At the start of preseason camp, David Sims gave voice to his goal.
“An undefeated season and a bowl win,” the Georgia Tech B-back said in early August. “That’s all I want.”
For Sims and the Yellow Jackets, the season has fallen a bit shy of the mark. Tech will play Georgia on Saturday at Bobby Dodd Stadium with a 7-4 record. Once again, the season-ending matchup with the Bulldogs gives Tech a chance to ease disappointments from the first 11 games. To this point, Sims said he would give the season a C-plus. A win over the Bulldogs, he said, “that’s like getting an extra letter grade in your class. I’ll probably go up to a B then.”
It has not been a season of ‘A’ work. In consecutive games, the Jackets lost to Virginia Tech for the fourth consecutive year and Miami for the fifth year in a row with turnover-filled debacles. That was followed by a fruitless road trip to BYU in which the Jackets committed 10 penalties, a high for Tech during coach Paul Johnson’s tenure. The fourth loss was to Clemson two weeks ago, in which the offense sabotaged Tech’s chances with a wasted first quarter.
Tech will finish no worse than tied for second in the ACC’s Coastal Division — the Jackets were picked to finish fourth in a media preseason poll — but it is reasonably safe to assume that achievement won’t be inscribed on any plaques. It is a strange season on a couple of fronts when the high achievement of the season is a win over Duke, which will be the first Coastal team other than Georgia Tech or Virginia Tech to play in the ACC title game if it beats North Carolina on Saturday.
“I definitely think we could have done better,” said center Jay Finch, who gave the season to date a grade of C. “But overall, I’m happy because I play the game because I love to play.”
This week, Johnson cautioned against the Georgia game being defining, that “you need to get away from this one-game scenario (mindset) that it defines your season,” he said. “It plays a part in it, but one game doesn’t define your season. I don’t care who it is.”
For Finch and his fellow seniors, it indeed won’t define the season or their careers. But it would alter the perspective. It was Finch’s linemate Will Jackson who declared after the Sun Bowl win over USC in December, a win that ended Tech’s seven-game bowl losing streak, that “it feels like we just won the national championship.”
It’s hard to imagine what he might equate with stopping Georgia’s run of four consecutive wins and 11 in the past 12. In September, Jackson described the rivalry as “just pure hate. I’m driving, and I hate seeing a red car. That’s just hate.”
Playing for the ACC title may be out the window, Jackson said, “but beating those guys and closing my senior year, especially my last home game at Bobby Dodd, would be pretty special,” he said.
For Jackson, Finch and Sims, who arrived on campus in the summer of 2009, a loss Saturday would also mean that their entire careers will have passed without a win over Georgia. Defensive end Emmanuel Dieke was an early enrollee with the 2009 class, arriving on campus a little more than a month after the 2008 win.
“So as a freshman, you’re thinking, Oh, that’s how it’s going to be every year, not knowing how much work is put into beating Georgia, winning championships and stuff like that,” he said. “My appreciation for it has grown a lot.”
Players have felt the pain of each loss since 2008. Sims can recite the hurt as easily as the most die-hard Jackets fan.
“(In) 2009, I remember (quarterback Joshua) Nesbitt getting hurt and coming back and us coming back and the dropped pass by (wide receiver Demaryius Thomas) on the sideline,” he said. “In the 2010 game, I remember the missed extra point, I remember fumbling inside the red zone twice. In the 2011 game, I remember the reverse pass that should have went for a touchdown, first play of the game, that could have set the tone. And last year I remember us driving down first drive, fumbling twice, me and (A-back) Robbie (Godhigh).”
They are, Sims confessed, “not a lot of good memories.”
They’ll have 60 minutes to create some better ones.
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