But he put the blame squarely on his shoulders, promising to get back to the drawing board in preparation for the Panthers, who come into
Bobby Dodd 4-1, 2-0 in ACC play, with their lone loss coming by a field goal in Week Three at 6-0, No. 17 Iowa.
“My deal this week is we’re going back to basics, and we’re going to go back and keep learning,” said Johnson. “You have to do that with the young guys. You can’t just throw them more and more stuff because they’re still trying to digest the other stuff. We’ve just got to do it better at a higher level and be consistent.
"You go back and you practice the plays that you run and practice the offense,” he added. “When you line up, and you are trying to run an option play, and the kids can't tell the difference between a 50 defense or a 4-3 or a 6-1, you've got issues. If you can't look and see if the guard’s covered or uncovered, you've got issues. So you go just back to basics, you keep repping it and hope that they do that. If you try to load the read-key and you load the pitch-key, you've got issues. We've got to do a better job of coaching that up. It comes back to me. We’ve got to coach it better. Same thing on defense. It’s not just on offense. Trust me.”
Johnson doesn’t want to see is a loss of confidence in themselves or trying to do too much and abandoning the principles of the offense.
"The worst thing that you can do when things aren't going well is throw the baby out with the bathwater and just panic,” he said. “We're not bad on third downs because of the scheme. We led the nation and set an all-time record last year running the same plays. We've got to do them at a higher efficiency and play better. And, it doesn't do any good to add more plays and add more stuff when you can't do the basics of what you are doing right.
Johnson was encouraged by the team’s fight in the second half against Clemson, the kind of effort that has kept them in every game.
“I don’t think anybody’s ready to give up. We still have half the season left,” he said. “Really, there is a thin line between winning and losing. You could make a case, maybe not the last game, but you could make a case in almost every other game where if a play goes this way or that way, we could have won those games, especially the Duke game and North Carolina. Even Notre Dame. We don't get the touchdown called back, that's 16-13 in the third quarter and you're in the game. But, you know if ifs and buts were candy and nuts. It doesn't happen. You have got to make it happen.”
