Georgia Tech’s offense scored one touchdown Saturday afternoon at Bobby Dodd Stadium. It didn’t come until the fourth quarter.
In a game where the Yellow Jackets' offense needed to be effective to take the pressure off Tech’s defense against No. 4 Notre Dame, the Jackets struggled to move the ball for much of the game, culminating in a 31-13 loss.
It took the Jackets until late in the third quarter to get inside Notre Dame’s 30-yard line. Tech gained only six yards of offense after the first quarter, and it finished with 238 yards, 172 of which came in the second half.
“First of all, you’ve gotta give credit to Notre Dame,” coach Geoff Collins said. “That is one of the top defenses in college football. We kept trying to move things around to get some things started. We found our rhythm in the second half. Really proud of the way they continued to battle (and) offensive staff continuing to communicate.”
Until the fourth quarter, defensive back Zamari Walton’s 93-yard fumble return touchdown in the second quarter — the longest fumble return in Tech’s history — was the lone scoring play for Tech. Running back Jordan Mason’s fourth-quarter touchdown barely made a dent in the Fighting Irish’s lead.
“We’ve just got to finish our drives,” quarterback Jeff Sims said. “We do a good job driving the ball down the field, but we’ve just got to execute when we get in the red zone. We’ve just got to stay locked in and finish the drive off.”
Notre Dame’s defense is one of the best in the nation, and it didn’t help that Tech possessed the ball for only 23 minutes. While the Jackets only went three-and-out once, they also only averaged four yards per play. Sims missed multiple open receivers early in the game on what could’ve been momentum-changing plays.
In the third quarter, Sims’ longest pass of the day, a 39-yard completion to Camp, got the Jackets to Notre Dame’s 22-yard line. Tech immediately followed that up with a false start. On the play after that, Sims was sacked and fumbled the ball.
“We were rolling, right?” Collins said. “We were having some things clicking. ... Those kind of things, you’ve gotta capitalize on when you can.”
“Once you have a turnover like that, it can demoralize you as an offense or as a team as a whole, but I think we did a good job of just trying to play the next play,” Camp added.
Though Notre Dame scored only a few plays later, it did appear that the drive to the 22 brought some momentum to Tech’s offense. Later in the third quarter, the Jackets put together their second-longest drive of the day, which ended with a missed field-goal attempt. And in the fourth quarter, Tech’s lone scoring drive was efficient — it took the Jackets only 2:42 to go 69 yards and score.
With an off-week next week before facing Pittsburgh on Nov. 14, Tech has some time to focus on increasing the offense’s efficiency. Collins, Sims and Camp all reiterated that they think the Jackets have improved each week, and with a less-daunting schedule down the stretch, Tech has a chance to demonstrate that improvement in the win column.
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