Paul Johnson

Mack

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The really frustrating thing about the game and it's outcome is that there were about 10 to 15 opportunities to make a play that would have won the game or made winning the game much more probable. We failed to make a play every. single. time. The coach's job is put his men in position to make plays. It's the player's job to make them. Again, we make just one of these game defining plays, we win. Most of these plays did not require anything extraordinary, either. So disappointing.
Agree with you but if we could have substituted a quick short pass rather than the drop back down and out which gave folks time to rush him I would think it would have won the game if completed.Of course one play doesnt win or lose but wish we had that one back.
 

Mack

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I agree. Next year is a huge year for CPJ. IMO the fork is in the road scenario is laid in front of him. If we have another 7-5 year next year and lose to UGA, Miami, VT, etc... then CPJ is out the door. I like him a lot but I have a hard time seeing any school holding on to a coach who has a losing record of 1-5 to his prime division opponents (Miami, VT) and his arch-rival (UGA). I hope he is able to get us back to the 08-09 days as well. But, IMO we have to recruit a tad better.
Agree with you on PJ but he has a lifeline.........we play folks he can beat such as Tulane and others and really if he has a nine and three record even with a ga loss he is golden.Do I like it ? No but it is what it is !
 

Mack

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I swore I was going to give this some serious thought at the end of the year and, lo and behold, this thread has caught me before I was ready. The day after a devastating loss to our rival, who has had their way with us for the last decade or more, is not the best time. However, I'll give it a go.

My feelings at the moment are that CPJ should stay, but his contract should not be extended, and if it is, a pay raise would not be in order. After our third loss in a row in game 6 of the season, I was leaning towards letting him go, primarily because it was looking like a clown show (with all of the mistakes) where the kids had actually quit on him. Once you lose the kids, it is over. Something has to change under those circumstances, either you go, or many of the kids do. However, since that time, I think the kids have played very hard and seem bought in. I have been a huge fan of the offensive scheme and have also gained confidence in Roof to lead the defense, but I needed to be sure the kids were too.

I don't think there is a single team in the land that would look forward to a match up with GT. We are a very tough opponent, even when the roster isn't where we would all like it to be. In a purely schematic sense, if you take the recruiting effects and so forth out of the equation, I believe this is the best offense currently in CFB, bar none. If you move the pieces on the chess board around, there is simply no way to account for the manpower shortage created by good timely reads in the option game. When you combine that with 4 receivers on every play, it is nuclear. However, you can't just look at the offense in a vacuum like that, because the negative effects
on recruiting have yet to be proven as folly. Until they are, there will always be that argument. Some are already convinced that recruiting will never be good as long as we run this system. I am not in that camp, but I also recognize that we really haven't put the myth to bed yet either. Personally, I think class rankings are a joke, so I don't use them to determine whether or not we are recruiting well. I believe you need 3 years to know for each class. I will say this: there have been too many swings and misses in CPJ's first 3 classes. On the surface it looks like things are much better in the last couple, but we really don't know yet. Guys like Devine and Custis waiting in the wings give me hope.

CPJ is leading the best academic era of GT football IMHO and that carries a lot of weight with me. I am a product of the GT total person concept (Homer Rice) and I buy into that thought process lock, stock, and barrel. We are doing it the right way and I can't tell you much I support it. We need to win more, but we are close.

At present, I am of the opinion that Vad has turned a corner. I thought it might have been so after the Clemson game, but with the thing out of reach so early it was hard to make any sweeping judgments. He played in the UGAg game the way I had hoped he would a little earlier in the season. JT is coming on as well. Good QB play that is designed for this offense will be an elixir. Right about this time in Lil' Joe's career the light was starting to come on. He lit it up in the bowl game. I expect VAd to do the same.
Hey Boom........will compromise with you and say if we ran the Carolina spread we would get better recruits and do better on offense.We can still run the option,throw from it and do other things.I just dont think we can continue to keep whipping on little guys with it and inflate our stats and then when the big uns hit town we fold.Yeah wish we had Homer back to fix our problems !
 

dressedcheeseside

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Hey Boom........will compromise with you and say if we ran the Carolina spread we would get better recruits and do better on offense.We can still run the option,throw from it and do other things.I just dont think we can continue to keep whipping on little guys with it and inflate our stats and then when the big uns hit town we fold.Yeah wish we had Homer back to fix our problems !
Hey Mack, we didn't play spectacular on offense in our losses to the toughest opponents this year but we didn't "fold" either, imo. We averaged 25 points in those games and the VT game skewed that average because we only managed 10 in that one. We scored 30 or more in 3 of the 5. You'd think 30 points would win at least one ball game.

Where's the defense? I'll tell you where.... no where. They gave up an average of 39 ppg in those 5 losses (VT, Miami, Clemson, BYU and Uga). So you're telling me we should be able to spot the very best of our opponents 39 points and win the game?
 

daBuzz

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Hope you aren't referring to Pollack. Sounds like something he would say.

It wasn't Pollack. It was the African-American guy who was the color commentator for the game. He was asked why more teams didn't run this system and his response was something like "Because it's hard to recruit for this system because none of your better players want to play in a system like this."
 
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Animal02

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Hey Mack, we didn't play spectacular on offense in our losses to the toughest opponents this year but we didn't "fold" either, imo. We averaged 25 points in those games and the VT game skewed that average because we only managed 10 in that one. We scored 30 or more in 3 of the 5. You'd think 30 points would win at least one ball game.

Where's the defense? I'll tell you where.... no where. They gave up an average of 39 ppg in those 5 losses (VT, Miami, Clemson, BYU and Uga). So you're telling me we should be able to spot the very best of our opponents 39 points and win the game?

I would not count the OT points. but at 35 pts / game for those games, our offense should be scoring about the same. The other fact is "if" our offense is working as it should, by its very nature, the oppents offense doesn't get the ball for that many possessions to score. Hard to hang losses on a D when the O is giving up the ball after 3 downs for multiple series.
 

Mack

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Hey Mack, we didn't play spectacular on offense in our losses to the toughest opponents this year but we didn't "fold" either, imo. We averaged 25 points in those games and the VT game skewed that average because we only managed 10 in that one. We scored 30 or more in 3 of the 5. You'd think 30 points would win at least one ball game.

Where's the defense? I'll tell you where.... no where. They gave up an average of 39 ppg in those 5 losses (VT, Miami, Clemson, BYU and Uga). So you're telling me we should be able to spot the very best of our opponents 39 points and win the game?
No my friend what I am saying is in those losses we got manhandled at the end and in clemins last td was for PJ looking to. help the score our.Miami same thing along with byu.vt we couldn't do it when we needed too and ga at the end killed us.we still don't do well vs big boys and we still don't have the horses we need to beat the big uns.
 

ATL1

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No my friend what I am saying is in those losses we got manhandled at the end and in clemins last td was for PJ looking to. help the score our.Miami same thing along with byu.vt we couldn't do it when we needed too and ga at the end killed us.we still don't do well vs big boys and we still don't have the horses we need to beat the big uns.
agreed and welcome Mack, I'm atllove from the other board.
 

dressedcheeseside

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I would not count the OT points.
We scored 1 OT td, those points are negligible.
but at 35 pts / game for those games, our offense should be scoring about the same.
Why?
The other fact is "if" our offense is working as it should, by its very nature, the oppents offense doesn't get the ball for that many possessions to score.
Not if the D is giving up td's in under 2 minutes.
Hard to hang losses on a D when the O is giving up the ball after 3 downs for multiple series.
That doesn't jive at all with the fact that we scored 30+ points in 3 of our 5 losses. That's enough points for most teams to win games, but not us.
 

dressedcheeseside

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If you want to blame CPJ for having a mentally weak team, fine. That's the reason we lost most of the games we lost. It wasn't scheme and it wasn't talent differential. Well, maybe talent differential, to some degree, but not nearly as much as people want to think. If we're talented enough to hang with Uga for 4 qtrs, we're talented enough to beat them. If we're talented enough to go up by 20 points on Uga, we're talented enough to beat them. If the scheme is sound enough to hang with Uga for 4 qtrs, it's sound enough to beat them. If the scheme is sound enough to go up by 2o points on Uga, it's sound enough to beat them.
 

Mack

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If you want to blame CPJ for having a mentally weak team, fine. That's the reason we lost most of the games we lost. It wasn't scheme and it wasn't talent differential. Well, maybe talent differential, to some degree, but not nearly as much as people want to think. If we're talented enough to hang with Uga for 4 qtrs, we're talented enough to beat them. If we're talented enough to go up by 20 points on Uga, we're talented enough to beat them. If the scheme is sound enough to hang with Uga for 4 qtrs, it's sound enough to beat them. If the scheme is sound enough to go up by 2o points on Uga, it's sound enough to beat them.
I wouldnt put Ga as a test case for ou;r offenese..yes they have talent but its clear they have many guys who makae mistakes on the defense and remember......they pups were after Granthams butt.Yep we score twenty and then .........we take time off and dont make the plays on OFFENSE when we need to..Big differenece on our defense side.We have maybe three guys that are blue chips so stopping folks will be hard to do...Now if our scheme is that good and I admit my friend its got its points........why do we lose to Ga and the big uns every year....Look over the games and you will see we get stuffed at the line of scrimmage when we play the big guys.......this hurts.
 

Mack

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If you want to blame CPJ for having a mentally weak team, fine. That's the reason we lost most of the games we lost. It wasn't scheme and it wasn't talent differential. Well, maybe talent differential, to some degree, but not nearly as much as people want to think. If we're talented enough to hang with Uga for 4 qtrs, we're talented enough to beat them. If we're talented enough to go up by 20 points on Uga, we're talented enough to beat them. If the scheme is sound enough to hang with Uga for 4 qtrs, it's sound enough to beat them. If the scheme is sound enough to go up by 2o points on Uga, it's sound enough to beat them.
Not to belabor the point but give me georgies talent on both sides of the ball and even I at 66 can win seven with the second team...big talent drop off from us vs georgie.Now I know you engineers rightfully so will start with the stats and figures and as a old coach I agree we do well on paper but with this offense and with trying to get folks to run it.....we are behind the power curve..now give me a Ham or a Watts etc then okay but we have not had a true option guy in awhile.
 

dressedcheeseside

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I wouldnt put Ga as a test case for ou;r offenese..yes they have talent but its clear they have many guys who makae mistakes on the defense and remember......they pups were after Granthams butt.Yep we score twenty and then .........we take time off and dont make the plays on OFFENSE when we need to..Big differenece on our defense side.We have maybe three guys that are blue chips so stopping folks will be hard to do...Now if our scheme is that good and I admit my friend its got its points........why do we lose to Ga and the big uns every year....Look over the games and you will see we get stuffed at the line of scrimmage when we play the big guys.......this hurts.
We moved the LOS enough to average 25 points against the biguns. Sometimes you need the D to lead the way. Like I said, the best teams in the country have defenses good enough to win ten+ games a year if they matched our scoring average.
 

Mack

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Little history to baack up your point...In 56 ,yes I know many here were not born,Tech came within a tipped pass vs Johnny Majors and Tenn of being undefeated for second time in Dodds career.Nine and one and another bowl win and .....................the Hill made the statement that it appeared to them that they needed to.................cut back on the football program...now folks forget that bowl money went to SEC and Tech but to no avail and Dodd had four so so yrs before they righted the ship..Some things just dont change
 

AE 87

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Allbarn gave up a 20 pt lead in the fourth. We lost ours from the second. By overtime, we were gassed, on both sides of the ball. However, my point is that regardless of how much stock you put on them having Murray against allbarn, that allbarn offense couldn't keep the ball and score for two consecutive drives after a fg gave them the 20pt lead. Those 6 plays went for -1 yd. Without that last miracle td, they scored 3pts per drive which is what GT did in regulation.
 
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