Out of the mouths of recruits…

The denizens at The Hive have their panties in a bit of a wad over this comment from Mitchell County wide receiver Justin Scott-Wesley, who is being recruited by Georgia and Georgia Tech (and currently lists Georgia as his number one choice):

… What about Georgia Tech? Scott-Wesley committed to Stanford last fall, but it was a February offer from Georgia Tech that caused him to de-commit and open up recruiting again. Scott-Wesley is an Honor Student with a 3.5 GPA.

“They didn’t make my top five,” he said. “The offense really killed it for them. Georgia Tech uses a Wing-T offense, and I am a wide receiver, so it really doesn’t match well with me.”

Scott-Wesley said that Georgia Tech’s coaches are trying to change his mind, saying that they will find creative ways to get him the football. “They said they would use me at A-Back, and also at wide receiver. They would get me involved in both the passing and running game … but I don’t know about all of that.”

Well, of all the nerve.  It’s hard to believe that a kid who noticed that Georgia threw the ball twice as much as Tech did last season might be skeptical about how he would be deployed during his college career.

But… Demaryious Thomas!  He’s gonna be a first round NFL pick!  He’s better than A.J. Green!

That’s interesting, now that you mention it.

… I’m watching the Georgia Tech offense. The Yellow Jackets run the flexbone, an option offense made famous by Paul Johnson and by the service academies he coached. Georgia Tech is the only major-conference school to run the scheme, which is so odd that it bears no resemblance to any other major college offense, let alone an NFL system.

In the flexbone, almost every pass is either a tunnel screen or a play-action pass, usually off a rollout. Thomas’ long receptions usually began with a play fake (often to Dwyer), with one or another wing backs drifting toward the sideline for an option pitch. All of this run action sucks up the secondary, sending safeties and corners toward the quarterback, Dwyer, and the pitch men. Thomas usually starts his route by pretending to block a corner or safety, then runs a fly pattern. If the quarterback rolls to his side, Thomas twists into a corner route. The cornerback, worried about the option first, doesn’t have a chance.

It’s exciting, but the scheme does much more work than Thomas does.

That’s not meant as a criticism of Johnson’s offense.  It is what it is.  The plus is that there’s going to be an opportunity for certain kids to excel in it that wouldn’t stand a chance in a more conventional offense.  Josh(ua) Nesbitt, for example.

The flip side is that there aren’t going to be a ton of opportunities for the wide receivers.  Tech’s bunch caught less than sixty passes combined last season.  For some perspective, there were 65 individual players on the D-1 level in 2009 that had at least sixty receptions.  Like it or not, Jacket fans, the recruiting market is going to reflect that reality.