Most football coaches have a chip on their shoulder. Some just disguise it better than others. What makes Paul Johnson unique is not that he has a chip, albeit one resembling Kilimanjaro, but that he can be so entertaining in his return fire.
So with Georgia Tech set to really begin semi-serious play this week at Duke, with no offense against Elon, and I'm actually lying about that, I thought I would toss one into Johnson's wheel house. See, Johnson kind of shook things up when he was hired by Tech. He won in Athens in his first season, and when he followed that by saying beating Georgia shouldn't be considered that big of a deal some were ready to rename Bobby Dodd Stadium his way. He went 20-7 in his first two seasons, stunned then-No. 4 Virginia Tech that led fans to tear down a goal post, and won an ACC championship.
Johnson raised the bar on a campus where for a while we wondered if a bar existed. But in the three seasons since, the Yellow Jackets have finished 6-7, 8-5 and 7-7, and it seems fair to wonder if those first two years, and particularly going 11-3 in 2009, were aberrations.
What should the expectations at Tech be?
“My expectations are to try to win every week,” Johnson said. “I’m a competitor. That’s just the way I operate. What Georgia Tech’s expectations are, they’re Georgia Tech’s expectations. They can’t be higher than mine. If you want to look at what’s realistic, form your own opinion, I guess. There’s records that have been there for 40 or 50 years. Go back and look.”
Naw. This is more fun.
“There aren’t very many teams in the country who can win 11 games every year. You can count them on one hand,” Johnson said. “We’ve either won or tied for the division championship three of the five seasons. I can take numbers and spin them the way you guys spin them.”
And we’re off …
“Let’s see. Let me give you a couple: If we beat Duke we’ll be 7-3 in our last 10 games, and the three losses are to Georgia, Clemson and Florida State. There’s one. You probably won’t see that in the paper.”
Paper? Now he’s just sweet-talking me.
(Slight correction: The losses in that span were to Georgia, Florida State and BYU. Hate it when coaches think they can be sportswriters.)
"People say in the last 18 or 19 games … all right, it's ironic to me you break off right where we were 6-0. You start from there. So you can do with numbers what you want."
Actually, I really wasn’t going to point out that the Jackets are 10-12 since a 6-0 start in 2012. Like Johnson, I hate people, too.
“The fans want to win every week. I got it. And if they don’t win once a week, they’re not going to be happy. It doesn’t matter if you’re coaching at Southern Cal or Georgia Tech or Florida or Miami or Texas or anywhere else. They all think that they’re entitled to win once a week. I think every coach at those schools would tell you that they want to win once a week, too. A long time ago, an old coach told me if you want to listen to the fans, you’ll be sitting with them before long.”
This is so much more fun than a Mark Richt news conference.
Johnson is seldom lost for material. The good news at Tech is this season’s team may not provide any ammunition to those nattering nabobs looking to spin numbers.
The Jackets will be good this season, and that’s not based on the 70-0 win over Elon, because, well, duh. Three more accepted signs: 1) the quarterback, Vad Lee, is more talented than what Johnson has had to work with; 2) the starting 22 players include nine seniors and 14 upperclassmen; 3) the defense should be improved. (Johnson: “It won’t be hard to be better.”)
Ted Roof is the new defensive coordinator. He’s going against Duke, where he spent six seasons (four as head coach). But when a guy is on his 11th job he’s bound to run into former employers.
Roof was an all-ACC linebacker with the Jackets under Bill Curry. He coached at Tech under George O’Leary. He remembers when Tech’s defense wasn’t a cartoon.
“I like the way he coaches. He’s more like me,” Johnson said recently.
Amplification: “It’s more in line with what we’re doing offensively. We’re not trying to rocket-science anybody. We’re trying to be sound and play fast.”
Roof did a remarkable job last season at Penn State last season. The Nittany Lions ranked No. 2 in total defense in the Big Ten and No. 1 in sacks and red-zone defense. He obviously could’ve stayed, but he preferred to come back to Atlanta for personal and family reasons.
“Everybody has a different level of ability, a different level of talent,” Roof said when asked about expectations. “I want our guys to go out and play free and uninhibited. If you’re on your heels, it’s not going to be good. I want them to play free and hard and enjoy it.”
If Roof succeeds, Tech will be players in the ACC. We’ll find out soon. The Jackets’ next four games are against conference opponents (at Duke, North Carolina, Virginia Tech, at Miami).
If this season evolves into something special, praise again will be heaped on Tech and Johnson, and nobody on either side will feel compelled to spin.
About the Author
