Only the defense can fail the genius.
People always question the challenge of preparing a defense when it practices against your style of offense. I’m not sure it’s really dramatically different than teams with tempo or spread style offenses, but do you see it as something unique you have to deal with when trying to get the defense straightened out?
Johnson: I think that’s just a crock. It’s excuses. Playing against our offense is not a whole lot different than playing against the spread with the zone-reads and all that stuff. You play it the same way. If you look, I think the offense should help the defense. That’s one of the things I was impressed with Nate, when I talked to him about it; he embraces it because it helps play the run, it helps make you tough, and all you have to look — a team like Army, those teams are top five, top 10 in the country in defense. So it hasn’t hurt them. When I was at Georgia Southern, we were perennially in the top 10 in defense. If anything, you play less snaps. We probably played less possessions and less snaps than anybody in the country except Army a year ago. A normal game for us is 10 to 12 possessions. For everybody else, it’s 17 to 18, so you’re essentially playing a quarter less every game.
He’s making it easy on ’em. Sooner or later, he’s bound to find a defensive coordinator who can appreciate his generosity, no?
Get The Picture 
I must disagree with the genius about this. Facing that O in practice may prepare a D for playing HS ball but certainly doesn’t prepare players for a schedule that includes Georgia, Clemson and FSU. But “Shhhh” don’t tell anyone at Tech that.
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Spot on, and then to compare the team to Army (a squad none of the “geniuses” on Tech’s roster could make) as way to seem relevant?
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As HC of Navy, I’m sure he has more experience with Army than most and that makes Army his best reference in terms of what he has faced in the past, but not-so-much when comparing to the future. There is a seed of truth in what he says in comparing styles and if he wants to use that as making him feel warm and fuzzy when practicing, don’t hold back his rain. It will come soon enough for Tech if he trains his D against their chop-blocking O and if he doesn’t, we should have chop blocking set up for one game in our schedule to let Paul know that there is a difference when practicing against his O.
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You can just feel the warnth and good cheer coming through the page. I swear Will Rogers never met Paul the Johnson.
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Sry, meant “warmth”. Typing with a lithp today.
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So Genius compared QB under center triple option to shot gun QB running zone reads and RPOs? Dang he’s even smarter than I thought to see a similarity there.
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#1 since UCF ducked them like scared cowards, shouldn’t tech invent a National Title?
#2 I can think of a game where they came out in the 2nd Half and didn’t to worry about holding on to the lead… #WeRunThisState
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Move GT to game 1, or drop them.
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38-7.
What are you afraid of?
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I would be curious to know what our coaches thought of preparing for the Tech D and if any of the preparation carries over to other game preparation. If not, then you could give some credence to the argument that playing them doesn’t help us much with any other teams on our schedule. Not that I’m for dropping them from the schedule. No sir, not saying that…no need for a scathing retort from the Senator 😉
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Weird prep before the SECCG…..obviously not afraid, I said move the game to first of the season.
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The only problem is if we play them right out of the gate and one of our star players gets hurt by a chop block and is out for the season….
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May he coach at Tech for another decade.
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He steps entirely over the real issue. It’s not the coordinator. It’s not the X’s and O’s. It’s the fact that any legitimate defensive Jimmies and Joes with NFL aspirations don’t want to get their knees chopped out from under them on a daily basis. He’s being willfully obtuse here.
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Paul-the-Johnson uses Army as a defensive juggernaut comparison. Last season, Army finished the regular season 9-3. Their losses came against Ohio State (38-7, sounds familiar), Tulane (21-17) and North Texas (52-49). Their wins came against Fordham, Buffalo, UTEP, Rice, Eastern Michigan (28-27), Air Force, Duke, Temple (31-28) and Navy.
That schedule doesn’t compare favorably to a regular ACC schedule featuring Clemson, Miami, often Florida State, and out-of-conference against UGA. Even the weaker sisters of the ACC are better than Fordham, UTEP, Rice and Eastern Michigan. And to top it off, some of those scores don’t scream defensive efficiency to me.
Tech’s main problem on defense seems to me that their front seven just isn’t very good. They usually have one decent linebacker, but they never seem to have any good D-linemen, and when they meet teams like Clemson, Miami or UGA, they get pushed around.
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Just imagine what they’ll be if Fish Fry leaves GT, and a new Coach wants to runs something from this century…. an undersized OL, and a terrible defensive front 7.
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That might be the reason they never fire him. The powers that be in Midtown could know they will have to be terrible before they can compete again.
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“Will have to be?” How much lower than five wins in a year and the Stay At Home Bowl will they need to fall before hitting the “terrible” threshold?
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Oh the Hubris, the pomposity, the laconic derision, the grandiosity, the lack of personal insight.
He will be fired at Ga. Tech one day and he will abandon the ship standing on the shoulders of others shouting his superiority to all.
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With belly and boobs jiggling for all to see.
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You almost don’t want to write or comment too much about this lest it becomes like looking a gift horse in the mouth. Shhh somebody might catch on.
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Looks like Matta has turned Georgia down … I assume Tom Crean is now on the clock.
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3.2 million to coach basketball at UGA? I don’t know what to say about that.
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3m goes a long way in Athens, GA
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It would be interesting to know why he turned it down. I suspect it wasn’t his salary but ability to win. Was it facilities, pays for the staff, the manager he would have to work with….
Who knows, I was happy with Fox a .500 program without the NCAA sniffing around which is really all I ask out of basketball.
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What is this “Basketball” you speak of?
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To continue to collect on his $8.8M Ohio State buyout, Matta has to show their lawyers he is “looking for work”.
Not sure what qualifies as “looking for work”, but he’s making close to $3M a year doing it.
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This is what I am afraid of….history of the “Georgia Way” comes back to haunt us in the hiring process for the next guy. Unless and until B-M shows a willingness to actually support the program top coaches will stay away. In BB Athens has become a coaching graveyard. I really hate this.
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P.S. Crean ain’t the answer.
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Mayor, just curious, but who do you think would be a great fit since you aren’t a Crean fan (I don’t know enough to have a real opinion)? All I know is this mid-major hiring with our fingers crossed isn’t working.
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DC ain’t the problem, neither are X and O’s
You can use scheme to maximize offense out of smaller players and quicker offensive skill players and bigger slower offensive lineman.
You can’t scheme around talent on defense nearly as well.
As long as PJ can’t recruit elite defensive talent, we shouldn’t lose to them more than a couple of times a decade.
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He’s right about TOP but you can’t make that work out if you don’t have any talent. It would be much harder to play good defense with a Mike Leach offensive approach because at least you’d have to be physical practicing at yech. His problem is more about the players than his system, but those issues are interrelated.
If he could recruit 15 to 20th ranked classes, he’d be tough to beat.
Hard to win D1 games with D2 talent.
Of course, tech is in a pickle. If they go pro system they get better players but still lose. With the system they have they catch some people because of the novelty but they can’t recruit.
Too bad for them.
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Being in the state of Georgia, I’ve got to assume that if they ran a spread option (a much more mainstream and effective approach to maximizing limited talent), they’d almost have to try to avoid not signing any of the in-state blue chippers. Surely with a normal scheme they would be able to get some blue chips to help compete. They’d never be Clemson but they could beat up on Duke, WF, UNC, BC, etc. with enough Georgia talent.
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I’m just not sure that’s true because they’d have to recruit much better at QB. You really have to be a special talent at qb to make those offenses go. If Gus survives on castoffs and not HS recruits, how’s tech going to manage to get there’s?
I really think that acting like a service academy serves them well. I’m not sure they win the ACC or play for it more than once with another system.
It’s just a bad place for a college football program in so many ways.
Bad campus
Low interest
Limited majors
3 good looking girls in the whole place
Being unique probably maximizes their potential. It’ll be interesting to see what follows. CPJ ain’t getting any younger.
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“With the system they have they catch some people because of the novelty” and ultimately the tech fan base revels in catching teams more than sustained excellence. Pitiful
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Some fans are getting annoyed with Johnson but from what I have gathered GT isn’t much of a position to pay the buy out and they would likely give up even more in ticket sales when they are terrible trying to rebuild the program. So it just costs less to defer the problem until later.
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^^This.
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To a fan base of virgins, a one-night stand can be pretty damned sweet.
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Especially on a dark and Stormy night.
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PJ and UGA AD. A lot in common.
Explain how they just hang on.
Case in point. Surely the AD as a “Matta” of facts had to know he was being played.
UGA AD could have something in common with the former UT AD. No problem firing a coach, just does not have what it takes to hire a replacement.
Vince is calling Phil. Vince is waiting in the wings.
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Wait. Vince Dooley you’re talking about?
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When the Trane left the station
It had two lights on behind
Yeah when the Trane left the station
It had two lights on behind
Whoa the blue light was my baby
And the red light was my mind.
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Johnson sounds like an idiot, head in the sand. As for Army’s defensive stats, in addition to their schedule protecting them, how many minutes do they average per game versus the teams who run conventional offenses? I don’t know but have to guess the clock eating offense makes them look better than they are.
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You make a good point Mac. I thought that Tech’s problem last year was really that its offense couldn’t keep the ball like it did in past years.
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