Wow. It’s never pretty watching somebody give up on his idol. Check out what Mark Bradley had to say about the game the genius called in last night’s less than scintillating loss to Virginia Tech:
This failure went higher than the starting quarterback. This wretched performance falls on Johnson. He designed this system. He recruited these players. He didn’t have them primed for this prime-time tilt, and near the end he nearly blew the game by himself.
Eight-plus minutes left, the Jackets down 17-10, fourth-and-2 at their 33: This is the place in a Tech game when we wits in the press box nod to one another and say, “Paul probably wants to go for this.” Only Johnson did more than want. HE WENT FOR IT. Knowing full well that failure would put Virginia Tech in position to kick the field goal that would ice the game, HE WENT FOR IT.
That’s a long way down from this. Hope Bradley can survive the pressure drop.
Get The Picture 
When Fish Fry has lost Mark Bradley, you can assume he is close to losing the Tech faithful.
First! 🙂
LikeLike
“Paul Johnson is doing a great job. The fans need to be patient and Tech should stay the course.” – Mark Richt
LikeLike
Agree, 50 more years of CPJ as much a possible. LOL I like to see GT lose to UGA until I close my eyes and sleep away.
LikeLike
GT would be wise to keep him for at least ten or twenty more years.
LikeLike
Who is more of GENIUS Bradley or CPJ?
LikeLike
Sting Talk is an absolute joy to behold this morning.
LikeLike
I took a quick look over there this morning. It’s fun to watch their meltdown.
LikeLike
They should have plenty of practice
LikeLike
Their recruits must be going to Stanford and Vandy.
LikeLike
+1 – Tech needs to realize their service academy offense can’t compete week in and week out against superior athletes prepared to play assignment football. Stanford has shown how to do it. They play hard-nosed, disciplined football on both sides on the line of scrimmage and do it at a disadvantage to the big boys in the Pac-12 (Nike U and the Darling of the WWL).
LikeLike
Mark Richt has lost control of Mark Bradley.
LikeLike
I am still reeling from Bradley’s line in that 2010 piece: “Urban Meyer, my role model in all things…”
LikeLike
I noticed that, too. Gave me a seizure.
LikeLike
I have an expose in my head about the sports media that’s been brewing for about a year now. It touches on several things, but there’s one of which is clearly seen in this article.
One of my favorite things about the media is that when they’re opinions are proven wrong, it’s not their fault for not being smart enough or good enough at the job to form the correct opinion. It’s always the coaches (or teams) fault for (insert reason….errr, excuse here).
If the media were judged the way Bradley judges the likes of Richt, and now Johnson, it would mean he’s simply not good at his job. Paul Johnson is Paul Johnson is Paul Johnson. It just too Mark Bradley this long to see it.
LikeLike
They’ve already turned on Vad Lee. (Not that a UGA fan can has any moral high ground with the way we treat Murray). He’s the most talented QB Paul Johnson has had because he can throw the ball, but don’t let that get in the way of a good QB-bashing.
To paraphrase James Carville… “It’s the offense, stupid.” Sure, you can run up the score on Elon, but defenses with a pulse have shown the ability to stop your vaunted running game, forcing you to pass. Welp, your offensive line doesn’t know how to pass block, so that doesn’t go so well. That’s why Paul Johnson is 8-20 when trailing at halftime – 28.6%. (For comparison, Mark Richt is 18-25 when trailing at the half – 41.9%).
They have the personnel to effectively run the spread option – an offense that would be much more comfortable for Vad Lee. They could really boost their recruiting, because players can see a path to the NFL in the spread. The only problem is the offensive line can’t do anything but cut block. So, the foundation of the offense is preventing it from even taking advantage of what it has. They need someone who can run the triple option, but QB’s who can run the triple option and also throw the ball effectively are pretty rare. And such talented QB’s opting to go to Tech instead of a place that will pass block is an even rarer occurrence.
Tech’s coach is not a genius. He’s a stubborn asshole who has backed himself into a corner. He can’t change the offense, because his offensive line can’t do anything else. He also has proven that better defenses can stop him, and he doesn’t have an answer for them. To that, I say, “Long live Paul Johnson. May he get a lifetime extension and live forever.”
LikeLike
Could Johnson even make the switch to the spread if he had the players? He may be of a mindset that he can’t learn anything new; and if he can’t learn it himself, how could he possibly coach it? It takes some work and knowledge to do this stuff…and some flexability.
The most amazing thing I see in all of this is the relative (to what would be happening if the situation was at UGA, Bama, UF, Clemson, etc.) level of resignment to the status quo among the GT fans. They’re bitching about it, but in a half-hearted and nicely (mostly) spirited way. The old saying “put a frog in a pot of cold water and bring it to a boil slowly and it won’t jump out” describes what has happened to GT’s football faithfull.
LikeLike
He also is dead-set against changing the offense. i saw in the write-up that he said “we won’t win throwing it 24 times a game.” And here there were those supporters that said “but he passed the ball at Hawaii.” Well, turns out Fish Fry hates the pass. Even though Lee’s probably the best passer the NATS have had since Freidgen was calling plays for them, Johnson wants his option.
Which bodes well for their opponents if further restrictions to cut blocking are passed.
LikeLike
Last night’s game was 1970’s era college football revisited.
LikeLike
I’ll take that back. Virginia Tech played 1970′s era college football.
Georgia Tech celebrated 100 years of Grant Field football by running a 1913 offense. The home fans and street people in free T-shirts were not amused.
LikeLike
“…and street people in free T-shirts…”
LOL!
LikeLike
That article from 2010 is such a joy to read. Makes me reminisce of a young Bradley with his curly hair and mustache right off the bus from Kentucky. It’s too bad he didn’t learn from Bisher…the goal in sports writing isn’t to be right or wrong…it should be to bring the reader some sort of nuance…whether its the joy of being at the event, some unknown detail of the preparation, the agony from inside the locker room…alas, Schultz and Bradley have settled into a ‘I’m smarter than you’ persona and have made ‘I’m going to tell you how smart I am b/c that gets hits’ shtick.
“Urban Meyer, my role model in all things”- Mark Bradley, 2010
LikeLike
That quote blew me away. I couldn’t stand Bisher either though honestly, he was a bitter ass old Tech homer to the very end.
LikeLike
There’s a difference between not liking a person’s talented writing and not liking a person’s writing because it lacks talent.
I have two Bradley columns that I point to that shows the progression…one was in the early/mid 90s that was headlined “Braves Success has Jaded Us”…it lamented the lack of passion shown towards what was turning into a run of division titles by Atlanta fans because they were not showing up in August and September to the ball park. It was thoughtful and was a great criticism of the reader/fan in the north Atlanta suburbs…
To show how far he and the AJC have come, A few years ago he wrote a column entitled “Can’t blame City’s Fair Weather Fans”…uhhh…what?
Between he and Schultz, I’m not sure they’ve written anything that would even be mildly challenging to the typical north Atlanta reader (aka, the money) in years. The whole editorial of the paper has gone that way…they look to provoke by just trolling for comments, not by actually articulating writing worth reading.
LikeLike
I love when columnists step in it like that, haha.
Non-Dawg, but check out the Bill Plaschke column from the L.A. Times, written in October of 2001.
He gushed that Los Angeles had become a “Bruin Football Town!”
Two months later, new USC Coach Pete Carroll’s Trojans would blast the Bruins 27-0. The Trojans would dominate the series, if not the college football landscape, for the next, oh, six years.
To his credit, Plaschke, a far more talented writer than Bradley, humorously admitted his error over and over again.
http://articles.latimes.com/2001/oct/25/sports/sp-61436
LikeLike
Loved Furman, what a great journalist. Wretched, thats what Tech is, just wretched. That was a disaster. I was going to homecoming at Tech. Think I will pass and just do the float thing with the SAE’S at the house.
LikeLike
Bisher was a great writer but he was also an insufferable ass. I couldn’t stand the guy, but he did write some great articles when his personality did not get in the way.
LikeLike
The Journal-Constitution days of Bisher, Outlar and Grizzard were glorious, IMO. The always entertaining Lewis G. was something to behold. He left us too soon…
LikeLike
The times I around him, he was a perfect Gentleman. Maybe he was on his best behavior around the opposite sex.
LikeLike
He was a good writer, but “great journalists” don’t cause their paper to lose a libel lawsuit. I’m referencing the Saturday Evening Post Bryant/Butts controversy. Bisher let his dislike of UGA and Bama lead him to libel.
LikeLike
Yeesh…the Post wasn’t his paper and he didn’t write the story in the libel lawsuit, but whatever.
That whole affair, starting with the 61 Tech-Bama game, had so much more to do with Atlanta and Georgia taking progressive leaps that lead to B’ham and the State of Alabama’s eventual second status…it’s funny when you separate the editorials from the court record you see a really sloppy article that most folks around the Post, including Bisher, tried to get them to stop before they published it.
LikeLike
Best quote in the article:
“We’re not very good with the option,” Johnson said. “In fact, we’re terrible.”
Delicious!
LikeLike
Makes me wonder about Bohannan over at Kennesaw State. Is he gonna stick with the same approach of having OL’s dive at the opponent’s knees and run the same offense? Guess I wouldn’t mind the Thursday night games since it’d be close to home. Wonder if they serve beer. Ya think he’d hire CPJ as an assistant?
LikeLike
Thoroughly enjoyed the game…just glad we are not among the Thursday Niters…who gives a fat rat’s ass what Mark Bradley writes, or the subject of his boring bullshit?
LikeLike
I agree that Johnson is an incredibly arrogant coach. The 4th down mentioned was a perfect example. Even if he decides to go for it (which was a terrible decision given the situation), the play call itself was horrendous. VT had been stuffing GT up the middle all night but Vlad had had some success running around the end. But Johnson called for another dive up the middle b/c he believes that his system is unstoppable – ridiculous.
LikeLike
That article is a testament to how epically stupid the ajc is. Bradley was bragging on Tech for losing because the loss was “cleverly wrought.”
LikeLike
yeah, this was hard to watch.
how many times does johnson need to call a dive or run up the middle with no success before he tries something else?
VT has a good-to-very-good defense but 129 yards rushing and 7 for 24 passing won’t get it done against anyone.
http://espn.go.com/ncf/boxscore?id=332690059
and let’s not talk about the 4th down play calling.
LikeLike
The problem at GT is the offense CPJ runs, he can’t recruit with that offense, he can only recruit the 2 and 3 star athletes, no 4 or 5 star recruits are coming to Tech with that offense, it does not prepare them for the pros and they know it, CPJ and his offense are doomed! It could not happen to a better school!
LikeLike