Anyone else?

[MWBATL]

Eli, you could be right about Roof. Dead right.

That said, it looks like since he's gotten here we've recruited better. If there is a lag between improved recruiting and on-field performance, it could be be that we are experiencing that lag right now. Also regarding points per game, one would need to normalize that to whether more points in general are being scored in college football.

I find our lack of improvement on defense this year extremely concerning, and we do appear disorganized on that side of the ball. So it you may be right that Roof is not the guy to improve our defense. I struggle to get a clear read. Studs players have a way of making a coach look like a genius. I don't see the studs right now on D.

Just curious why you say that he has recruited better since ehe got here? This year's recruits might be better, buoyed mostly by the legacies from New Orleans, but otherwise when I looked at ratings it did not seem any different....maybe lower

 

[4shotB]

Since roof has taken over we have an average recruiting ranking of 51.6 and are giving up 20 points per game. His defensive philosophy doesn't work at Tech. Or anywhere for that matter

20 points a game? is this a typo. If not, it feels like that we give up 20 a half.
As for me and the original topic,I am going to schedule something else this Saturday. Something my wife and I have been talking about doing on a fall Saturday for quite awhile now but I have always put watching the GT games as my #1 Saturday priority. Maybe it will change our luck! Will still be rooting for them of course.

 

[RamblinRed]

Against P5 opponents Roof defenses have given up
25.6
29.3
28.9 (so far) points per game

The last 2 are the 2 worst under Johnson so far and the 25.6 is the 3rd best though still 3 ppg worse than the worse performance under Gailey.
So not good, just like pretty much every year.

 

[awbuzz]

Not only No, HELL NO. I support the players and will till I draw my last breath. Until I will suffer through thick and thin.

... ditto the above!

 

[awbuzz]

If someone can show me a legitimate head coaching Option that wants to be here and that we can also afford. I might change my mind, but until then Nope.

So rumors of Nick Saban wanting to be all of the above aren't true? Guess that means it won't happen.[emoji57]

 

[CrackerJacket]

I unconditionally support the players as people and students, but I'm having a hard time watching them play lately. My short game and putting have improved the last three weeks, because I've been walking away from the telecast and gone to the golf course.

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

Just curious why you say that he has recruited better since ehe got here? This year's recruits might be better, buoyed mostly by the legacies from New Orleans, but otherwise when I looked at ratings it did not seem any different....maybe lower

Think about those recruiting rankings for a minute. We know that our offense is built on 3* athletes who fit our system. There is no secret that, with the exception of the occasional 4*, (JeT, Devine), we know we will recruit lower ranked offensive players. Yet during the period through CAG, the recruiting ranking stayed roughly static, which should tell you how poorly CCG recruited, 2007 and Megatron aside. CCG was feast or famine. He had more 2* recruits in a three year span than CPJ has had his entire tenure here. Since CTR, we have actually seen the rankings go up. We haven't gotten any new 4* offensive guys, so that means the defensive guys are rated higher. CTR IS improving recruiting. That is pretty undeniable. Whether he can get those recruits in and on the field in time to save his job remains to be seen. @InsideLB is right, though, it is a function of development of players, especially the DL. Ideally, this year would have seen progress, but if we don't see significant improvement next year, my guess is CTR will be gone and CPJ will have a very warm seat.

 

[Eli]

20 points a game? is this a typo. If not, it feels like that we give up 20 a half.
As for me and the original topic,I am going to schedule something else this Saturday. Something my wife and I have been talking about doing on a fall Saturday for quite awhile now but I have always put watching the GT games as my #1 Saturday priority. Maybe it will change our luck! Will still be rooting for them of course.

Stats are misleading sometimes lol. Our defense gets far less possessions now than under Tenuta

 

[dressedcheeseside]

Every game is a new day. The teams are much closer than most people realize. We could have won every game we've lost except for Clemson. These realities keep me going even though I know we've got a crappy defense.

 

[swampsting]

In 1998, after UMass put up 55 points on a previously unbeaten Georgia Southern team, PJ told the media afterward "I promise you next year we will be better on defense."
And they were. They were vastly better.
To say PJ "doesn't care about defense" just isn't true. How many times has he started a halftime or postgame interview with "we've got to do a better job of getting them off the field on third down."
He has a Tech legend and a good recruiter at DC. Another good friend and one of the better recruiters on staff - McCollum - is on the defensive staff. It's a tough spot to be in if he's contemplating staff changes. PJ is stubborn and he's loyal. He's also a much better guy than the Atlanta media, particularly the talk radio jackwads, paint him to be.
We can't go back to the O'Leary days, not with the APR mandates.
We've lost to one damn good team, lost to a decent team we should have beaten,lost to a ranked team by handing them two easy scores and crapped the bed defensively against a good UNC offense.
We're 5-4, should be 6-3 and likely will be 5-5 because Va Tech is much better than I thought they would be after the coaching change.
But I'll take 7-5 this year. Need to drop the hammer on Virginia and go to Athens and not give away the game. They are beatable - even for us.

 

[Old South Stands]

Think about those recruiting rankings for a minute. We know that our offense is built on 3* athletes who fit our system. There is no secret that, with the exception of the occasional 4*, (JeT, Devine), we know we will recruit lower ranked offensive players. Yet during the period through CAG, the recruiting ranking stayed roughly static, which should tell you how poorly CCG recruited, 2007 and Megatron aside. CCG was feast or famine. He had more 2* recruits in a three year span than CPJ has had his entire tenure here. Since CTR, we have actually seen the rankings go up. We haven't gotten any new 4* offensive guys, so that means the defensive guys are rated higher. CTR IS improving recruiting. That is pretty undeniable. Whether he can get those recruits in and on the field in time to save his job remains to be seen. @InsideLB is right, though, it is a function of development of players, especially the DL. Ideally, this year would have seen progress, but if we don't see significant improvement next year, my guess is CTR will be gone and CPJ will have a very warm seat.

I still think a lot of the problem is the Hill... There's only so much in the way of allocated resources for the GTAA, not to mention lack of moral support from the Hill. Allegedly, this was the principal reason DRad left for Clemson. The environment just wasn't right to generate sustained success. It wouldn't be surprising at all if morale in the GTAA is near what it was at the end of the'70s, a time when people in the administration were even considering scrapping the football program altogether. With all the new stadium infrastructure, I don't see that happening. But they could still put a cap on financial resources, making it difficult if not impossible to hire talented guys like a Venables-type coordinator. I like Ted Roof a lot... He was an impactful player on the field, and he seems to recruit well. Just doesn't seem to have the gift for teaching the game of football. My wife is a school teacher, and I can tell you that teaching well is a very special gift, whether it's teaching the basics of math and reading or teaching how to shadow a receiver and tackle in space. Not everyone has that gift. Would love to see CTR remain in some capacity in the GTAA, maybe as an assistant AD. But not as a defensive coordinator.

You don't hear of this much anymore, but in the '70s and '80s, and even in the '90s, you regularly heard sports commentators talking about certain players being "a student of the game". I know coaches are paid big money to coach and make players better, it's true. But if I were a struggling starter or a guy on the bench and I was continually getting beat in coverage, or getting burned trying to tackle in space, I'd want to study as much as I could to become a better player. Football commentary on TV has gotten so good lately, you can learn a ton just by watching the best teams on TV and studying the best players at your position. A lot of that started with John Madden and the CBS chalkboard, giving rise to the plethora of good analysts out there today. There's no shortage of opportunities to learn the game these days if you want to get better...

 

[midga fan]

Feel the same way now as they did at the end of the Gailey era. Just straight up apathy! I love CPJ's offense but 8 straight years with a sh*t defense has me not caring to watch the games anymore. There is no way VT scores less than 28 this week and there is no way we score more than 24 against Bud Fosters' defense. I think this will be the first game I don't watch in the CPJ era.

No!

 

[00Burdell]

There is definitely something missing. I don't sense much of a spark anymore. Maybe the offense realizes that the defense will just give back with interest whatever the offense does and it's killing morale.

Our program right now reminds me less of the end of Gaileys term and more of the last time Roof coached here. Defense cost us the best shot at a Heisman since Castleberry.

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

Stats are misleading sometimes lol. Our defense gets far less possessions now than under Tenuta

Just checking. We had 11 defensive possessions against UNC last week, 9 in 2015, 11 in 2014, 10 in 2013, 15 in 2012, 13 in 2011, 9 in 2010, 10 in 2009, & 13 in 2008. We had 11 against UNC in 2006, 12 in 2005, 14 in 2004, & 10 in 2003.

From 2003-2006, we averaged 11.75 defensive possessions per game. Since 2008 we have averaged 11.22.

2007 box score from espn only lists first half drives, so I excluded 2007 from the comparison. (6 first half, so 11-12 is likely)

Granted, this is only one team, but I would wager we see similar results across the board. Possessions are probably down slightly, mainly due to our offensive efficiency.

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

There is definitely something missing. I don't sense much of a spark anymore. Maybe the offense realizes that the defense will just give back with interest whatever the offense does and it's killing morale.

Our program right now reminds me less of the end of Gaileys term and more of the last time Roof coached here. Defense cost us the best shot at a Heisman since Castleberry.

Defense didn't cost us that. Voters giving Dayne a lifetime achievement award did.

 

[4shotB]

I like Ted Roof a lot... He was an impactful player on the field, and he seems to recruit well. Just doesn't seem to have the gift for teaching the game of football. My wife is a school teacher, and I can tell you that teaching well is a very special gift, whether it's teaching the basics of math and reading or teaching how to shadow a receiver and tackle in space.

I could not agree more with this post. After doing the engineering thing for awhile I retired. Then I "unretired" after a few years of sitting around and goofing off to teach HS math. Doing math is way, way, way easier than teaching math based on my experience, especially if you are good at math.
Roof was arguably one of the best 2 or 3 LB's I have ever seen on the Flats (as measured by impact)...he could change the complexion of the game as he did vs. Uga one year. He was a dominant player in that game. Also, against UT. The dude just made a difference when he was on the field.(he was like Lil' Joe in that his skill sets didn't translate well to the next level but on the college FB field, he was a bad SOB.) I have often wondered if he hasn't struggled as a coach simply because he was so gifted as a player. There is not a lot of history of great players making great coaches in any of the major sports. Of course, there are exceptions to this and any rule. But I have seen guys on our squads who have 5 times the measurables the CTR have but make 1/80th the impact that he did.

 

[Vespidae]

I have often wondered if he hasn't struggled as a coach simply because he was so gifted as a player.

Marcus Spears made an interesting comment today. He said that the great coaches are the ones who understand how the game is changing and stay ahead of it. The average ones just stand pat.

Is that Ted?

 

[Vespidae]

I still think a lot of the problem is the Hill... There's only so much in the way of allocated resources for the GTAA, not to mention lack of moral support from the Hill. Allegedly, this was the principal reason DRad left for Clemson. The environment just wasn't right to generate sustained success. It wouldn't be surprising at all if morale in the GTAA is near what it was at the end of the'70s, a time when people in the administration were even considering scrapping the football program altogether. With all the new stadium infrastructure, I don't see that happening. But they could still put a cap on financial resources, making it difficult if not impossible to hire talented guys like a Venables-type coordinator.

I'm not sure it's the Hill. They provide about what other schools do - zero. It's really the AA that is not doing enough. With revenue a third less than say, UGA ... we stress our budgets by signing fat contracts and then firing the guy.

AA needs to fundraise, build a booster org, and fix the recruiting process. The Hill could help by opening the donor rolls.

 

[00Burdell]

I will never understand why it is so commonly believed that great players make great coaches when there are so few examples of it.

 

[Old South Stands]

I could not agree more with this post. After doing the engineering thing for awhile I retired. Then I "unretired" after a few years of sitting around and goofing off to teach HS math. Doing math is way, way, way easier than teaching math based on my experience, especially if you are good at math.
Roof was arguably one of the best 2 or 3 LB's I have ever seen on the Flats (as measured by impact)...he could change the complexion of the game as he did vs. Uga one year. He was a dominant player in that game. Also, against UT. The dude just made a difference when he was on the field.(he was like Lil' Joe in that his skill sets didn't translate well to the next level but on the college FB field, he was a bad SOB.) I have often wondered if he hasn't struggled as a coach simply because he was so gifted as a player. There is not a lot of history of great players making great coaches in any of the major sports. Of course, there are exceptions to this and any rule. But I have seen guys on our squads who have 5 times the measurables the CTR have but make 1/80th the impact that he did.

Funny, but my dad was so good at math he could do much of it in his head... Tried to help me with my integral calculus and didn't understand why I wasn't getting it, especially in light of the fact that he hadn't solved a single calculus problem on paper in over 25 years! Not long afterwards, he became a tutor over at Clark Atlanta University. Some of the guys at Clark/ Morehouse were taking classes at Georgia Tech, and Dad taught calculus to them after work a couple nights a week as a volunteer. He would always talk about how difficult it was to teach them, but I knew from first-hand experience that he wasn't very good at translating knowledge--at least in the field of mathematics. But he was and still is brilliant... one of those AE guys from the slide rule era, a contemporary of the men who sent the astronauts to the moon.

Look at a lot of basketball coaches, like Mike Fratello, and it's funny how many of them are actually quite short, or not much taller than six feet. How did they learn to coach basketball? Probably from sitting way up in the bleachers and looking down, studying the flow of the game... basketball nerds. Same with football. Kirby Smart is actually among the few college coaches who have started on a college team at the highest levels of Division 1 football. Only a handful of Div 1 coaches have experience playing first-string at bigger programs than UGA, and 1 or maybe 2 current coaches have played professionally. Yet the jury is very much out on whether Coach Smart has what it takes to be a HC at this level. Paul Johnson is among the Div 1 coaches with the least playing experience, and Jimbo Fisher played QB at a small college. Mark Richt mostly watched Jim Kelly and Vinnie Testaverde from the sidelines while at Miami.

Here's a video you might like with Ted Roof... I remember being incredibly excited when Tech made it to this bowl.