Saturday night, Georgia Tech arrived in Atlanta around midnight after losing to N.C. State in Raleigh. The Yellow Jackets typically have a recovery run on the Sunday after a game, and this week was no exception.
But when Monday morning rolled around, the impact of the short week was in full effect. Monday is normally a day off before getting back into game preparation on Tuesday. This week, with Pittsburgh coming to town on Thursday night, game plan installation meetings started bright and early at 7 a.m. Monday before practice.
While Tech coach Geoff Collins spoke to the media Monday morning, the players were finishing an extra recovery and stretching session, added to the schedule to help them recover quicker. From the time meetings started Monday to kickoff Thursday, the Yellow Jackets have 80 hours to get ready for the Panthers — and it’s finals week.
“We don’t make excuses around here,” Collins said. “We just play the situation we’re under at the given moment. That’s what we’re in right now. Obviously, in a normal schedule, we would not be having all of these things combined, but that’s what it is right now. ... It’s what we’ve got to go through and still get ready to play at a high level against a really good team Thursday night.”
From a physical standpoint, the short week is challenging, hence the extra recovery. Two players didn’t participate in the normal Sunday recovery run because Collins and Ryan Horton, the director of applied sports science, determined their physical load over the previous two weeks was too much and they needed a break.
Collins has been lightening the physical load in practice over the last few weeks, so this week will be no different. Because Tech has been working for so long at this point, there’s less of a need for intense, physical practices, which helps ensure the players are fresh for the game while also helping prevent further injuries late in the year.
“The biggest thing is we’ve been going at this since July 15,” Collins said. “We’ve had basically two preseason camps where we’ve gotten physical. We’ve played some tough, hard-nosed football. There are times for that and we have a very good base of doing all of those things.”
In addition to the physical challenges of playing on limited rest, defensive coordinator Andrew Thacker emphasized the mental challenges of learning a game plan in a compressed time frame. The Yellow Jackets are used to learning game plans in specific pieces on each day of the week — one day for third down situations, one day for red zone work, and so on — and they’ll now need to combine multiple days this week to get everything installed.
Luckily for the Tech coaches and players, there were three days into installing the plan when the game against Pitt was postponed last month. While the Panthers have played twice since then and there are always new wrinkles to prepare for, the basics of what they do remains the same, so the Yellow Jackets already have a foundational knowledge of what’s going on.
“We had to go back and see what are they doing differently, what are they doing the same, but over the course of time, they’ve had the same offensive coordinator, Mark Whipple, for a while that does a great job,” Thacker said. “He’s got a staple, he’s got a feel for what he does. He’s always gonna have nuances, but it was very helpful for us to go back to accelerate the process.”
In Monday meeting, Thacker was able to show his players video of them working on that same portion of the game plan in practice from the last time they were preparing for the Panthers. With a short week to prepare, the ability to lean on the knowledge from November is crucial.
“We were able to have visual recall (and) kinesthetic recall to really accelerate the process,” Thacker said. “Our guys are smart. They’ll do a great job (and) accelerate their process this week, but it is very helpful that we made it all the way to a Thursday planning on the previous game plan.”
When the Yellow Jackets hit the field at Bobby Dodd Stadium on Thursday evening, it will be their second game in six days and third game in 13 days. There are undeniable physical and mental challenges that come with playing so frequently, but Collins and his staff know they have to be ready regardless.
“At the end of the day, there’s no excuses about it,” Thacker said. “We’re gonna get there on Thursday night and I promise you that Pittsburgh will not feel sorry for us and take any pity on us. We’ve gotta be ready to play.”
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