Tech in Birmingham Bowl

[stinger78]

I’m suffering under a heavy load of guilt and shame about the whole thing so go gentle with me.

 

[4shotB]

Lots of things were bad today. I'm not gonna rehash what happened because we pretty much all saw it. This game just wasn't meant to be. It be like that sometimes.

Id like to bring attention to something nobody really likes to talk about. A glaring issue that has been a problem since BK's first game coaching...

Brent Key has awful game clock management. Awful in game coaching decisions. Y'all, it's bad. And it's cost us multiple opportunities in multiple games at this point. I love the guy but time and time again I've seen us waste precious minutes of clock just lollygagging around. Then bad decisions leading us to burn timeouts unnecessarily. We declined a holding penalty after the lightning delay? AM I MISTAKEN?! WE DECLINED A HOLDING PENALTY WHILE TRYING TO MOUNT A COMEBACK?!

cmon man. This has to be improved for him. It's pretty much my only bone to pick with Brent Key. I love his energy and passion and love for Tech. But damn dude. This stuff has to improve if we want to give ourselves a shot at bigger goals.


Now starts the long off-season. Go Jackets

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.

 

[SOWEGA Jacket]

One team prepared to stop what the other team did well and succeeded. The other team let their opponent do exactly what they were good at. The one who prepared won.

I watched 1 Vandy game all year and I knew exactly how they would use their QB. And they did exactly that and we had no answer after 3 weeks of practice for this game.

 

[4shotB]

Anyone who thinks Singleton not playing didn’t matter is simply being obstinacy. He is a difference maker.

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).

 

[billga99]

i think we were fired up in the bowl game last year since very few or mo players had beeb before. Vanderbilt had not been to a bowl for many years and their excitement and intensity showed

 

[awbuzz]

I noticed how well they tackled. those dismissing Vandy are living in past paradigms. That team in the ACC would be a threat.

I told my son that it's almost like they had Velcro hands and stuck to you if you were close enough to grab. Their D played pretty darn good.

 

[awbuzz]

There was a blatant hold on their oline on the same play that our db got called for a defensive hold. It was egregious, but it went uncalled, and the announcers didn’t say a word either.

100%, iirc it was Biggers, should have been offsetting.

 

[57jacket]

https://www.ajc.com/sports/ken-sugiura/officiating-in-georgia-techs-bowl-game-awful-but-jackets-response-didnt-help-matters/AVST7EUMINDUPDIYZ3G3WMOU6M/

 

[wvGT11]

I'm still pissed at the officiating this morning BUT as key keeps saying, control what you can control...

Maybe it was some of the players we lost to the portal, or Haynes Kings injury, who knows, but something just was off yesterday. This team has so much potential to be a great team but something just isn't there yet. It's frustrating to see, we have all the right pieces now.

Hopefully next season we finally snap out of this 7-6 streak and actually play to our potential.



More than anything, it really shows to me how low we fell during the Collins years and how much of a mountain we have had to climb to get back

 

[stinger78]

I'm still pissed at the officiating this morning BUT as key keeps saying, control what you can control...

Maybe it was some of the players we lost to the portal, or Haynes Kings injury, who knows, but something just was off yesterday. This team has so much potential to be a great team but something just isn't there yet. It's frustrating to see, we have all the right pieces now.

Hopefully next season we finally snap out of this 7-6 streak and actually play to our potential.



More than anything, it really shows to me how low we fell during the Collins years and how much of a mountain we have had to climb to get back

Streak? We barely have a trend.

 

[awbuzz]

You just missed having me in that picture. We were down at field level watching warm ups.

I'll try and do better next time

 

[GT33]

We had no answer for their QB and they did a good job defending ours.

There were 2 mins left in the 3rd quarter, on 3 drives in the 2nd half Vandy had managed a measly 32 yds on 14 plays which is a whopping 2.3 yds/play. They eked out two 1st downs on those 3 drives. 28 of those yds came on 3 plays giving them the only first downs they earned. I’d say our 2nd half defensive adjustments pretty much had stopped Vandy dead in their tracks but out came the hankies and they were gifted a TD.

We not only had an answer for Vandy’s offense, they were completely shut down and could not move the ball on their own.

Maybe we make mistakes like the INT we threw or Rutherford’s fumble, but those are on us. That’s one team making a play and the other one having a bad play. What happened here was not that. Key’s poor clock management is on us. Leaving an injured King in too long is on us. Perhaps we should have been able to make every move perfectly and overcome all the adversity? We’re just not that much better than them or most teams for that matter, so these types of scenarios are game changers instead of margin of victory things.

The Refs went to wherever they went during the rain delay, no doubt got on their phones and saw what they had done. We got a few make up calls down the stretch to “even things out” but that’s little consolation to our team that got shafted 2 games in a row now.

Could have been 9-4, ranked, much momentum going into next year. Ended up 7-6 and a disappointing end to what should been viewed as a launching pad year.

 

[MWBATL]

I’ll wade through these comments in my leisure, as I feel like it, but I did not watch the whole game due to social obligations. When I turned the game on Tech was slightly behind but gaining momentum. Vandy was forced to punt and interfered with the receiver. Bizarrely it was not called and Tech was forced to play out of their own end zone. It looked like a game changing blunder by the refs so I turned off the game after that. There are some bad calls (witness the uga game) that you just don’t recover from unless you’re playing a very bad team.

Still optimistic about the future. And surely our run of bad refereeing will eventually end.

Good take and the only thing you missed is that on the ensuing Vandy possession, the refs called PI on GT when absolutely NO ONE thought it was PI. That 3rd down call added to Vandy momentum allowing them to keep the ball instead of punting. Key went berserk and got a 15 years unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on that call as well.
Game over.

 

[awbuzz]

Watching the game today I realized a couple of things.

1- ES was more important to our offense than the passes he actually caught. You can never ignore a talent like his.

2- We don't have enough depth on our defense to lose 3-4 starters and still compete at the same level.

3- The bottom line? The portal and injuries hurt us today. Much more than they hurt Vandy.

Just a technical point, you made three points, not a couple!

I bolded the two that struck deep and were what killed us.

Regarding those that bolted from their "Brothers", i.e. went into the portal and abandoned their teammates when they could have delayed announcement until today, December 28th which was the deadline to announce, ... Never mind, some things are better left unsaid...

 

[bobongo]

Vandy allowed 10 or 115 precious seconds to tick off by making their defensive substitions.

If I understand it correctly, that seems to be a problem with the substitution rules. If an offense is lined up and ready to go, the clock should stop until the defense gets its players on and off the field. The defense shouldn't be allowed to drain the clock that way by lollygagging.

 

[bobongo]

Regarding those that bolted from their "Brothers", i.e. went into the portal and abandoned their teammates when they could have delayed announcement until today, December 28th which was the deadline to announce, ... Never mind, some things are better left unsaid...

Is there a cogent reason why the portal is open through half of the bowl season? Why can't the portal open the day after the bowls are all played? Why the rush?

 

[wvGT11]

Is there a cogent reason why the portal is open through half of the bowl season? Why can't the portal open the day after the bowls are all played? Why the rush?

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

 

[gtee91]

If I understand it correctly, that seems to be a problem with the substitution rules. If an offense is lined up and ready to go, the clock should stop until the defense gets its players on and off the field. The defense shouldn't be allowed to drain the clock that way by lollygagging.

I am pretty sure we would have been flagged for slow substitution had the teams been reversed...I have seen it called before

 

[CEB]

I’m suffering under a heavy load of guilt and shame about the whole thing so go gentle with me.

I suppose laughter is not the correct response… it doesn’t feel like a ha ha moment…they don’t have a preprogrammed emoji that feels appropriate right now…

 

[Techster]

Obviously bad calls by the ref didn't help, but King's interception and Rutherford's fumble in the middle of the field hurt us more than anything else. Oh, and our inability to tackle comes back to bite us.

Not much more to say about this game. We just looked off on defense and offense. This actually could have been a very special season with a few breaks....a 9-10 win season and a win over UGA. That's just how it goes sometimes.

I'm turning the page to 2025. Not much to be said about this glorified exhibition that hasn't already been said.