Tech in Birmingham Bowl

[awbuzz]

At least we basketball season to look forward too

Yikes

 

[danny daniel]

I believe it's to fit in with the university requirements for student athlete transfers, for being in for spring semester.

The portal really wasn't set up to work well with the season or university requirements

A solution in the right direction as others have pointed out is to move the portal to late May/early June to avoid the December coaching changes, Bowl games, early signing of freshmen, and the playoffs. Veterans missing spring practice would be the cost of abandoning your team.

 

[bobongo]

I really don't get it. It's a huge issue and nobody ever really talks about it. I think it's his biggest weakness and it's obvious.

Brent has lots of strengths, but time management is one glaringly obvious weakness he needs to fix.
Agree with declining the holding penalty, though. That was a good time management decision. You don't want to give them another play to run off more clock.

 

[CEB]

I was also wondering why we were holding onto TO's at the end of the first half tbh. Vandy sorta bailed us out with their Tech-like sequence of consecutive penalties so the problem sorta "disappeared" but it almost bit us their at the end. Vandy allowed 10 or 115 precious seconds to tick off by making their defensive substitions.

This is the glaring one I noticed too.
We had two or three TO when we subbed with a running clock. Vandy smartly subbed, took their time doing it and took the clock from about 1:20 to just about a minute. Stole nearly 20 seconds when we were a long way from even FG range. If we had only one TO, maybe we hang on to it, but I didn’t understand that decision with multiple TO

ETA- I don’t want to but I may have to look back. I feel like they stole a whole lot more than 10-15 sec. Had we not substituted I think we could’ve preserved 20+. A time out certainly would’ve saved 15+

 

[Root4GT]

EDIT to supersede the below: it seems like, Root, you think I’m saying “they play down to their competition” as some sort of good thing about the team? Like I’m overly optimistic? An inflated sense of how good the team is? It’s not. It’s a bad thing. I hope you’re right, frankly, because then things can be fixed by the talent Key is bringing in. I think there are some persistent deeper coaching failures that could continue to cost the team if Key can’t fix them.

It’s… two games? Not 1? Unless you’re only counting the head to head ones, but that would be silly.

My claim was “GT plays down to the level of the opponent” so the closeness of those UNC and NCST games tells us nothing about if GT was actually much better than those two. “They don’t play down, they just aren’t that good, because they didn’t beat them by much” is circular.

So we have to look at the other games UNC and NCST played. Because those games being close is built into both of our claims.

And they look… not great. Neither team had any wins suggesting as high a ceiling as GT’s best win (or even close to GT’s best loss). Both teams had worse losses than GT.

If you don’t want to take my eye test’s word for it, FPI has GT 6th in the ACC and UNC 12th, NCST 13th. Similar story by overall efficiency. https://www.espn.com/college-football/fpi/_/group/1

Still waiting to hear why your “but the overall record is close!” wouldn’t also apply to Duke/UGA if it applies to GT/UNC blindly. Replace Charlotte and JMU with ND and UGA for UNC and get back to me on that too. Replace NIU with UGA for NCST. You’re using overall record because it fits your argument, but it has some holes.

Duke played well this season. They were 5-3 in the ACC, same as GT and better than UNC/NCST. Duke clearly had an easier OOC schedule than GT. Their 2 hardest OOC games were Northwestern and UCONN as compared to UGA and ND. Your argument on Duke's record is without merit.

WE played great against Georgia and had many chances to win. That is about as good as GT can play on any given day. We are not at the level where we can play 12 games at that level. We simply do not have the talent across the board or the depth to do it weekly.

CBK seems to be bringing in more talent each year. I doubt we ever get to Georgia's talent level but we can get to the talent level where we can compete with everyone on our schedule and survive injuries. We could not survive the injury to King in both the ND and VT games.

As an aside no team plays every game at their top level. In the final 8 playoff teams ND lost to NIU. Texas beat Vandy by 3 points, UGA beat Kentucky 13-12 and those are off the top of my head. I suspect the other teams had similar games.

Playing down in my view would have been against GAST or VMI. You could say we played down against FSU. I would not as they were not yet a broken team.

I would classify Vandy as a peer team as well this year.

 

[Root4GT]

I am torn on the question of how much we are going to miss him tbh. Obviously he was a starter so he was better than the guys behind him. Next year will be telling - is he a Nate McCollum/Amerean Brown or is he a Jared Ivey/Kyle Kennard type of loss. I will say this about Diego Pava - I had perceived him in my limited observations as a Josh Nesbitt/Tim Tebow style QB, But he threw some really nice balls last night. If Vandy had Bama's receivers, their O would be unstoppable )same might be said about ours as well).

Hopefully the inbound guys from FIU will offset the loss of Singleton. I think that is a real possibility. His loss stood out yesterday as we really struggled getting chunk plays in the passing game. Some of that is likely due to King's injury that does not appear to be fully healed.

 

[billga99]

Hopefully the inbound guys from FIU will offset the loss of Singleton. I think that is a real possibility. His loss stood out yesterday as we really struggled getting chunk plays in the passing game. Some of that is likely due to King's injury that does not appear to be fully healed.

I also think it hurt Rutherford's effectiveness being the #1 Receiver and Vanderbilt not having to worry about Singleton's deep threat. They could clamp down on Rutherford more than any other time this year.

 

[Root4GT]

I also think it hurt Rutherford's effectiveness being the #1 Receiver and Vanderbilt not having to worry about Singleton's deep threat. They could clamp down on Rutherford more than any other time this year.

I 100% agree with this line of thought. Rutherford and Singleton are different receivers but their skill level in college games is about the same. There is a significant drop off from their level to the "Next Man Up" in our receiver group! That was evident yesterday.

 

[Dinner_Jacket]

Anyone feel like maybe Key should have used Philo to provide a spark late in the 2nd quarter?
It looked like King had no zip on his passes.
The interception was a really good play by Vandy; not sure if a “fastball“ would have changed that outcome or not.
I was honestly shocked at the size of Vandy’s offensive and defensive lines.
Tech needs more beef and speed on the defensive line.

 

[IslandsofGaunilo]

Pavia running loose on multiple third downs pissed me off more than the referees. I’m ashamed to admit that during the game I was hoping one of our players would knock his *** out.

 

[4shotB]

Pavia running loose on multiple third downs pissed me off more than the referees. I’m ashamed to admit that during the game I was hoping one of our players would knock his *** out.

My thinking when watching him was “ this must be how other teams feel playing against a healthy Haynes King”.

 

[SOWEGA Jacket]

My thinking when watching him was “ this must be how other teams feel playing against a healthy Haynes King”.

Then why did we play him? If you watched body language their QB would jump up, fire up his guys, etc. King is a solid college QB, but he had zero pep and looked like grandpa limping around. There would have been nothing wrong with giving the game to Philo.

 

[4shotB]

Then why did we play him? If you watched body language their QB would jump up, fire up his guys, etc. King is a solid college QB, but he had zero pep and looked like grandpa limping around. There would have been nothing wrong with giving the game to Philo.

A solid college QB? We differ on our assessment of him. When healthy he’s at the top of the food chain amongst his peers imo. So is their guy btw. I don’t think there are any better in the playoffs than these guys. I am admittedly biased however.

 

[Dinner_Jacket]

Then why did we play him? If you watched body language their QB would jump up, fire up his guys, etc. King is a solid college QB, but he had zero pep and looked like grandpa limping around. There would have been nothing wrong with giving the game to Philo.

I’m with you on Philo.
Vandy never had to worry about Tech throwing anything further than 10 yard passes.
No threat whatsoever for throwing a deep ball.
Behind the line of scrimmage, sideline passes have been way too predictable from King.
Play to freaking win dadgummit!
Get our dang cowbell back too!!

 

[dressedcheeseside]

Missing 3 starters on D was a huge problem for us, especially stopping the QB improvised runs. But the biggest disappointment was the ineffectiveness of the OL. We got pushed around on both LOS.

Lack of creative play calling was disappointing, as well.

 

[awbuzz]

Missing 3 starters on D was a huge problem for us, especially stopping the QB improvised runs. But the biggest disappointment was the ineffectiveness of the OL. We got pushed around on both LOS.

Lack of creative play calling was disappointing, as well.

Hard to be creative when their d-line was eating our lunch.

 

[MtnWasp]

Wins and losses are strongly correlated to turnover margin and chunk plays.

Vandy took shots down the field and got Pass Interference calls. Whereas we just kept trying the wide receiver flat passes. Loss of Singleton hurt but I thought two or three shots to Avery Boyd would have been viable.

 

[Mattmc10]

Disappointing end to a season that I can only think what could have been.

I had no issue with the defense. We gave up 14 points with 3 minutes left in the 3rd qtr when we got a stop robbed from us from a horrible PI call. They were playing better in the 3rd quarter before the implosion. It should have been 3 straight punts with only 2 first downs.

The reaction to that was bubbling for the past 3 weeks and was going to come out of with any type of over the top adversity. We had our hearts ripped out in athens in a brutal way. I haven’t gotten over it, it was clear the team wasn’t over it. A game in Birmingham against Vandy wasn't going to take away the hurt from the game before.

Then the 3rd quarter happened. I had no issue with it. The refs totally changed the game in 5 minutes. We let our frustration out in a meaningless game. Key lost his mind after seeing junk calls two straight games.

Before that somehow we hung around in a bad consolation game with little to play for and were in a spot to win heading with 17 minutes to play.

It is what it is.

The only thing I hope we learn from this game is clock management. It’s horrible and completely frustrating.

I’m looking forward to next year. We have the right people leading the school, the athletic department, and the football team.

Give’em hell.

 

[gtie73]

Wins and losses are strongly correlated to turnover margin and chunk plays.

Vandy took shots down the field and got Pass Interference calls. Whereas we just kept trying the wide receiver flat passes. Loss of Singleton hurt but I thought two or three shots to Avery Boyd would have been viable.

Vandy played 3 safeties . Kinda limits the downfield stuff. We got burned with the interception against this coverage. Majority of open throws were the flats.

 

[stinger78]

Vandy played 3 safeties . Kinda limits the downfield stuff. We got burned with the interception against this coverage. Majority of open throws were the flats.

That’s the way we are played by most cogent teams now. Shut it off deep, stuff the inside zone, and force us wide.