A year ago, there was pressure, and not an insignificant amount.
“It felt like somebody had just gotten their foot on you, I guess,” Georgia Tech linebacker Quayshawn Nealy said.
The Yellow Jackets had lost seven consecutive bowl games. With a Sun Bowl date against USC next, the prospect of eight losses in a row hung over the team. But in gusting winds on a west Texas afternoon, Tech toppled USC and ended its postseason drought. Memorably, offensive lineman Will Jackson said it felt like the Jackets had just won the national championship.
“I think it was more relief of breaking the streak than just winning the game,” he said Friday.
Tech has prepared for Monday’s Music City Bowl against Ole Miss with relative lightness, but similar purpose.
“It feels different, but at the same time, we’re trying to keep something going, versus all those losses that we just came from,” Nealy said. “We’re trying to keep going in a brighter direction, up instead of down.”
As losing seven bowl games in a row caused its own frustration, pressure and derision, winning back-to-back bowl games would deliver a pile of benefits. An opportunity to gain stands before the Jackets at LP Field.
While the Jackets practically roll their eyes at SEC hype — said Jackson of the Rebels, “they’re from the SEC, so apparently that’s like playing an NFL team” — a win over an SEC opponent would help Tech and, by extension, the ACC erode the conference’s little-brother stigma. It is not a small matter in recruiting.
“We hear a lot about the SEC,” coach Paul Johnson said. “We’re right in the middle of it in Atlanta, Georgia. So representing the ACC is a big deal to us.”
And, as easy it was to affix the “perennial bowl game loser” label on Tech’s back like a “kick me” sign, Tech could begin to profit from postseason success. (Granted, winning two bowl games in a row is probably not enough for Johnson to add “bowl game wizard” to his business cards, but the Jackets can’t win three or four consecutive bowls without first winning back to back.)
The Jackets could further dispel the notion that Johnson’s spread-option offense struggles when opponents have extra time to prepare for it. A big offensive output Monday would be particularly meaningful, considering that Ole Miss’ defensive coordinator, Dave Wommack, coached with Johnson in 2008 and 2009.
“I think it’d be a testament to what (Johnson) has done and how he’s been able to get us dialed in and focused and say, ‘Hey, it’s not the fact that teams have so much time to prepare for the offense, it’s about us going out and executing on game day,’” Jackson said.
Somewhere, an impressionable high school football player will watch the Jackets for the first time, ready to be intrigued by a team with a capacity for big offensive plays, a developing quarterback and an aggressive defense. It will be up to Tech to provide that impression.
With the exception of last year’s Sun Bowl win, Tech has dropped the ball when given the opportunity to play in a time slot with little opposition, such as this year’s two Thursday night losses on ESPN to Virginia Tech and Clemson and last year’s Labor Day loss to Virginia Tech.
In an interview with the AJC, ESPN analyst Brock Huard said Saturday that Johnson’s gets offense “gets pigeon-holed as this old-school triple option. That’s just not the case.” He expounded on the various formations Tech uses and said he expected Ole Miss’ defense at times to be challenged just to line up properly. Huard, who will call Monday’s game, will be hard-pressed to share that analysis with hundreds of thousands of viewers if the Jackets’ offense sputters with the turnovers and penalties that plagued it in the regular season.
The greatest return on a bowl win, though, might be internal. Players have credited last year’s bowl win for beginning the offseason with an entirely different tone and mood than had been the case in previous years.
“It made guys hungry, it made guys come to work, it made people actually want to go and get a second workout,” B-back David Sims said. “I think it does wonders for the team.”
At a pregame news conference Saturday, Johnson asserted that the bowl would define neither Tech nor Ole Miss. The Music City Bowl, he said, is a game between two teams that had pretty good seasons.
“But, yeah, it would be significant for us to win the game,” he said.
It might even do wonders.
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