A riveting series resumed Thursday night with a twist: One of the teams involved still had a chance to reach the ACC title game, but it wasn’t the one ranked No. 8 in the BCS standings. Clemson had seen its hopes of a championship of any sort dashed by the egregious loss to Florida State. Yet Georgia Tech, which wasn’t sure it would be bowl-eligible a month ago, was still alive in the Coastal Division.
Key word: “Was.” Mathematically the Yellow Jackets weren’t eliminated by this 55-31 loss, but effectively they were. And this halting season — Tech won its first three, lost the next three, then won the three after that — will require an upset of Georgia on Nov. 30 to keep the Jackets from finishing a tepid 7-5.
Since 2009, the Jackets under Paul Johnson are 27-23. If that’s not awful, neither is it anything special. This season carried the promise of a new quarterback in Vad Lee and a new defensive coordinator in Ted Roof, and no one can say that Lee hasn’t had his moments and Roof hadn’t wrought a massive upgrade. But the defense, which collapsed in the loss at Miami, cratered again here Thursday.
Never had Tech yielded more than 55 points in an ACC game. Not since 1903 had Clemson scored so many against the Jackets. Still, as silly as it might sound, the defensive breakdown didn’t seem a failure of tactics. Clemson just has better players.
After five seasons and 10 games under Johnson, that remains the thorn in the collective Tech paw. The Jackets can beat the heck out of lesser lights, but they’re 0-8 against ranked opposition since Oct. 29, 2011. In their two games against ranked teams this season, they’ve been beaten by an aggregate 100-61.
Tech’s defense, which had climbed to No. 13 nationally in yards against, reverted to its misshapen form of seasons past by yielding three Tajh Boyd touchdown passes in the span of 8:15 in the second quarter. Sammy Watkins got away with a gentle shove of D.J. White on the first, but the third came when Martavis Bryant ran past Louis Young. That 76-yard score made the score 27-7.
But Clemson didn’t get to be Clemson — meaning the team that invariably flatters to deceive — by being the smartest bunch on the block. Charles Perkins’ fumble put the Tigers in Position A to put this away by halftime. Being Clemson, it declined.
On a night when he established an ACC mark for touchdown passes, Boyd also threw the worst-looking interception this or any conference has ever seen. On second-and-8 from the Tech 9, at a time when a field goal would have made the score 34-7, Boyd threw a pass under duress that no quarterback of his gifts should ever attempt. It was intercepted by Tech nose tackle Adam Gotsis — when your pass is caught by a nose tackle, you’ve messed up royally — and the blowout was put on hold.
Tech failed to make a first down and deployed its punting team. Clemson coach Dabo Swinney called timeout to save time . The Tigers then jumped offside, handing Tech a first down and those precious saved seconds. The Jackets nearly scored a touchdown, but Robert Godhigh couldn’t hold Lee’s pass. A field goal at the halftime horn made the score 27-10, which still wasn’t all that close, but was better than the Jackets probably deserved.
Soon it was 27-17, Godhigh taking a pitchout and fleeing 65 yards, and the orange-clad folks in a strangely unfilled Death Valley were wondering if Clemson was in the process of pulling another Clemson. But the reason the Tigers have become a national punch line is that they seldom play to their gifts. Having seen their lead shrink to 10, they played to their gifts.
Bryant, who’s Clemson’s second-best receiver, flashed down the sideline to gather in another deep Boyd throw. Boyd scored from the 1 on the next snap. Corey Crawford, who’s the Tigers’ second-best defensive end, stopped Godhigh on fourth-and-2 at the Tech 44. On first down, Watkins took a flanker screen and turned it into a touchdown. Case closed.
Boyd would leave late in the third quarter with a collarbone injury. Didn’t matter. The Tigers scored twice more behind backup Cole Stoudt. This was another of those games when Johnson’s offense didn’t look awful on paper — Tech did gain 440 yards — but paper was misleading.
Going forward, that’s pretty much the state of this peculiar program. The Jackets don’t have enough to good players to compete at the highest level, and Johnson’s scheming is no longer enough to make modest talent seem anything more than a curiosity.
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