Georgia Tech defensive backs coach Joe Speed saw a lot of Yellow Jackets players hurting late Saturday afternoon, which wasn’t the worst thing. It told him how much they wanted to beat Notre Dame before falling short in a mistake-filled afternoon in South Bend, Ind.
“It’s good to see the kids feel the magnitude of the game,” Speed said.
But that didn’t mean he wanted them to soak it in too deeply. Perhaps even before players and coaches had filed out of the Notre Dame Stadium visiting team locker room, the processing of the emotional heights and depths of the day had already begun, with an eye on preparing for No. 20 Tech’s ACC opener against Duke seven days later.
“It was disappointing the way we played,” coach Paul Johnson said in his postgame news conference. “Go back, try to correct it, move on, get ready for conference play.”
In his eight seasons at Tech, Johnson has been effective at managing this turnaround, commonly referred to as “flushing.” In regular-season games following losses — when players need to quickly recover from the physical and emotional toll of a defeat — Tech’s record under Johnson is 15-8, a winning percentage of .652. His overall winning percentage at Tech is slightly lower, .629. It suggests that Johnson, his staff and the Jackets have been as effective at preparing to win after having met defeat as when riding the momentum of a win.
Some of the Jackets’ most notable wins in Johnson’s tenure — the 2008 win over Florida State, the 2011 upset of No. 5 Clemson and a practically flawless 56-0 win over Syracuse in 2013 — came seven days after losses.
“Sometimes, it was harder than others,” former B-back and 2013 team captain David Sims said. “But I thought for the most part, we did a pretty good job of rebounding and not having many losing streaks.”
Former players said part of the success lay in Johnson’s consistency. According to former offensive lineman Will Jackson, Johnson excelled at treating each week independently of the previous week. He treated each upcoming opponent with respect in how he led preparations, whether it was Georgia or Western Carolina. After a loss, he always warned “don’t let one team beat you twice.”
After losses, former A-back Charles Perkins said, “He said the same thing pretty much every week: Flush it, move on.”
Johnson set the tone with the routine for Monday practice, when the team reviews the game video from the previous Saturday and corrects mistakes made in the game in walk-throughs on the practice field. Sims recalled that Johnson, who typically reviews the game with the quarterbacks and B-backs, liked to say “there’s always some good, there’s always some bad and there’s always some ugly,” and it was critical to fix the bad, take care of the ugly and sustain the good.
Johnson’s style in reviewing the game was to point out why he called certain plays and explaining what could have been done better.
“Instead of, ‘You did this wrong, that wrong, that wrong,’” Sims said. “You do get some of that, too — he’s not going to sugarcoat you — but it was more positive than I expected the first time I watched film with him after a game.”
Johnson was “pretty much the same” after a win, Sims said. The ultimate message any week was the need to keep improving.
“It’s just stressing the importance of the next game,” Speed said. “The game’s behind us, we can’t do anything (about it). What we can do from that game is learn from it.”
Being college students playing an emotional game, it doesn’t always work. Sims quickly recalled how, after losing a wild overtime game to Miami in 2012, the team was “sleepwalking” the next week through practice and was hammered by Middle Tennessee State 49-28 at home the following Saturday.
After Duke defeated the Jackets last season to give them their first loss of the season, the offense played in high gear but the defense couldn’t stop North Carolina in a 48-43 defeat. Those back-to-back losses, though, grabbed the team’s attention and set the stage for Tech’s run to the Orange Bowl victory.
The experience at Notre Dame Stadium on Saturday humbled the team. The Jackets, then ranked No. 14 in the country, with fans and national media calling for a statement win, were beaten soundly by the Fighting Irish. The offense sabotaged itself with mistakes, the defense gave up devastating big plays and the kicking game didn’t contribute much.
Saturday will match two teams seeking to wash away the bitterness of a loss with a win over a Coastal Division opponent in their ACC opener. Duke lost last week at home to Northwestern.
On Monday, Johnson said that he wouldn’t bring up Notre Dame after that day.
“Just like I don’t when we win,” he said. “You put it behind you and move forward and get ready for the next game. It’s what you do.”
