Spring Game Impressions

Randy Carson

Helluva Engineer
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1,304
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Apex, NC
For those of us who couldn't (or didn't) attend the game, would anyone who was there share your impressions of what you saw?

What type of offense did we run? Did the team look more disciplined on the sidelines? Were we able to get plays called and executed without delay of game penalties? Did anyone standout as the obvious starting quarterback?

That kind of stuff. TIA.
 

Buzzbomb

Mello Yellow-Jacket
Messages
12,014
For those of us who couldn't (or didn't) attend the game, would anyone who was there share your impressions of what you saw?

What type of offense did we run? Did the team look more disciplined on the sidelines? Were we able to get plays called and executed without delay of game penalties? Did anyone standout as the obvious starting quarterback?

That kind of stuff. TIA.
Buster stated he only put in 30% of the offense. First play was the Wildcat. Hooray for some variations. Mostly displayed the passing game. QB’s wore green jerseys for 2 hand touch, no hitting them, Rutherford, DJ Moore(he got mad at himself for dropping one ball), were both outstanding. All four QB’s were good. Pyron on the 1st team offense going against the 2nd team defense. Outstanding poise, good throws. Hanes King with the 2nd team was super impressive to me. Fantastic arm. Some spot on deep throws, down and outs, posts, hitting the TE’s. He is the better scrambler, great speed/agility back there. Zach Gibson, B. Rhodes were good on their reps. No turnovers. Almost one.

Defense was attacking. Some definitely good licks. Tatum, Bryant, even Biggers, all had some bone crushers. No injuries that I noticed(Rutherford has his bell rung, w/ the wind knocked out or a cramp- he came back in later & looked like the Malik in the 1st half). Clock ran the last two 12 minute quarters non-stop. The DB’s were in close coverage most of the game. Some perfect throws, one blown coverage although good communication back there. Players stayed in their lanes. Disciplined, however aggressive. A few stunts run, only to give the offense a different look to go against. Coached Thacker mentioned at the NIL meeting afterwards, that in the upcoming weeks, they will be taking the players to visit local companies and letting them meet and talk to Tech grads at those companies. Coaches don’t want kids that ask about NIL $ first during recruiting.

Tech lined up the best players for STeams, as CBK wanted. Not much action with them in a 42-24 game. GT has to move the ball for us to be better. Not a lot of stars, but a “tough team” we will be by Sept. 1st. Stone, Kennard, Sylvain Y., looked good. We will need Andre White in the MILB spot. Lee & Brooks at safety.
More guys coming in to help depth this summer. J.Moore #95 got the walk-on award. Evan Dickens, Jamie Felix, the portal guys such as Christian Leary, look good for the future. The TE, Jackson Long and the edge dude Etinosa Reuben from Clemson #6, were athletically mobile. The game was set up for the offenses. Two sides were also asked to make it entertaining for the fans.

CBK is stressing to the recruits & family members, that academics are a plus in choosing GT over the other competitors where they might not care enough about your future. Study Halls and Class Attendance will be mandatory and monitored.

The attendance number was a little disappointing to me. Expected more to give the new regime a solid chance. No money down stuff or foolishness. We voted for the Crazy Train song on our devices over another tune, as the choice to hear.
 

WrongShadeOfGold

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
358
If Malik Rutherford plays all season like he did yesterday, we won't miss Nate McCollum at all. He even took Nate's old jersey number lol. Tight ends still have some very frustrating drops though Dylan Leonard did have a nice one handed catch on the west sideline. Both QBs were very impressive, especially on some of the deep balls. Penalties were not called so hard to judge that. There was one obvious pass interference on an underthrown deep ball and the ref was reaching for his flag but then realized he didn't have one to throw 🤔. No turnovers!!! Woohooo!
 

danny daniel

Helluva Engineer
Messages
2,613
I really enjoyed the game. It looked like real Tech football and the hard work by the payers and details by the coaching really shows. What a wonderful change!

The meeting with the players was an experiment gone bad. There were too many people crowded into too small a space for too long. Very poor plan. However the interaction with the players was a plus.
 

CuseJacket

Administrator
Staff member
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19,549
The in-stadium entertainment/production quality was improved in my estimation. We brought in an emcee of sorts like the pros (e.g., ATL Hawks) to hype the crowd, intro the scoreboard vids, facilitate the in-game music voting/selection, etc.

I hope that Carrie’s forward. We’ve been stuck on the same stuff that no longer engages the crowd for far too long.
 

SOWEGA Jacket

Helluva Engineer
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2,075
As stated above, GT football HAS to be about team. We do not have the stars that will compare to guys on other teams we will play. But that is just fine. We have a team of young and hungry guys who have been put through the wringer. Once Cabrera gave JBatt the ok to change direction there has been a ray of sunshine on GT football. We have all felt it. The feeling we all had walking out of the stadium after the Citadel game thru the Ole Miss game has been replaced with a tingle of what may come. It’s not going to be easy and we are going to lose our share of games, but it does appear we finally have a legit D1 coaching staff, legit D1 QB’s, and skilled positions. Key and Marco just need to keep beating the bushes for the lines and we could be a team no one wants to play in a couple of years.
 

Lil G

Ramblin' Wreck
Messages
702
The in-stadium entertainment/production quality was improved in my estimation. We brought in an emcee of sorts like the pros (e.g., ATL Hawks) to hype the crowd, intro the scoreboard vids, facilitate the in-game music voting/selection, etc.

I hope that Carrie’s forward. We’ve been stuck on the same stuff that no longer engages the crowd for far too long.
Agree so much. The environment used to be borderline embarrassing imo. I wasn’t sure if my girlfriend would like it, but we were both pleasantly surprised
 

Kennethshannon20

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
321
My opinion is that its hard to draw much from a game like this. HOWEVER, it seemed clear that the offense moves quicker under H. King. Not necessarily better, just quicker which tells me he has a more clear understanding of what’s happening and less hesitation. This could very well change by September, though.

Dante still not getting many opportunities, hope that changes. But Felix is decent.

TE’s showed promise but definitely still have work to do to make the easy catches more consistently.

Rutherford is going to make an impact this year. Our WR group in general is much improved already in routes and catches.

OL still has hella work to do, there was pressure in the QBs that would definitely change the trajectory of a real game.

Missed a FG. . . Lol

Pyron needs to get a higher trajectory on his passes. Gibson is more accurate and made better decisions. Oh, and all of our QBs tend to stare down their targets.
 

takethepoints

Helluva Engineer
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6,095
I couldn't go; I got a specific invitation from my granddaughter to see her play soccer. She had two long distance shots on goal and the second almost went in. So this is just impressions from the film. And thanks for posting that link.

I think Dante is the obvious #1 RB. As said above, Felix looked ok too. Since everybody knew that the QBs weren't running, no options and it was all up to the RBs. Hard to evaluate the running game without that. At times it looked like we might be thinking about the kind of slow mesh that Wake uses. That would be nice.

It is hard to evaluate the QBs when they can't run (well, not much). All of them looked pretty good, but the Ds were limited so it becomes even harder to see who, if any, has it. One thing: Pyron is sidearming the ball on short/medium throws, sorta like Nesbitt. The coaches know best, but I'd try to stop him from doing that ASAP. Gibson also still tends to float balls to open receivers. Quit it.

I don't know why, but the TEs didn't do their jobs. For the third or fourth year in a row. Leonard is the best of them, but I was disappointed overall. Why not move Boyd over there? He's just big enough and he can catch. The WRs appear good enough to be useful. Rutherford, Moore, and Leary all looked pretty good. There were drops, however. Stop that.

The OL looked ok, but, again, the limits on the D made it very hard to see if they had improved enough.

The D looked ok too. The DBs were, generally, in position and played well. The DL didn't stand out, but they didn't give concern either. Yet again, the limits on the D made it hard to see what was going on with who.

Why did we mi9ss an FG? I thought we we're over that.
 
Last edited:

RamblinRed

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AJC write-up on the event.
Paper says that Key's 2 objectives for the game were to have no injuries and put on an offensive show for the fans in attendance.
Therefore the starters on offense were matched up against mostly backups on defense and the defense was very limited in what they were allowed to run. Defense was limited in what coverages it was allowed to run and what pressure it was allowed to exert.

“This is not indicative of the progress our defense has made, I promise you that,” Key said. “There was no blitzing, there was very basic coverage. I’ve kind of told those guys – ‘Thack,’ (linebackers coach Kevin Sherrer) – on the other side to swallow their pride a little bit, and they did that.”

Also, no flags were allowed to be thrown.

Paper said that Joe Hamilton said that King is the leader in the clubhouse for the QB job, though Key wouldn't go as far.
Overall King was 13-22 for 276 yds and 3 TD
Pyron was 11-16 for 153 yds and 1 TD
Gibson 7-12 for 106 yds and no TD's
 

Jacket20

Georgia Tech Fan
Messages
95
I couldn't go; I got a specific invitation from my granddaughter to see her play soccer. She had two long distance shots on goal and the second almost went in. So this is just impressions from the film. And thanks for posting that link.

I think Dante is the obvious #1 RB. As said above, Felix looked ok too. Since everybody knew that the QBs weren't running, no options and it was all up to the RBs. Hard to evaluate the running game without that. At times it looked like we might be thinking about the kind of slow mesh that Wake uses. That would be nice.

It is hard to evaluate the QBs when they can't run (well, not much). All of them looked pretty good, but the Ds were limited so it becomes even harder to see who, if any, has it. One thing: Pyron is sidearming the ball on short/medium throws, sorta like Nesbitt. The coaches know best, but I'd try to stop him from doing that ASAP. Gibson also still tends to float balls to open receivers. Quit it.

I don't know why, but the TEs didn't do their jobs. For the third or fourth year in a row. Leonard is the best of them, but I was disappointed overall. Why not move Boyd over there? He's just big enough and he can catch. The WRs appear good enough to be useful. Rutherford, Moore, and Leary all looked pretty good. There were drops, however. Stop that.

The OL looked ok, but, again, the limits on the D made it very hard to see if they had improved enough.

The D looked ok too. The DBs were, generally, in position and played well. The DL didn't stand out, but they didn't give concern either. Yet again, the limits on the D made it hard to see what was going on with who.

Why did we mi9ss an FG? I thought we we're over that.
I just don't understand why we can't find one tight end that can consistantly catch the ball.
 
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