Paul Johnson captured it precisely.
“This has been a screwy season right from the start,” the Georgia Tech coach said.
Even before the season began, the team’s leading rusher in 2016, Dedrick Mills, was dismissed. In the opener, Tech ran virtually at will against Tennessee and took a 14-point lead, and then lost in double overtime 42-41. That was only the beginning.
“I don’t think we ever really got going or got much momentum,” Johnson said.
A brief recap: Tech has won every game at home. It has lost every game away from Bobby Dodd Stadium, three of the them in driving rain. A game was canceled because of a hurricane. No. 7 Georgia, the Yellow Jackets’ opponent Saturday, will be their fourth Top 25 opponent and the third ranked in the top seven.
The Jackets beat the then-No. 17 team in the country, Virginia Tech, by holding the Hokies to their season-low for total offense, but lost to Virginia and Duke, two of the weakest offenses in the ACC, by giving up a combined 83 points and 857 yards. The Jackets rank sixth nationally in third-down defense at 28.5 percent, after ranking 126th last season, but have been repeatedly victimized on last-minute drives.
In four of the five losses – Tennessee, Miami, Virginia and Duke – the Jackets held double-digit leads. In all but the Duke game, the Jackets held the lead in the final 1:30 of regulation.
“This year, I’m disappointed with our results,” Johnson said. “I think we had a chance to have a really special year, and we had a chance to be OK. And we put ourselves in a little bit of a hole. If we could find a way to win the game on Saturday and maybe go win a bowl game, you salvage a little bit of the season. But certainly, when we started out, our goal wasn’t to be 5-5 right now.”
Beating Georgia on Saturday would get the Jackets into a bowl game and undoubtedly be a satisfying result. But it can’t erase the reality that this is a team that had the potential to play for the ACC championship next week against Clemson.
“The close games, we definitely should have won in my opinion,” quarterback TaQuon Marshall said. “When you come out and you start off good but you can’t finish at the end, it definitely sucks, and you leave some things out there. But, again, you have to flush it and then come back the next week and try to prepare.”
In the summer, defensive end KeShun Freeman tried to encourage his team to "break the cycle" after the Jackets won nine games last season, including their last four. He made a presentation to his teammates about how Tech's history has been to follow up successful seasons – namely the ACC championship (since vacated) in 2009 and the Orange Bowl championship season in 2014 – with mediocrity.
“We kind of like playing with a chip on our shoulder,” Johnson said at a preseason media event in Charlotte, N.C.. “We’re much better when we do that.”
Much to the Jackets’ chagrin, the cycle remains unbroken. Ever optimistic, Freeman saw a teaching point in the season.
Freeman said that “what we can do is, we can talk to the guys who are coming up as seniors and make sure that (we tell them), ‘Hey, this is what happened to us. We don’t want y’all to have a season like ours.’”
Johnson said that this team is “not close” to the 2016 team. That team, he said, had the offensive firepower to make up for shortcomings on defense and special teams. But the 2017 offense, he said, is average. The defense has been “really good or really bad,” he said.
When the season comes to an end, as Johnson always does, he will evaluate the state of the team and where improvement is necessary.
Trying to understand how a team that, before this season, was 24-21 on the road under Johnson could go 0-5 away from Bobby Dodd Stadium this season might be on the list. Helping a defense that ranks 92nd in sacks per game after finishing 114th last year (1.4) is another. Addressing pass protection (one sack per 5.8 pass attempts compared with one per 13.6 the five seasons previous) is one more. Special teams has problems almost across the board.
“There’s a lot of things on offense and defense you’ve got to look at,” Johnson said. “You can look at things tweak ’em without throwing the baby with the bathwater. There’s things you can try to do to help yourself.”
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