Against Pittsburgh on Saturday, the Georgia Tech defense did what seems to be its calling card this season: Play soundly some of the time and give way the rest.
On nine possessions, Pittsburgh punted four times with two three-and-outs and one four-and-out. But the others, the Jackets allowed Pitt to pound the ball, stay on the field by converting short third downs and make big plays both on the ground and via the pass.
“We’ve just got to play a complete game,” linebacker Tyler Marcordes said. “We have some good plays here and there and then we let some plays go, and we can’t have that. We’ve got to play a whole game if we want to win.”
It was a better performance than the Jackets have had of late. Pitt’s 5.9 yards-per-play average was a considerable improvement on Tech’s last two efforts – 7.2 against North Carolina and 7.3 against Clemson. Yet, consider this – in ACC conference games last year, only two defenses averaged worse than 5.9 for the season. Tech was one of them. It’s not what was expected of a unit with eight returning starters. Pitt’s 200 rushing yards was its best against an FBS opponent this season.
“Right now, we’re not very good on defense,” coach Paul Johnson said. “Facts are facts.”
Tech fixed one problem – the preponderance of big plays it had been allowing, 16 in the past two games. The Jackets gave up two Saturday, pass plays of 41 and 29 yards on Pittsburgh’s second touchdown drive of the game. The latter was by wide receiver Tyler Boyd on a gadget play.
But the Jackets instead failed to produce a single tackle for loss in 66 plays run by the Panthers. That allowed Pittsburgh to put itself in position for makeable third downs.
The Panthers are by no means an exceptional third-down team – they came into the game making 40.3 percent, and were 4-for-11 (36.4 percent) against Tech – but picked up enough.
Pitt’s fourth touchdown drive, which put the Panthers up 28-21 with 51 seconds left in the third quarter, included third-down makes of four and one yards.
The Jackets couldn’t quite do enough with the game in the balance in the fourth quarter. With the score tied at 28, the Panthers took possession at their 31 with 8:13 to play. Pitt didn’t have a gain longer than nine yards, but was able to make three first downs to drive just long enough to let kicker Chris Blewitt win the game with a school-record 56-yard field goal.
“We’re trying to work on not being that ‘almost’ type of team,” defensive end KeShun Freeman said. “We want to be a team that we can say, ‘We did it.’”
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