In the five seasons since Paul Johnson arrived from Navy, nobody has succeeded in coaching Georgia Tech’s defense half as well as Johnson has overseen its offense. Ted Roof is the third man to try — the fourth if you count Charles Kelly, last season’s interim replacement for the fired Al Groh — and already he has something his predecessors didn’t. He has a framed photo.
“A linebacker walks into the linebackers’ room to meet, and his coach’s picture is on the wall,” Johnson said, speaking at Tech’s media session Saturday. “That helps with credibility.”
Roof was a great Tech linebacker on the great Black Watch defense of 1985. That mightn’t mean much to the 2013 Yellow Jackets, none of whom was born when Roof’s teammate Jim Anderson recovered the fumble on that foggy night to seal an epic victory over Georgia, but it can’t hurt.
And this part will surely help: At 49, Roof remains a player’s coach. When he was hired from Penn State last winter, he didn’t return to the Flats doing the Charlie Weis thing and insisting the Jackets would have “a decided schematic advantage” over opponents. Roof’s approach is so basic it can, according to linebacker Quayshawn Nealy, be boiled down to three letters — NPH.
Said Nealy: “Nobody plays harder. They can’t beat us if nobody plays harder. He’s definitely instilling that to all the players.”
Said Roof: “I want us to have somewhere to call home during the ebbs and flows and when the game is going bad. I want there to be somewhere we can go that has no relation to talent and athletic ability. I want to have a foundation.”
That foundation is effort. If that sounds simplistic … well, simple is a welcome word for Tech. The issue with Groh, as Johnson said when he dismissed him last season and as Nealy seconded Saturday, wasn’t that the coordinator didn’t know his X’s and O’s; it was that he knew too many of them.
Nealy again: “Coach Roof is a better coach for us because he simplified things. He doesn’t give us too much at one time. Coach Groh gave us so much … we were thinking rather than playing. Now we’re just seeing and doing.”
Roof has changed Tech from a 3-4 base to a 4-3, but he concedes there will be times his Jackets deploy only three down linemen. He’s not, it must be said, hung up on design. “The job is to do the best we can with what we have to help win a football game,” he said. “Last year at Penn State we blitzed more than at any time in my career. You do what you have to do.”
If there’s a knock on Roof, it’s that his career path hasn’t been strewn with gaudy numbers. Over his past 10 seasons as a coordinator, only twice — with Tech in 2001 and with Penn State last year — have his teams ranked in the top 50 nationally in total defense. That said, Roof’s defenses outperformed their offensive counterparts, at least statistically, six of those 10 seasons.
The most glaring offensive/defensive split came with Tech in 1999, the first of Roof’s three seasons as coordinator under George O’Leary. The Jackets’ offense, fueled by Joe Hamilton, ranked No. 1 nationally; their defense, fueled by nobody, ranked 100th. Twice that season Tech lost games in which it scored 35 or more points; the same would happen twice more in 2001.
Roof was the defensive coordinator on Auburn’s undefeated 2010 team, an aggregation renowned for Cam Newton’s improvisations off Gus Malzahn’s schemes. Those Tigers ranked seventh in total offense, 60th in total defense. Still, they wouldn’t have been champs had Roof’s D not held Oregon to 19 points — 28 below its average — in the BCS title game.
Said Roof: “When you win, there’s enough credit for everyone. When you lose, it doesn’t matter.”
Roof doesn’t wear his championship ring often — “I do in recruiting some” — and doesn’t consider himself a ranter. He yells, he said, “when I need to.” He’s essentially the same down-to-earth guy from Central Gwinnett, albeit with a different shade of hair, as in his Black Watch days.
“All I know,” Roof said, “is that I’m going to work hard and be myself.”
Roof has been many places as a coach — two tours apiece at Tech and Duke, with stops at places as diverse as Alabama and UMass and Western Carolina and Minnesota interspersed — but Penn State in 2012 was a season he’ll remember forever. Set up to fail in the wake of NCAA sanctions after Jerry Sandusky was convicted, the depleted Nittany Lions finished a rousing 8-4.
“That’s why I got into coaching,” Roof said. “Those (players) wanted to be there. They liked each other. It was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had. It was simple and pure. It was a blessing.”
There’s that word again — “simple.” Ted Roof didn’t come back to Tech with the intention of dazzling anyone with footwork. He’s here to get his defenders to play hard and well. He’s here to help his alma mater win. It might not work, but this part we know: NWTH.
Nobody will try harder.
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