After Georgia Tech center Freddie Burden said he experienced some moments of confusion in Saturday’s loss at Clemson, coach Paul Johnson said he was similarly confused after reviewing what Burden and the rest of the offensive line did in the 43-24 loss.
It could be considered a mean-spirited reaction, but it exemplifies the emotions that the coaches are feeling after four consecutive losses, capped by 71 yards rushing — a low under Johnson at Tech — to the Tigers.
“This is something very new for us,” offensive line coach Mike Sewak said. “How many times have we led the league? It’s more than disheartening, it’s crushing.”
Indeed, the team that has rushed for 30,672 yards, more than any other FBS team in the past seven-plus seasons, is turning into something that Johnson said he has a hard time recognizing.
Players are having a difficult time reading defenses, communicating what they are reading, coming up with a plan and executing that plan. That it has to be done in 25 seconds or less is something few care about.
The confusion Burden referenced had to do with what he described as linebackers moving into gaps and defensive linemen shifting just before the snap. Those last-second changes can cause problems if what Tech’s linemen think they are seeing isn’t what’s actually going on.
Sewak said he thinks that may be part of the problem. He said he may be giving his charges too much to think about, too many permutations off what turns about to be a basic defensive look. Tech has always had a lineman who was good at seeing the entire defense and could come back to the sideline between series and tell Sewak what the defense was doing, reducing those permutations. Sean Bedford, Omoregie Uzzi and Shaq Mason were three of those. Burden is becoming that player this year, Sewak said.
But there are still recognition problems. Sometimes, a player will come to the sideline and relay what he saw, only for Sewak to know that’s not what they did. Other times, Sewak will point out what the defense did only to hear a lineman say that he didn’t see that.
“Sometimes they overthink the process,” he said.
Those last-second changes by the defense can also cause problems if the snap count isn’t adjusted to give the linemen time to digest the changes and subsequently change their blocking technique. Those changes can cause problems if one linemen reads the defense one way and changes his technique, and another reads it another way and changes his technique. Or, it can cause issues if the linemen all the same time but aren’t communicating what they are seeing, or hearing each other. Each lineman can make a call, but they have to be able to say it and hear each other.
“We have a third of the line doing something else, a third of the line doing something else and one guy doing something else,” lineman Shamire Devine said.
“That messed up everything. The biggest problem for the Georgia Tech offensive line right now is ourselves. We are shooting ourselves in the foot with lack of communication.”
That lack of communication was what happened when Tech couldn’t convert a key fourth-and-1 in the loss to Duke. A call was changed, and one of the guards didn’t hear it.
“Five guys up front have to play better,” tackle Bryan Chamberlain said of the play. “That’s it. We have to play better as unit. We have to communicate better. It doesn’t matter how they line up, if we do what we have to do we’ll be fine.”
On top of the recognition and communication problems, Johnson referenced that some of the linemen simply can’t do what’s being asked of them.
“Since Notre Dame every team we’ve played has played the same way,” he said. “They all line up the same way. I don’t know how you could be confused. We’re killing ourselves with some calls and some line calls and some stuff that we probably shouldn’t be doing because we’re trying to overcompensate for guys who can’t do what we should be doing.”
It seems like an odd thing to say considering that Tech’s line features three fifth-year seniors, a fourth-year junior and a third-year sophomore. But with the Yellow Jackets’ rushing totals in the past four games (715 yards) combined not exceeding what it totaled after the first two games (915 yards), it may be time for a different approach.
So, Tech’s coaches and offensive linemen are going back to basics this week in their preparations for Pitt in an attempt to get the players to recognize that sometimes a 3-4 defense is just a 3-4 defense. And to let their teammates know that a 3-4 is just a 3-4 and this is how they are going to attack it.
“We’re going to go back and work and keep learning,” Johnson said. “You’ve got to do that with the young guys. You can’t just throw them more and more stuff because they’re still trying to digest the other stuff. We’ve just got to do it better, at a higher level, and be consistent.”
