Even in the lightness and good feeling after Georgia Tech beat Miami last Saturday night, it was hard to imagine that Georgia Tech could extend its winning streak all the way through the season.
Saturday afternoon, the No. 22 Yellow Jackets put any of those doubts to rest, offering up probably their poorest performance of the year in a 31-25 loss to Duke at Bobby Dodd Stadium.
The excitement and hope that attended Georgia Tech’s run to 5-0 and its first top-25 ranking since Nov. 2011 was sedated by Duke’s running game (250 yards), a heap of penalties and turnovers and a general inability to match the offensive precision and defensive opportunism displayed in the first five games. A Tech partisan might wag a finger at a few officiating calls, also.
“We’ve got to play clean games,” coach Paul Johnson said. “That’s the way we’ve got to play. We can’t roll our helmets out there and beat anybody. It’s not going to happen.”
Playing their first game as a ranked team since Nov. 2011, the Jackets (5-1 overall, 2-1 ACC) lost their first game of the season and had their 10-game winning streak against Duke. It was also the Blue Devils’ first win at Bobby Dodd since 1994, a streak of nine games. In so doing, the Jackets surrendered control of the ACC Coastal Division to Virginia (2-0 in the ACC) and the Blue Devils.
After becoming the first Tech teams to beat Virginia Tech since 2009 and Miami since 2008 in back-to-back games, the Jackets experienced the other side of the coin.
“I just give credit where it’s due,” linebacker Quayshawn Nealy said. “They fought hard and they went out there and out-willed us (Saturday).”
In the first half, Tech extended one Duke drive by lining up offsides on a punt. The Jackets extended another with a pass interference penalty on cornerback Chris Milton on a third-and-8, one that drew boos from Tech fans expressing their uncertainty with the call. Both resulted in touchdowns and a 14-12 halftime lead. On the first drive, the Blue Devils also converted a second-and-22 with a 29-yard pass that ended with a debatable targeting penalty on safety Corey Griffin, which resulted in his disqualification from the game. Duke hit on a third-and-26 on the second touchdown drive of the half.
In between those drives was a Tech possession in which the Jackets’ attempt to convert a fourth-and-3 from the Duke 46-yard line was thwarted by a false start by left guard Trey Braun.
“As a defense, you’ve kind of just got to flush it and go, ‘We’ve got a first-and-10, we’ve got to stop them,’” defensive tackle Adam Gotsis said. “We really couldn’t (Saturday). We really couldn’t stop them really (on) anything.”
In the second half, the offense turned the ball over on three of its first four possessions and missed a field goal from 52 yards on the fourth. The Jackets had remained undefeated through the first five games in no small part due to their ball security. Tech had turned the ball over just four times through the first five games, a total of 335 plays, giving the Jackets enough turns with the ball to pull out two games on their final possession and come back to win in all five. By the early second half, they had executed 139 consecutive offensive plays, going back to the Virginia Tech game, without a turnover or even so much as a fumble.
In the second half, trying to rally again, Tech turned it over with B-back Zach Laskey’s first fumble of the season and two interceptions by quarterback Justin Thomas in the span of 18 plays. Also critical – Tech scored 13 points in its first four red-zone trips.
“If we can play clean games and don’t have penalties and don’t have turnovers, we’ve got a chance to win every game we play,” Johnson said. “If we lose the turnover battle 3-0 and make stupid penalties and drop balls and don’t make plays, then we could lose every game we play. It’s just the nature of the beast.”
Johnson took Thomas, hobbling on an ankle rolled in the first half, out of the game after his second interception. Backup Tim Byerly led the Jackets to two touchdowns in the final 5:04, the second touchdown with 1:27 to play that drew Tech to 31-25. For a moment, it appeared Tech’s comeback magic might have been rekindled. But Butker’s onside kick try was recovered by Duke’s Joseph Ajeigbe, and with Tech out of timeouts, the Blue Devils killed the remaining seconds. Duke fans cheered at the game’s end for the first time in Bobby Dodd Stadium since 1994, the lamentable final season of coach Bill Lewis.
Given the opportunity to grab the Coastal by the throat, the Jackets failed to seize.
Said Johnson, “I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t disappointed.”
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