For all that has gone wrong through the past two weeks for Georgia Tech in road games at Notre Dame and Duke, being stopped on fourth and 1 by the Blue Devil defense with 4:54 left on Saturday was a pretty good microcosm.
The Yellow Jackets were down six points, 26-20. They could practically sniff the end zone from there, just 26 yards out. And their toughest and best back Patrick Skov, their B-back and go-to guy for the tough yards, got stuffed by a host of Duke defenders trying to find room off left tackle.
“It was called give,” Tech coach Paul Johnson said, meaning as opposed to an option play. “I think the left guard got blown up. The center got blown up. Whoever was covering got beat. You’d like to have that one over again but again you want to play to the strength of your football team. You’ve got seniors up there, and you got a guy who’s hard to tackle. That’s where we were trying to go. I wish I’d thrown it on third down on play action is what I wish.”
Johnson had had some tough words for Skov during the week coming off the Notre Dame game, saying he needed to be more than “a bull in a china shop,” and that he needed to “open his eyes and look where he’s going.”
Skov was doing his best to do a little of both on Saturday. He bulled his way to 75 yards on 19 carries which led the Yellow Jackets. That was an improvement on his 66 yards and a touchdown on 18 carries against Notre Dame. Skov appeared to play through a banged up shoulder throughout Tech’s only sustained drive of the second half – which quarterback Justin Thomas capped with an 12-yard keeper to pull Tech within 26-20 with 8:02 left in the game.
But when push came to shove and Tech had a scoring chance with good field position on the ensuing drive, Skov didn’t have much room to maneuver, or create his own space in a short yardage. The game was decided on the next possession when quarterback Justin Thomas chose not to hand off to Skov, kept the ball and coughed it up to Duke on a fumble.
“We’ve got to get more production out of the B back,” Johnson said. “We’ve got to get more production out of all those (skilled guys) – when you do break though it can’t be for five yards. Eventually somebody’s got to make somebody miss, break a tackle and go for a big play.”
When asked if he thought Skov had played with better vision Saturday, Johnson said: “I don’t know. I’ll have to check (video) and see.”
And then he said, almost with a shrug, “His longest run was 11 yards.”
