Season in review.

[Vespidae]

Having lived through the Curry years, we’ll be fine. It’s never as good or as bad as it seems.

What worries me more than the players is the attendance. Even if Tech starts going 9-3 every year, I don’t see BDS averaging more than 45K. It’s hard to have a great game day experience unless you do.

We need more of the state to care about GT Football.

 

[stech81]

Having lived through the Curry years, we’ll be fine. It’s never as good or as bad as it seems.

What worries me more than the players is the attendance. Even if Tech starts going 9-3 every year, I don’t see BDS averaging more than 45K. It’s hard to have a great game day experience unless you do.

We need more of the state to care about GT Football.

Best think we could do is bring our seating back to 48,000 take out the benches and put in chair backseats . That way we should always have 80 percent of the fans no matter who we play. A BDS full is better with 48,000 than a 55,000 with 70 percent. Now getting the state to care more about Tech I have no idea how to do it. Some will say winning but as long as uga keeps winning I don't see it helping.

 

[RyanS12]

I watched this game with a friend of mine and his son. His son is a 6’5 o linemen at Eastern Michigan. He’s a Fr. He told me to my face, it’s about time you run a real offense. He said “the issue is your guys look small and aren’t on the same level as Georgia and look more like the size kids he sees at MAC schools”. Also said “the play calling looked good but when your OLine is getting their *** kicked a QB like Tom Brady would look like garbage too”. He visited temple 2 years ago and like CDP and met CGC briefly (Which I didn’t know) and liked CP’s scheme. I then told him it’s time to transfer to Tech! Lol
He also told me he knew a lot of kids from OLine camps and none had any interest in playing in the 3O because most of them ran it in HS and were sick of diving at peoples legs.
He did say the pre game weight lifting looks bad when you’re getting your *** kicked too!

 

[wvGT11]

Having lived through the Curry years, we’ll be fine. It’s never as good or as bad as it seems.

What worries me more than the players is the attendance. Even if Tech starts going 9-3 every year, I don’t see BDS averaging more than 45K. It’s hard to have a great game day experience unless you do.

We need more of the state to care about GT Football.

And that's the thing I'll never understand how we do. Drive around the boonies in Georgia and you will see uga flags, and have to wonder how many of these families actually went to Georgia or are they a sidewalk fan? You don't really see that with tech

Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

 

[Towaliga]

And that's the thing I'll never understand how we do. Drive around the boonies in Georgia and you will see uga flags, and have to wonder how many of these families actually went to Georgia or are they a sidewalk fan? You don't really see that with tech

Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

The old joke—What do the average GT and UGA fan have in common? Neither one of them went to school in Athens.

 

[croberts]

After year 1 of one of the greatest transitions in all of sports, we have to give not only this offense, but this team and the coaching staff the benefit of the doubt. CPJ has set this program back many many years by the lack of recruitment that has taken place on the flats in recent years. I'm glad the triple option worked for a few years. There's a reason why the military schools run it, because you can be competitive with undersized players. There is also a reason why no other P5 program in the country runs it. I have a favor to ask. Go look at the recruitment pages on the kids on our team, especially offensively (247, rivals, etc) and see who GT beat and competed with to land most of these players. We didn't land any top prospects and weren't competing against many P5 teams. It is going to take some time for this regime to recruit the right kind of kids that will compete nationally and within the ACC. Offensively, these guys were going into a gun fight every week with a bunch of sticks. It's very easy to complain and point fingers, but when you have probably one of the best Oline coaches in the country in CBK and one of the better passing coordinators in the country (Temple ranked top 40 in throwing last 2 years), this is set up for a recipe for success. When you don't have time to throw, guys who can open up running lanes and move guys off the ball, guys that can CONSISTENTLY throw, or guys who can consistently catch, it makes things very difficult. These coaches had to chance game-plans basically every week because there are simply schemes and gameplans that our kids can't execute because of athletic ability. This is what we're going through and things will change for the better. These coaches dedicate their lives to coaching ball and are really good at it. Trust the process and give these guys support for the future. Especially around recruits, they follow all of us on social media and take note of the negativity/positivity surrounding this program. Go Jackets!!

I almost stopped reading the post when I got to the part about PJ setting the program back many many many many many many many years crap. In reality , I agree with a lot of what you say but find it silly to talk about PJ and leave out (again) funding and other things involved. The reality is we cant be set back more than a full recruiting cycle (4 years) period. At that point, along with the transfer portal, I think our current head coach will prove his worth.

 

[Gtswifty81]

This is my first year back on the boards in several years after losing interest in following recruiting over the last few years. I attended school during the Hamilton and Godsey years, and one positive is several of my classmates have become more engaged this season in the teams future.

I am admittedly disappointed in the season this year although the record doesn’t surprise me. The risk of transitioning away from the 3O was always there, and the success was always going to be dependent on the personnel that remained. Unfortunately, this season was a perfect storm of injuries to an already thin offensive line, a redshirt freshman winning the QB job with almost no game experience and being academically ineligible during the spring, plus coming off of one of Tech’s worst defensive season with a team dominated by underclassmen. The running game was as expected, the defense was as expected, but the passing efficiency left much to be desired. A 46% completion percentage with a 6.0 yd average is not going to win games. An offensive that cannot sustain drives is going to stress an already undersized defensive unit and games like yesterday will happen. The special teams unit did not help with coverage and fg misses. I like Harvin as a punter but even he was up and down on pinning teams inside the 20 consistently and could help the coverage unit with more consistent yardage and hang time.

There has been a lot of discussion on the coaching staff this season, and I’m on the fence with Pnut. However, the teams youth and inexperience affects the execution level which also impacts play calling so I’m going to give the staff the benefit of the doubt and hope for improvement next year. Primarily I’m looking forward to December 15th to see who signs early and enrolls early. This class, even though it is not on the factory level, is an improvement and has more size than previous years. I don’t expect us to suddenly be a bowl team next year, but I expect to see improvement on the offense with year 3 taking us back to a bowl.

 

[croberts]

I agree. UVA wasn't a terrible game. I was most disappointed with VT. We got smacked in the mouth over and over.

Actually, Bud Foster teams look very, very good against teams that are not strong enough to take advantage of their scheme. Reminds me of Tanuta teams. Hello Matt Ryan.

 

[gtstinger776]

This is my first year back on the boards in several years after losing interest in following recruiting over the last few years. I attended school during the Hamilton and Godsey years, and one positive is several of my classmates have become more engaged this season in the teams future.

I am admittedly disappointed in the season this year although the record doesn’t surprise me. The risk of transitioning away from the 3O was always there, and the success was always going to be dependent on the personnel that remained. Unfortunately, this season was a perfect storm of injuries to an already thin offensive line, a redshirt freshman winning the QB job with almost no game experience and being academically ineligible during the spring, plus coming off of one of Tech’s worst defensive season with a team dominated by underclassmen. The running game was as expected, the defense was as expected, but the passing efficiency left much to be desired. A 46% completion percentage with a 6.0 yd average is not going to win games. An offensive that cannot sustain drives is going to stress an already undersized defensive unit and games like yesterday will happen. The special teams unit did not help with coverage and fg misses. I like Harvin as a punter but even he was up and down on pinning teams inside the 20 consistently and could help the coverage unit with more consistent yardage and hang time.

There has been a lot of discussion on the coaching staff this season, and I’m on the fence with Pnut. However, the teams youth and inexperience affects the execution level which also impacts play calling so I’m going to give the staff the benefit of the doubt and hope for improvement next year. Primarily I’m looking forward to December 15th to see who signs early and enrolls early. This class, even though it is not on the factory level, is an improvement and has more size than previous years. I don’t expect us to suddenly be a bowl team next year, but I expect to see improvement on the offense with year 3 taking us back to a bowl.

This is a measured take. We’re a worse football team, but better program than we were during Johnson’s last 2 years (I’ll save face with the CPJ homers and say we were a better program with him the prior 9 seasons). But the vision is to play like a Florida team - stout defense and explosive offense. I know football - and I can see it happening. If you look at the scores and stat sheets you won’t see it. These things are not gradual or linear. We are going to play bad (but better football) next year, and all of a sudden we’ll start to dominate the ACC coastal and come within a prayer against uga or Clemson. That’s how these transformations work: u suffer, u experiment, and then 1-2 critical pieces come together and it takes off. It happened under O’Leary with Hamilton and company.

 

[Lotta Booze]

I thought it'd be interesting to read a 2019 season preview of GT now that the season is over and it's interesting to see what they got right and what they got wrong. Below is Bill Connelly's preview:
https://www.sbnation.com/college-fo...ia-tech-football-2019-preview-schedule-roster

Projected wins per his SP+ rating: 3.7

That's pretty close to what happened. If we don't drop the Citadel game we're right there.

And his rating doesn't account for coaching changes. So even if PJ was coming back this was the anticipated performance.
But where you can see the coaching change reflected is the Offensive rating and the Defensive rating. Projected 57th ranked Off. and 102nd ranked Defense.
And the last actual SP+ ratings I'm finding are pretty much exactly flipped. 119th ranked offense and a 45th ranked defense.

 

[HouseDivided]

And that's the thing I'll never understand how we do. Drive around the boonies in Georgia and you will see uga flags, and have to wonder how many of these families actually went to Georgia or are they a sidewalk fan? You don't really see that with tech

Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

Well, if we're being honest, those fans help sell their program with sell-outs for recruiting events, great game day atmospheres, loud home field advantage, buying up lots of memorabilia that helps fund their massive budget. They also help ensure their home games are not a home game for visiting teams. Yesterday, from the looks of it, it was 70/30 Ugag fans to our fans. Most of those probably never stepped foot in Athens nor could find it on a map, but it helps sell a vision. Our fans need to step up. We have enough fans to pack our stadium, we just dont have the product.

 

[Milwaukee]

This is always so funny to me. This mythical all powerful cabal in a smoke filled back room calling the shots. If these guys exist please tell them they suck because our hoops have been a disaster for over a decade, our baseball coach should have been gone years ago, and our stadium was just turned red. The one good thing this cabal did was hire a coach who actually cares about bringing in high level Georgia high school players. You may also want to tell them that if they tell GT to accept qualified Georgia high school students into the school that maybe our fan base would grow in a few years instead of trying to be the UN of the south. But I guess they’d rather family after family turn from GT lines into UGA lines.

This is probably the best post ever in Swarm history, you get a standing O for this one.

 

[orientalnc]

This is probably the best post ever in Swarm history, you get a standing O for this one.

State universities in NC have to have 82% of incoming freshmen from in-state high schools. I wonder what is the percentage at GT?

 

[83jacket]

State universities in NC have to have 82% of incoming freshmen from in-state high schools. I wonder what is the percentage at GT?

Last stats I saw were 60% instate, 30% out of state, 10% out of country. For comparisons sake UGA is 89% in state

 

[BainbridgeJacket]

I thought it'd be interesting to read a 2019 season preview of GT now that the season is over and it's interesting to see what they got right and what they got wrong. Below is Bill Connelly's preview:
https://www.sbnation.com/college-fo...ia-tech-football-2019-preview-schedule-roster

Projected wins per his SP+ rating: 3.7

That's pretty close to what happened. If we don't drop the Citadel game we're right there.

And his rating doesn't account for coaching changes. So even if PJ was coming back this was the anticipated performance.
But where you can see the coaching change reflected is the Offensive rating and the Defensive rating. Projected 57th ranked Off. and 102nd ranked Defense.
And the last actual SP+ ratings I'm finding are pretty much exactly flipped. 119th ranked offense and a 45th ranked defense.

This is what I mean, folks. Projected to win 3.7 without accounting for the coaching change. Considering the injuries on the line, this season met expectations.

 

[LibertyTurns]

This is what I mean, folks. Projected to win 3.7 without accounting for the coaching change. Considering the injuries on the line, this season met expectations.

The 0.7 was the Citadel?

 

[gtstinger776]

The 0.7 was the Citadel?

On a GT blog, I shouldn’t need to explain the idea that expected outcome is an aggregate of fractional win probabilities across a season

 

[LibertyTurns]

On a GT blog, I shouldn’t need to explain the idea that expected outcome is an aggregate of fractional win probabilities across a season

On a GT blog, you’re expected to understand snarky sarcasm. I’ll add a disclaimer next time so you get it.

 

[RickStromFan]

I watched this game with a friend of mine and his son. His son is a 6’5 o linemen at Eastern Michigan. He’s a Fr. He told me to my face, it’s about time you run a real offense. He said “the issue is your guys look small and aren’t on the same level as Georgia and look more like the size kids he sees at MAC schools”. Also said “the play calling looked good but when your OLine is getting their *** kicked a QB like Tom Brady would look like garbage too”. He visited temple 2 years ago and like CDP and met CGC briefly (Which I didn’t know) and liked CP’s scheme. I then told him it’s time to transfer to Tech! Lol
He also told me he knew a lot of kids from OLine camps and none had any interest in playing in the 3O because most of them ran it in HS and were sick of diving at peoples legs.
He did say the pre game weight lifting looks bad when you’re getting your *** kicked too!

This is what I mean when I say that "More money was not going to change the perception that the TO had on the PJ regime".

 

[slugboy]

Some disjointed thoughts on the season:

• Even though 3 wins was what was projected by a number of good sources, it’s still disappointing. We should have had at least 4, and possibly as many as 5 (but I’m not sure where the 5th win would come from this year).
• Collins said that we were the second smallest lineup in P5, and that they’d worked on that through S&C. He did say how much he admired the grit of the kids playing, but that we needed to get bigger and stronger and that wouldn’t be easy. At the end of the season, I think we’re probably still on that end of the spectrum for P5 teams and smaller than a good number of G5 teams. In the Southeast, that I’m sure we’re looking at other ACC and SEC teams, but that’s also going to include teams like Vandy, Rutgers, Washington State, et al. I can see Wisconsin or LSU walking out a line that’s much bigger than ours, but we can be at least average in this category. That’s hurt us in past bowls and big games where we get pushed around. Handling this with S&C, nutrition, and recruiting is a big need over the next few years.
• I don’t think we had a crazy number of injuries this year—we just have such a young team that the injuries we had were so much more crucial.
• On defense, we were better than last year by most of the sources I look at. This is despite us losing a lot of the tackles and leadership from last year’s team. I saw us take a step up in a few areas, but in others I saw us repeating the same mistakes we’ve made for years. Mostly, it was a mix of watching us almost make a good play, like the missed interception yesterday, or make two good plays in a row and just fail on the third play with a missed tackle or a bad read.
• Special teams didn’t get any more special this year. These coaches have had good special teams before. It’s really hard to fix something like that in-season. I think it will get fixed in the off-season.
• I think the DL will play better next year if only because it’s a year older.
• I didn’t see the OL progression and growth during the season that other posters did. I didn’t expect much during the season, anyway—the off-season is where you build up that kind of skill and strength, while during the season you scout your opponents and execute against them. I would still see a tackle block down instead of taking an outside man yesterday, or some other play where a defender was mistakenly left unblocked. The VTs, UGAs, UVAs, and UNCs were pushing us around all season, and they will until we get bigger and stronger.
• Same as the above line, but for DL too.
• We have some young potential at LB if we can ingrain the scheme and the decisions. We need the QB on defense to be a coach on the field.
• I didn’t see us progress at DB during the year. We were better this year than last, but I thought we were as good in the first game as we were in the last. Even in the NCST game, I saw us give up quick receptions that you couldn’t blame on lack of penetration because no one is fast enough to get into the backfield that quickly. We’ve got potential there, but they should be playing better, and you can’t blame everything on the front 7.
• I like our running backs.
• We brought in a grad transfer to be our main tight end this season. I hope we don’t have to start over completely there next season. This is a position to develop in so many ways.
• Our Wide Receivers have a lot of physical potential, but they need to win footballs. I’ve seen too many passes dropped or slapped away. That’s not all on the QB.
• Wide receivers used to block, now it’s not the same. We don’t win unless they block.
• Our QB play was gutsy this year. Graham can run, but it’s definitely his backup plan. No one is spying our QB and taking a player out of pass coverage. The completion percentage is way too low, too many passes are going to triple coverage instead of a better target. We’re not completing enough short passes.
• I’m working on incomplete information, but I give our defensive coaching a B- this year. We were more aggressive, created more havoc, and improved in some fundamentals. but there are mistakes that have been going on for years that are still happening.
• Special teams is a C-. I can understand not getting place kicking fixed, but kickoffs you have to find a way to get someone to put the ball deep with some air under it.
• Offense I consider a C. Re: being able to predict which play is coming—you could predict the play coming from a lot of top tier teams in the NCAA and NFL, but that doesn’t mean you can stop it. They see a weakness and they exploit it until you adjust, then they attack what you just adjusted out of defending. On the other hand, the 1970s Seattle Seahawks had the most unpredictable play calling you could imagine, and they kept going 2-12 or 3-13. We just aren’t strong enough or automatic enough to do that. The three things that bring down the offensive grade down for me is that we never seemed to get our line calls “right” through the season, we kept making poor reads at QB, and our wide receivers didn’t grow into game changers. All of those contribute to the other.
• I think Patenaude will be here next year. Collins is looking for an educator to teach his players a new offense. I know a bunch of you don’t like his play calling, but the bigger needs now are to teach the right reads and the right fundamentals. If Patenaude can do that, then he’ll stay at least until the players make the right decisions on the field and have the right techniques.
• On the line, I think our players were overwhelmed with their new responsibilities and also the physical demands. Key has a big job this offseason.
• I expect a big step up in play next season. I’m not sure we get bowl-eligible, because it’s a bloodbath schedule, but we’ll look the part next year.