Georgia Tech's Paul Johnson: ‘This team will fight'

A: I think it's been positive. It's never as good as you would like it to be, but we're 6-0 and that's as good as we can be at this point. I think it's a gradual process. I don't think there's any question, if you go back and look at all the prognosticators and what everybody said, we've done better than most people thought. But we're still halfway through, and it's a fragile game. You never know what the next game's going to bring.

Q: What do you think is the identity of this team?

A: I think this team will fight. They've had their back up against a wall a little bit and we've clawed, and I think we've shown that we can win games when we don't have our 'A' game sometimes. And you've got to win some games like that because you're not going to be perfect every game all year long. It's just not going to happen.

Q: What do you think when you hear that this is the first Georgia Tech team to go 6-0 since 1966?

A: Honestly, it doesn't make me think anything. It's like I told our guys, I mentioned it because I think it's good motivation because it's an opportunity. It's something they should be proud of and continue to work to get better. I don't think anybody's satisfied, but there's a point where you have to give the kids some credit. You can't just beat 'em up every day.

Q: Does the inexperience or youth of this team still play a factor after six games?

A: The more experienced you are, historically, the better you play. But you've just got to go out there and play the game. I think more of what experience does is it teaches you to play more with intensity and more to play with focus. It's an emotional game and you've got to play with emotion and you've got to be intense and you've got to be involved in it. I think that's a learned thing. You have to learn how to do that.

Q: Can you see this team in the Orange Bowl?

A: Yeah. Anything's possible if we keep getting better. You never know what's going to happen. If you look back before the season started, everybody had Florida State in the Orange Bowl. And they might still get there. But they've dug themselves quite a hole.

Q: If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about your team, what would it be?

A: You'd always like to have more depth and be bigger and stronger. That'd be the thing.

Q: Defensive coaches and players have said they understand the scheme better and can play faster. Are you seeing that?

A: [Palms raised] I don't know. At times, maybe. It's like everything else. At times, we've played OK, and at times we've played not real good. I don't even know what the stat comparison would be from a year ago. I think we're probably a little better, but I don't know that for a fact. I haven't looked.

Q: But when you watch the defense play, do you see improvement?

A: I think we're better. I think we're more athletic. We're younger. We're giving up too many big plays. You'd like to see that [decrease], the big, long plays. But I think we've made plays, and we've probably gotten more stops this year than we did last year.

Q: On paper, how does this team compare to the 2009 ACC championship team?

A: I don't know that you have the individuals, the guys who were quote-unquote, the star-type payers, but I think overall, there's more depth, there's more quality from top to bottom. You don't have as many holes, but you probably don't have the marquee first-round draft picks, either. But I think if you took 'em as a whole, it might be better. But it remains to be seen, too. The 2009 team is over. They did it on the field. We've still got half a season to go.

Q: Is there a coach out there whose schemes you like to watch for ideas?

A: I don't know if there's any one person. We've had our system, and we've run it for a long time and we don't change a whole lot. If somebody has some ideas on the staff, I might listen to 'em. They'd probably tell you I'm hard-headed. But we've done things a certain way and it's been successful for the most part, so there's not much use to changing.

Q: Do you doodle plays on napkins?

A: [Lifts a yellow legal pad with plays drawn on it.] That's for this week. All these plays. This is my game plan for this week. That's it right there.

Q: How many plays are there?

A: [Counting] 10. There'll be base plays with it and I won't run all that, but that's just the ideas I've scribbled down in the last two days watching tape and [Tuesday], I'll go in with the offensive staff and I'll tell 'em, 'OK, here's what I got. What do you guys got? You've got anything you want to do?' If they've got some ideas that I think will work, we'll put 'em in, we'll look at 'em this week and we'll sort 'em out. That's the way we do it.