The warning that Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson served to his team before its past two games proved prophetic — Duke and North Carolina had their backs to the walls, and the Yellow Jackets should expect both teams’ best.
Tech absorbed losses two weeks in a row, and now Pittsburgh finds itself awaiting a Yellow Jackets team that may be down to its last chance to stay alive in the ACC Coastal Division race. Where wins in the past two weeks would have advanced the Jackets to 7-0 for the first time since coach Bobby Dodd’s final season in 1966, Tech lost both games with less-than-peak effort and focus.
A loss Saturday at Heinz Field would hand the Jackets a three-game losing streak and a much less appreciable “first time since” — it would be the first time Tech has had three-game losing streaks in three consecutive seasons since coach Bill Lewis’ three-season tenure 1992-94. While the Coastal is a tangled thicket, a third loss to a division opponent would be devastating for the Jackets’ hopes to reach the ACC Championship game.
“Our kids feel like at one point in time this season, we were feeling good, we were where we wanted to be,” defensive line coach Mike Pelton said. “Now, it’s a sense of urgency. I think these kids respond when their backs are pushed up against the wall. Sure enough, here we are.”
As has been the case so often in recent seasons, Tech has weekly found itself in games where the difference between winning and losing has been razor-thin. For the first five games, Tech landed on the more pleasant side of that divide. In the past two, once again, a handful of plays, or even one play, have prevented Tech from achieving victories.
“We pretty much gave them the game,” said quarterback Justin Thomas, whose two interceptions against Duke paved the Blue Devils’ path to their first win over Tech since 2003. “We didn’t do anything to help ourselves. We just didn’t execute. We’ve just go to out there, get back on track and do what we were doing the first five games.”
Defensive shortcomings, particularly against North Carolina, have reversed the Jackets’ momentum. In the past two games, the Blue Devils and Tar Heels had a combined 10 possessions in the red zone. They scored touchdowns on nine and a field goal on the 10th. Before that, opponents had reached the end zone on only five of 12 red-zone opportunities.
“If half of those are field goals, we’re probably sitting here 7-0, but they weren’t,” coach Paul Johnson said. “If and buts were candy and nuts.”
Still, all would not seem to be lost. The website footballoutsiders.com ranks Tech's offense No. 1 in the country. The website's analytics approach measures NFL and NCAA teams by metrics such as success rate (how often a team gains 50 percent of the necessary yardage on first down, 70 percent on second down and 100 percent on third and fourth down) and drive efficiency (a team's success rate at attaining or preventing the points expected based on the drive's start position).
That said, Tech’s defense ranks 98th. It is the second widest offense-defense spread in the country after Toledo (No. 20 offense, No. 122 defense). Saturday’s outcome likely will be influenced by factors less easily quantified — embarrassment and resilience.
Tech’s defense experienced plenty of the former in Chapel Hill, N.C., giving up touchdowns on seven of the Tar Heels’ final nine possessions. Insufficient effort, fatigue, poor tackling, failures in discipline and an inability to defeat blocks were among the causes for the Jackets’ jagged form.
“It doesn’t feel good,” Pelton said about the North Carolina game. “It’s not one of those things that you’re pleased it happened. But if we can learn from it and move forward, it can be a positive thing.”
As for Tech’s gumption reserves, there seems to be plenty. Despite the shellacking taken by the defense, the Jackets came back from a 42-31 fourth-quarter deficit — the sixth game in which Tech has come from behind to take a lead, albeit the first time that it was not able to make it stick — with help from one of the defense’s four stops in the game.
It is a trait that likely will prove valuable as the Jackets find themselves in a different kind of hole.
“I think that our kids, they kind of keep playing,” Johnson said. “They’ve done that in every game. A couple times, it’s been good enough to win games, a couple times, it hasn’t. I think they’re going to play till the end. It’s just kind of the nature of who we are, I think.”
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