For Georgia Tech, the season ended the right way.
The pulverizing running of B-backs Synjyn Days and Zach Laskey. The merciless drive blocking of right guard Shaquille Mason and his cohorts. And the darting playmaking of quarterback Justin Thomas rendering the Mississippi State Bulldogs helpless.
On a humid south Florida night, No. 12 Georgia Tech laid claim to the Orange Bowl championship with a 49-34 win over No. 7 Mississippi State, throttling the Bulldogs with 452 rushing yards, including 318 after halftime on just 34 carries.
“I don’t want to say it is (easy), but it felt like it was going pretty easy out there,” Thomas said. “We’ve been doing it for so long, it just comes natural to you.”
Ahead 21-20 at halftime after a 42-yard Hail Mary touchdown pass for Mississippi State concluded the half, the Jackets laid waste to the Bulldogs in the second half, scoring touchdowns on four consecutive drives with 20 runs in 22 plays.
“In the second half, we kind of found a little gravy train there with the formation with a little belly play to those (B-back),” coach Paul Johnson said. “(Days) was running hard and breaking a lot of tackles.”
Days broke four tackles on the way to a 69-yard touchdown run on the opening drive of the half, running over defensive back Taveze Calhoun on his way down the left sideline and speeding down the left sideline, at times inches or less from going out of bounds.
Thomas ran 32 yards to the end zone on a play in which he froze cornerback Will Redmond with a fake. He ran 15 yards for another score on a sprint to the pylon and Days added a game-icing touchdown in the fourth quarter, a four-yard run that put Tech ahead 49-27 with 11:54 to play.
Thomas was electric, converting third downs on runs and passes, and finishing with 246 yards of total offense, three touchdown runs and another through the air, a 41-yarder to wide receiver Darren Waller in the first quarter. He was named the game’s most valuable player, a remarkable achievement for a player who is finishing his first season as a starter.
“When the offense is running as smoothly as it ran, the guy under the center is executing pretty good,” Johnson said. “I thought he did a good job of that, getting us in the right plays and making plays with his arm and his feet when he needed to.”
Tech’s defense played its part, forcing two turnovers, including an interception by cornerback Chris Milton on the first series of the game that helped Tech give a 7-0 lead less than three minutes into the game on a Days three-yard run. The Bulldogs had six red-zone trips and turned them into 27 points. Tech had four trips and converted them into 28 points.
But the centerpiece was the Tech offense, which set single-season school records for total rushing yards, rushing yards per game and yards per carry.
As the Jackets celebrated on the field after the game, they reveled in the happy culmination of a season truly worth celebrating. At 11-3, Tech has just its fifth 11-win season in school history. Two of them have come under Johnson’s watch. The hard-to-please coach has not been shy about sharing his pleasure in this team, his seventh at Tech.
“They’ve been fun to coach, to work with,” Johnson said Tuesday. “They just work hard, haven’t been a problem, do good in class, go to class.”
When the final Associated Press poll is released following the College Football Playoff championship game, it likely will reveal that the Jackets defeated three teams in the top 15 (Clemson, Georgia and Mississippi State) no small achievement for a team picked to finish fifth in the ACC Coastal Division and only entered the top 25 for good in the Nov. 9 poll.
Tech’s closing four-game run – wins over Clemson, Georgia and Mississippi State and a two-point loss to Florida State – has few rivals in team history.
The Jackets will be in the AP top 10 for the first time since 1998 and just the third time since coach Bobby Dodd’s retirement following the 1966 season. That a team without a single first-team All-ACC player will lay claim to that achievement speaks to one of defensive coordinator Ted Roof’s favorite appraisals of the Jackets – the strength of the team is the team.
