Article GT vs UCF Postgame Thread

Shorthanded Jackets Fall Short In Home Opener

Jahmyr Gibbs (21) runs for a touchdown (Hyosub Shin / ajc.com)

Atlanta, GA – Down six starters and depth at key positions, the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets (1-1, 1-0) faded late Saturday night in their first home tilt of the 2020 season.  The Central Florida Knights (1-0, 0-0), a respected top 25 program over the last few years, emerged victorious by a final score of 49-21.

The Jackets entered the game with gaps and question marks across its Above The Line (ATL) depth chart when compared to preseason expectations.  Absent from the offense today were starters RB Jordan Mason and TE Dylan Deveney.  Another TE, Dylan Leonard, was a scratch.

The damage done to the defense made matters worse.  Tech’s defensive line was missing starters DE Antonneous Clayton, DT TK Chimedza and DL Antwan Owens along with key rotational player DE Curtis Ryans, a key cog in the Jackets’ week 1 win against Florida State.  Tech’s top CB Tre Swilling also missed his second consecutive game.

“We had to get creative in practice this week… minimal 12 personnel on offense and three down linemen on defense,” said Head Coach Geoff Collins in his postgame interview with radioman Wiley Ballard.

Let’s be clear.  Neither Collins nor the players claimed moral victories.  Save those for today’s victor who is wont for fabricated titles and hardware.

For Tech the mantra is next man up.  The team fought valiantly, showing signs of life into the 4^th quarter against an opponent that most outside of the Georgia Tech program expected to roll easily today.  A 33-yard touchdown run by true freshman RB Jahmyr Gibbs narrowed the Knights’ lead to 28-21 with 13:12 remaining in the game.  The home crowd was energized as was the home team.

But football games are won on the line of scrimmage, and Tech began with one hand tied behind its back on the defensive front.  Evidence of wear and tear to that unit showed itself late as the Knights’ vaunted offense reasserted itself in the 4^th quarter, scoring three consecutive touchdowns immediately after Gibbs’ jaunt without much resistance.  Tech’s offense sputtered in response, and the final chapter of the story was written.

Despite the absence of key players, the Jackets had plenty of opportunities within their control to affect the outcome of the game.  Turnovers and special teams often determine college football games and today was no different.

Following an impressive first game despite a few mistakes, QB Jeff Sims led a Tech offense today that coughed up the ball five times.  Of the Jackets five turnovers, two came thru the air and three came via the ground game.

Special teams was a mixed bag.  Rarely is “mixed bag” a positive, however after the debacle in Tallahassee that descriptor is an improvement.  The Jackets must resolve its field goal issues to become a threat in the ACC this year and in the future.  See 2014.  Otherwise, “mixed bag” will lead to a new definition for “scoring range”.

There were certainly signs of light.  Jahmyr Gibbs lived up to his billing, ripping off a 75 yard kickoff return on his first collegiate touch.  Gibbs finished with 219 all purpose yards and two touchdowns. 

Tech’s offense has now shown a pattern of improvement as compared to last year.  Sims led the offense to 471 yards of total offense.  Nine different receivers caught balls for 244 yards thru the air, demonstrating a balance and proficiency without needing to rely on one or two playmakers.  To that end, noticeably absent despite the team success were WR Ahmarean Brown and WR Jalen Camp, each of which tallied a single reception for 11 yards.

The Jackets managed 12 chunk plays, defined as passing plays of 15+ yards and running plays of 10+ yards.  The distribution was an even 6 and 6, respectively.  Overall the offense produced 5.8 yards per play and converted 7 of 15 third downs.

Last but certainly not least, punter Pressley Harvin remained an “absolute unit”, averaging 51.2 yards per punt.  Of his four punts, three ended up inside the 20, with one boom ball traveling 70 yards.

Ultimately it was feast or famine on offense.  Combined with a shorthanded defense forced to play 92 plays, the flood gates opened late for Tech’s foe.  Next week brings Tech back into ACC play with a road trip to Syracuse and an opportunity to go 2-0 in ACC play.

 

[JacketOff]

AB has been MIA this year, 3 catches for 25 yards. 9 per vs 19 per last season. You may be onto something

UCF played with 6+ guys in the box all game long. Daring Sims to beat them 1 on 1 down the field. He never did. The only chance he took was to AB in the 3rd. I wish one of the other 3 QBs would’ve gotten a shot at the end of the game just to see if they could do damage down the field. Sims is solid inside of 15 yards. That moves the chains and builds yardage. But at some point the D is going to adjust and make you beat them deep down the field. With Tech’s running game and short to intermediate passing game being the only way we’ve gotten yards so far, more teams will adjust and stack the box just like UCF did today. We’re either going to have to find ways to score with our underneath game, or somebody is going to have to complete a deep ball or 2, just to keep the defense honest. Graham’s success on the deep ball last year is not a realistic expectation for any of our more well balanced QBs, but we’ve got to get over the top at some point.

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

I hate gimmicky offenses so I was not impressed with ucf. Yeah, yeah, I get it. It's legal and all, but the little 'run a play every 6 seconds' stuff is ...

If that's what you gotta do, Central, you go ahead. Here, I'll give ya a lil' pat on yer heads.

(Ah, lay off. Feelin sour-grapey this evenin'.)

I don't think UCF much cares about how we feel about their "gimmicky" offense at this point.

 

[g0lftime]

I hate gimmicky offenses so I was not impressed with ucf. Yeah, yeah, I get it. It's legal and all, but the little 'run a play every 6 seconds' stuff is ...

If that's what you gotta do, Central, you go ahead. Here, I'll give ya a lil' pat on yer heads.

(Ah, lay off. Feelin sour-grapey this evenin'.)

You must enjoy pounding your head against a wall cause it feels so good when you stop. That offense put up over 600 yards with their "gimmick ". I hate it too but we had no answer for it. I will take their record over ours right now and ultimately Collins has to start winning. They are within the rules and i didn't see a lot of cut blocks today either. What they are doing is a lot better than what we are doing. We don't have the personnel to dominate anybody and may never for various reasons so I will take their gimmicks if we win with it. We will probably never recruit at consistent top 10 levels. We have to find ways to win. PJ had some successes with his gimmick and army is doing pretty well with it. Just win. I don't think the TO Paul ran works anymore at the P5 level with several rule changes and negative recruiting he faced. We got blasted today by a AAC team. I'm tired of excuses. We can't expect to just line up and dominate anybody we play this year and that includes Duke. We sure didn't dominate FSU but it was a win. Now our staff has to figure it out.

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

My initial takeaways:

1. We looked better losing than we did last year. I know that's a moral victory but I think it's part of the process.
2. Depth is a killer. You could tell by the 4th Quarter our guys were gassed. This will take another recruiting class or two to fix.
3. Our offense does great between the 20s but when the field shortens we start to come apart. A lot of this is due to having a true freshman QB. Losing sucks but the experience is invaluable.
4. Another blocked chip shot....
5. lots of turnovers.
6. I still trust our coaching staff.

On to next week...

 

[kg01]

I don't think UCF much cares about how we feel about their "gimmicky" offense at this point.

I can wipe my hairy butt with what UCF thinks right now.

You must enjoy pounding your head against a wall cause it feels so good when you stop. That offense put up over 600 yards with their "gimmick ". I hate it too but we had no answer for it. I will take their record over ours right now and ultimately Collins has to start winning. They are within the rules and i didn't see a lot of cut blocks today either. What they are doing is a lot better than what we are doing. We don't have the personnel to dominate anybody and may never for various reasons so I will take their gimmicks if we win with it. We will probably never recruit at consistent top 10 levels. We have to find ways to win. PJ had some successes with his gimmick and army is doing pretty well with it. Just win. I don't think the TO Paul ran works anymore at the P5 level with several rule changes and negative recruiting he faced. We got blasted today by a AAC team. I'm tired of excuses. We can't expect to just line up and dominate anybody we play this year and that includes Duke. We sure didn't dominate FSU but it was a win. Now our staff has to figure it out.

I thought it was clear mine wasn't a serious post, thus didn't require a serious response. Was just blowing off some board steam, homes.

Not sure what any of what I said had to do with CPJ.

 

[kg01]

Is it wrong that I kinda can't stand Marty Smith?

And can we stop with the sneakers with suit stuff? I'm not talking about the guys that wear them for charities and whatnot. I mean the ones that do it for some stupid style or whatever. Freaking obnoxious.

Yeah get off my lawn, you posers.

 

[deeznats]

Spike play is 2nd behind Reggie Ball and the 4th down to the fans against the Dawgs

Not really. It wasn't a smart play, but it was first down and we scored anyway. Didn't make any difference in the game.

 

[ibeattetris]

Worse than ugag?

UCF grads are worse than UGA grads, easily. Uga sidewalk are the absolute scum of the earth though. I lived in orlando for 5 years and I believe UCF is the worst fan base I’ve had direct interaction with (and that was BEFORE they had their sun run).

 

[jojatk]

Well, we could have done better except for the mistakes.

The positives first:

1. Gibbs should be returning KOs for the rest of the year.
2. Dontae Smith should get more playing time.
3. I saw Griffin do something today he never did last year,. He got a handoff and there was a hole at an angle right there in front of him. Did he juke in the hole to try to gain more yards? Why, no. He ran straight ahead and gained 8 yards. If I had been on the sideline, I'd have called time out, brought him over to the sidelines, pulled his helmet off, and kissed him right there in front of everybody.
4. We had a couple of designed runs for Sims! I repeat: we had a couple of designed runs for Sims! More of that, please.
5. Our WRs and RBs continue to get open and catch the ball.
6, The D had 2 sacks and 7 TFLs. Not too shabby.

The negatives:

1. I believe I said (just checked; I did) that we couldn't have place kicks blocked and expect to beat these people.
2. Not having Mason out there late in the 3rd made a real difference.
3. You can't turn the ball over 6 times and expect to win.
4. They had 7 TFLs. This kind of thing has to stop.
5. They had 660 yards of total O. This is unacceptable.
6. We got beat over the top way too often. But … given the D players we had out this wasn't too surprising. Still, I expected bettrer coverage. Of course, having a QB who has real talent didn't hurt them.
7. Poor clock management again? What is it with this?

Things other complained about that I didn't think made much difference:

1. The refs missed as many interference/holding calls against us as they did against them.
2. Sims could be blamed for one of the interceptions. The one off a tip was a good play by two of their DLs.
3. Ok, we fumbled the ball 4 times and lost 3. Refer to #2 in the negatives above. Game experience counts. You have to work through this. It isn't really anyone's fault.

Overall, I didn't thin we played all that badly, but that was a much better outfit then FSU. Now we need to get ready for The Cuse. They're better then they've showed so far.

I’m not sure I have ever agreed this comprehensively with one of your posts. I usually agree with some of what you say and disagree with other things you say. Which is about right. I like reading posts from people with whom I sometimes and agree and sometimes disagree but I think are thoughtful because it makes me think and so I pay attention. In this case I think you nailed it completely with this post. I was lucky enough to go to the game and as I sat and watched, then walked to my car, and then drove home I thought about almost every one of those items and had the same conclusion you did. I didn’t think we played that badly and I think there’s still reason to be optimistic that we are moving in the right direction.

Some general observations:

1) Our offense is going to be inconsistent this year. We have a true freshman QB who is immensely talented. We have an OL that appears to be much better than last year. We have 4 very talented runners. I take nothing away from Smith, Mason, and Griffin when I say that Gibbs is absolutely ELECTRIC. I think those other three guys are fantastic backs but there’s something extra about Gibbs.

2) We have a lot of talented people playing defense. I think they played really pretty well for the first 3 quarters of the game and then the mistakes the offense made combined with the pace of UCF finally got to them. I think this group, if we can get healthy, can be pretty decent. Not great. Not yet.

3) I thought the officials were bad but not enough for the outcome of the game to be anything other than UCF being better than us right now.

4) I’m still super excited about Jeff Sims. Yeah, he made a bunch of mistakes today and looked a lot more like a true freshman than last week. But UCF is better than FSU and Sims will learn from these experiences. He may have made some mistakes but he also did a lot to get us into position where we were competitive in this game.

 

[jojatk]

Some people don't care about results and more about how popular the program is. I would love to have tech put up those numbers.

For real!

I do think UCF is a really good team. I thought that before today’s game because I’ve watched them play a few times a year the last few years. I also think we played a really good team pretty well for 3/4 of the game. It’s not where I want us to be. But I think at this point in the evolution of the program the fact that with 13:12 left in the game we had clawed our way to be within 7 tells you something about how hard this team fights and scratches for things. We were playing against a top 15 team according to the rankings. I’m not “happy” that we ended up losing nor do I look at this as a “moral victory.” But I do think some good things can come of this game and the experience our young leader on offense is getting playing against a really good team so early in his career.

 

[Coloradojacket]

For those wondering about Sims and the deep pass. We have played two teams with cover guys all with 4.4 speed. That pretty much eliminates the deep ball. AB is matched with that speed. When we play teams like Pitt and the Cuse there should be more opportunities. That being said when we play Clemson, Miami and Louisville, there will be fewer.

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

For real!

I do think UCF is a really good team. I thought that before today’s game because I’ve watched them play a few times a year the last few years. I also think we played a really good team pretty well for 3/4 of the game. It’s not where I want us to be. But I think at this point in the evolution of the program the fact that with 13:12 left in the game we had clawed our way to be within 7 tells you something about how hard this team fights and scratches for things. We were playing against a top 15 team according to the rankings. I’m not “happy” that we ended up losing nor do I look at this as a “moral victory.” But I do think some good things can come of this game and the experience our young leader on offense is getting playing against a really good team so early in his career.

They are a good team especially on offense. Fine quarterback with lots of weapons at his disposal. The recruiting rankings show up on defense. They are like a Big 12 team in that regard. The biggest difference I noticed was that their quarterback often had a clean pocket and Sims often did not. Line play is going to be a problem again this year just like last year on both sides of the ball. We are better than last year but still have a long way to go. Regarding the officiating, it was bad to be sure but anytime a team gives up over 600 yards total offense and commits 6 turnovers it is going to lose. I was disappointed in the play of the offensive line which did not pass block that well and did not run block that great either. I was also disappointed at the play of the secondary which repeatedly got beat. I think it is telling that UCF was playing press coverage on the outside and daring Sims to beat them. I don't think they had as high opinion of him as we seem to. We have to win next week. We need Swilling, Clayton and Mason back ASAP.

 

[ChicagobasedJacket]

UCF played with 6+ guys in the box all game long. Daring Sims to beat them 1 on 1 down the field. He never did. The only chance he took was to AB in the 3rd. I wish one of the other 3 QBs would’ve gotten a shot at the end of the game just to see if they could do damage down the field. Sims is solid inside of 15 yards. That moves the chains and builds yardage. But at some point the D is going to adjust and make you beat them deep down the field. With Tech’s running game and short to intermediate passing game being the only way we’ve gotten yards so far, more teams will adjust and stack the box just like UCF did today. We’re either going to have to find ways to score with our underneath game, or somebody is going to have to complete a deep ball or 2, just to keep the defense honest. Graham’s success on the deep ball last year is not a realistic expectation for any of our more well balanced QBs, but we’ve got to get over the top at some point.

This might be the first positive post regarding James Graham in weeks. Lol ... I think Sims can throw the deep ball too. He’s just got to get comfortable. He looked for the deep ball today but either chose not to throw it or took off or missed it.

 

[jayparr]

Not really. It wasn't a smart play, but it was first down and we scored anyway. Didn't make any difference in the game.

It was 4th down and that was the game!

 

[Jacketman]

Haven't seen this said yet: the pregame weight lifting on the field-yikes... don't like it when you lose by 28 points. Didn't like it last year against Clemson, don't like it now. It's not intimidating to the other team.

 

[DeepSnap]

One of the worst things I saw re: officiating is the assigned AAC crew, which made me long for an ACC crew - something I never thought I'd say - were woefully out of shape and consistently out of position to make calls. There's a reason they're not working in a P5 conference.

That said, Heupel will probably be the chosen one - esp as a former Sooner QB - when Lincoln Riley finally gets lured away from Norman to the NFL.

But overall, the zebras didn't cost us the game. Their Jimmies beat our Joes. We're getting better, but are about two years away.

 

[deeznats]

It was 4th down and that was the game!

I'm talking about the spike today. It was odd, but had no effect.

 

[jayparr]

I'm talking about the spike today. It was odd, but had no effect.

Excuse me!!

 

[Ibeeballin]

Quick post game observations:
1. Gibbs/Sims gonna be good.
2. Refs sucked butthole.
3. That offense UCF has is the biggest cheat code. They’re so fast they don’t even give enough time to call down for a review.
4. We are not as good as we thought after the FSU game. Better, but not as good as we thought.

Honestly, this is confusing to me. Why would anyone think this?

 

[BleedGoldNWhite21]

The kicking game, Red Zone offense and turnovers are what really kills me. We clean that up, we really have a chance to WIN(seems crazy looking at the final score, but it was 28-21 in the 4th)

We were missing so many guys on D against one of the best offenses we’ll see all year, it’s hard to get too frustrated about the D’s performance, though it was bad.

The officials were putrid. I’m not solely blaming them for the loss, but even with the poor calls throughout the game(and our own putrid mistakes) it was 35-21 in the 4th and they missed an obvious PI that would have kept the drive going. We score on that drive, who knows. It’s just frustrating.

This game kind of defines a certain saying our last coach liked to say: it’s never as good as it seems or as bad as it seems. The final score is embarrassing and there were awful moments, but there were also some real highlights and it can not be forgotten that it was a one score game in the 4th quarter even after the missed opportunities and turnovers. I know it’s not popular to talk about how good UCF is, but I do think it’s safe to say their offense is pretty good and our defense was missing 5 starters. There will be easier days this year for the D. We’ve got a lot to work on, but I still think we can compete with everyone not named ND or Clemson on the schedule.