams that won five games or six games are in the Top 25 because of who they are.”
Over its final four games last season, Tech became a Somebody. It beat Clemson, Georgia and Mississippi State, all of which would finish in the top 15, and played then-unbeaten Florida State to the wire. The Jackets finished No. 8 in the AP poll, their best showing since 1990.
Still, it must be noted that preseason rankings regarding Tech are famously inexact. (Johnson has been known to guffaw over this.) The 2014 Jackets were picked to finish fifth in the seven-team Coastal Division. Even on Nov. 15, the day of the Clemson game, Tech was 8-2 but ranked only No. 24 by AP.
Over those final four games, Tech played splendid football against top-shelf opposition. At issue is whether that’s apt to carry into a new season. The excellent quarterback Justin Thomas returns, but almost everyone else who touched the ball on offense is gone. C.J. Leggett, projected as the replacement for departed B-backs Zach Laskey and Synjyn Days, tore his ACL last week and will miss the season.
On Friday, junior Marcus Allen — who does have a running back’s name — gained 77 yards. The same Marcus Allen previously had been a linebacker and a receiver. “(Tech coaches) told me I could probably play a lot of positions,” he said. “I didn’t know how literal that would be.”
It’s hard to imagine that an offense with Thomas won’t move the ball; it’s also hard to imagine that Tech’s offense will be as overpowering as it was last season, when it led the nation in rushing and third-down efficiency. As Thomas said Friday: “We can’t do anything about last season. That’s over. This team is 0-0.”
Off the strength of last season, Tech fans are dreaming big. Those same folks might temper those hopes by heeding the words of their coach: Ten-win seasons haven’t happened here very often.
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