Time to Bury the Asterisk?

[Techfan02]

If we can break even, we'll break even against the 18th toughest schedule in the country.

ESPN FPI ranks college football's 25 toughest schedules (247sports.com)

... Schedules weren't created equally in the ACC this season and Georgia Tech got the short end of the stick. The Yellow Jackets play Clemson, Miami and Notre Dame away from Atlanta and end the season with their annual-rivalry showdown with Georgia. That's arguably three national championship contenders on the slate for a team just trying to get to six wins and a bowl game.

There's North Carolina, Pitt and Boston College at home too, a trio of opponents who won't go away lightly. The Yellow Jackets could be an improved football team this fall, but not have the record to show for it.

You forget that georgia and clemson play division 2 schools before they play us

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

You forget that georgia and clemson play division 2 schools before they play us

FCS, not division II, but point well taken.

 

[ncjacket79]

Was any of the rest of the comments not correct? Or did we have players that had only played 3-0 offense all there life?

Touch football only?

The comments were not incorrect but the inference that they should suddenly be able to switch over and be competent in a style they weren’t recruited to play…and in many cases would not have been recruited to play is what was ridiculous. No QB, few linemen of the size required, WR who were primarily blockers in the old scheme and who didn’t run the requisite route tree, no TE, small DL, etc. Any of those comments not correct?

 

[Pointer]

The comments were not incorrect but the inference that they should suddenly be able to switch over and be competent in a style they weren’t recruited to play…and in many cases would not have been recruited to play is what was ridiculous. No QB, few linemen of the size required, WR who were primarily blockers in the old scheme and who didn’t run the requisite route tree, no TE, small DL, etc. Any of those comments not correct?

Excuses. They sound good on paper.

We basically had the same talent level on o line as bc and they did just fine last year under a first year head coach also dealing with covid. Btw one of those receivers just got drafted to the NFL so...

 

[ncjacket79]

Excuses. They sound good on paper.

We basically had the same talent level on o line as bc and they did just fine last year under a first year head coach also dealing with covid. Btw one of those receivers just got drafted to the NFL so...

That’s wrong. BC had OL recruited to play the style they played last year. But you believe what you want. To Jalen’s credit he was able to improve under the new staff and get his shot.

 

[Pointer]

That’s wrong. BC had OL recruited to play the style they played last year. But you believe what you want. To Jalen’s credit he was able to improve under the new staff and get his shot.

You know what, I ain't doing this today lol.

 

[jacketup]

Asterisk should never have been or be in place. It's not like the players that made the transition had only played 3-0 offense or only practiced
against all of their lives. Nor that tackling or catching the ball had changed overnight only for us and no one else.

I get so tired of all these posts with opinions backed up by zero facts.

The 2018 team--Johnson's last team--lost 13 starters from a team that was .500 against FBS competition--and also lost the starting QB. Those are the facts. Yes, Collins' team only won 3 games in 2019, but now I'll give you an opinion: Johnson would have won 4 games--maybe--in 2019. He saw what he had coming back, and said, I'm out of here. The change in offensive style was a factor--we really didn't have any OL suitable to play tackle in an offense that passes the ball--but the bigger issue was simply an overall lack of experience and talent. We now have at least average P5 talent, but these guys are young on one hand and, even with the transfers who have experience, they haven't played together.

I expect this to be a much improved team--barring an unusual number of injuries--by mid season or I will start questioning where we are headed. In the meantime, the posts that are running down Collins demonstrate a lack of knowledge of football generally and the Georgia Tech program specifically.

 

[Ibeeballin]

Was any of the rest of the comments not correct? Or did we have players that had only played 3-0 offense all there life?

Touch football only?

Quinney

 

[Ibeeballin]

Excuses. They sound good on paper.

We basically had the same talent level on o line as bc and they did just fine last year under a first year head coach also dealing with covid. Btw one of those receivers just got drafted to the NFL so...

lol what? Y’all just say anything on this forum now that it’s unreadable.

What OL did fine?

 

[Pointer]

lol what? Y’all just say anything on this forum now that it’s unreadable.

What OL did fine?

See the million other times we've gone over this for my previous response, which btw hasn't changed.

Back to the original question, yes asterisk is firmly buried, laid to rest, sealed in a tomb, never to come back, not even if there was a zombie apocalypse. Time for the coaches to start putting some of their promises on the field (which I believe they can do without all these lame excuses). It's put up or shut up time.

Edit:
Since I know you pretty well and you will demand proof here you go.

Bc ranked at 21 on offensive line

Gt coming it at 123.

 

[LibertyTurns]

Ostrich crowd doesn’t like the statistics but if anyone else is interested here’s unbiased metrics that strip off the garbage games & garbage possessions.

2020 COLLEGE FOOTBALL OFFENSIVE LINE STATS | Football Outsiders

through games of Monday 1/11/21 Offense Line Yards Rk Std. Downs Line Yards Rk Pass. Downs Line Yards

www.footballoutsiders.com

 

[Pointer]

Ostrich crowd doesn’t like the statistics but if anyone else is interested here’s unbiased metrics that strip off the garbage games & garbage possessions.

2020 COLLEGE FOOTBALL OFFENSIVE LINE STATS | Football Outsiders

through games of Monday 1/11/21 Offense Line Yards Rk Std. Downs Line Yards Rk Pass. Downs Line Yards

www.footballoutsiders.com

Not sure if the ostrich thing is directed at me, but by all measures Boston College had a much more successful season and its hard to argue against their O-Line performing better than ours.

Taking a look at their record, they were 6-5 overall.

They put up plenty of points on most of their schedule (including factories).

Their loses (minus Virginia Tech) were all respectable (even against Clemson only lost by one score... ouch). They also played one more ranked team then we did, otherwise schedules were pretty identical.

I won't put our record up here cause it still stings.

But hey, nowhere to go but up from here. Sims got a rough year under his belt, hopefully the game starts to slow down for him. RB's look straight up nasty. Lots of additions in areas everyone has been complaining about (rightfully or wrongfully so). Doesn't mean we become unbeatable overnight, but I think there's enough there to go bowling at least, even with a tough schedule.

 

[LibertyTurns]

@GTRanj2 Not at you directly, just in general. We’re all GT fans on here outside of the occasional visitor & I’m guessing mostly successful people in their respective fields. We use analytics daily, monitor trends, etc and drive increasing better performance results In our businesses.

Then comes GT football & all measures of analysis go out the window. Consider the years 2016-2018 vs 2019-2020. You’ve already pointed out a disconnect. How could an OL have the capability of performing better yet the results are worse?

When people are looking at your businesses you see inherent biases. You want Timmy to perform well, you like Timmy, but Timmy’s performance is declining. You know what Timmy is probably a dwag & you’re gonna be a lot better off realizing that earlier on than suffering thru years of Timmy not getting it.

Not saying that’s going on here but for example there’s absolutely no reason for our OL run blocking to plummet. Consider pass blocking & the percentage of times we did that in past years season to season and our relative performance. Look at 2015 data for example where we were decimated with injuries in order to get a baseline of how bad it should ever be. Probably should be a floor in performance. We should never be substantially below that.

The data is there. It drives you to the root cause. Someone’s driving the bus and that person plus staff beneath him are not just performing poorly with a re-engineered line, they are performing as if they have no clue what they’re doing. I think you know who I’m referring to. It’s going to be CGC’s undoing unless this dude magically figures it out or he hits the eject button very soon.

Whatever will happen will happen and I’m along for the ride. Just sad to see our kids suffer at the expense of making excuses for the weak link in the chain because a mistake was made & pride gets in the way of doing what’s needed. It’s what most of us do in our businesses unless we’re wanting to fail. I like GT being competitive & having a chance to beat everyone on our schedule. It used to be that way this entire century.

 

[4shotB]

@GTRanj2 You want Timmy to perform well, you like Timmy, but Timmy’s performance is declining. You know what Timmy is probably a dwag & you’re gonna be a lot better off realizing that earlier on than suffering thru years of Timmy not getting it.

While I appreciate your analytical thinking, what if you inherited a bunch of Timmy's under their previous boss who performed well previously but are now being asked to do different tasks by you? You cannot fire all your Timmy's and replace them at will with people who have the talents and skill set you want. Eventually you turn over staff, train and develop and you get the performance you want.

Like you, I am along for the ride one way or the other. CGC will either right the ship or he won't. But people were ready to give up on CJP and it appears he has righted the ship in hoops. Simlarly, I think it is much too soon to draw any conclusions about our FB situation although I do expect to see a more 'polished" product on the field this fall. This doesn't happen quickly as much as we want it to be so.

 

[slugboy]

Not sure if the ostrich thing is directed at me, but by all measures Boston College had a much more successful season and its hard to argue against their O-Line performing better than ours.

Taking a look at their record, they were 6-5 overall.
View attachment 10655
They put up plenty of points on most of their schedule (including factories).

Their loses (minus Virginia Tech) were all respectable (even against Clemson only lost by one score... ouch). They also played one more ranked team then we did, otherwise schedules were pretty identical.

I won't put our record up here cause it still stings.

But hey, nowhere to go but up from here. Sims got a rough year under his belt, hopefully the game starts to slow down for him. RB's look straight up nasty. Lots of additions in areas everyone has been complaining about (rightfully or wrongfully so). Doesn't mean we become unbeatable overnight, but I think there's enough there to go bowling at least, even with a tough schedule.

I’m not sure why we’re comparing our O-Line in year two to Boston College’s. Maybe it’s oversold (and I think it is), but BC has a reputation of grooming and growing NFL-ready linemen. Haven’t they been running essentially the same blocking scheme for twenty years?
At the beginning of the season last year, BC’s line was considered one of the ACC’s best, if not the best (which is a tall order). They’ve had years of consistent training in technique and physical conditioning. Even if they had some younger linemen, they have the ability to be in a “get old-stay old” format on their lines. We haven’t had that ability, since we’ve only been in this scheme for two years. Year 4 or 5 of Key will be the first real “get old-stay old” year at Tech.
To me, FSU is a better comparison. We are both in an offensive line transition—theirs, because Jimbo Fisher left the cupboard bare, ours because we had a massive scheme change and we also graduated and lost key players on the offensive line. FSU started their transition in 2017. Geoff Collins started in 2019. Even though FSU is two years ahead of us in reworking their offensive line, they seem similar in progression to me. It feels like they’re one year ahead of us in rebuilding their offensive line, even though they started two years earlier.

 

[ncjacket79]

@GTRanj2 Not at you directly, just in general. We’re all GT fans on here outside of the occasional visitor & I’m guessing mostly successful people in their respective fields. We use analytics daily, monitor trends, etc and drive increasing better performance results In our businesses.

Then comes GT football & all measures of analysis go out the window. Consider the years 2016-2018 vs 2019-2020. You’ve already pointed out a disconnect. How could an OL have the capability of performing better yet the results are worse?

When people are looking at your businesses you see inherent biases. You want Timmy to perform well, you like Timmy, but Timmy’s performance is declining. You know what Timmy is probably a dwag & you’re gonna be a lot better off realizing that earlier on than suffering thru years of Timmy not getting it.

Not saying that’s going on here but for example there’s absolutely no reason for our OL run blocking to plummet. Consider pass blocking & the percentage of times we did that in past years season to season and our relative performance. Look at 2015 data for example where we were decimated with injuries in order to get a baseline of how bad it should ever be. Probably should be a floor in performance. We should never be substantially below that.

The data is there. It drives you to the root cause. Someone’s driving the bus and that person plus staff beneath him are not just performing poorly with a re-engineered line, they are performing as if they have no clue what they’re doing. I think you know who I’m referring to. It’s going to be CGC’s undoing unless this dude magically figures it out or he hits the eject button very soon.

Whatever will happen will happen and I’m along for the ride. Just sad to see our kids suffer at the expense of making excuses for the weak link in the chain because a mistake was made & pride gets in the way of doing what’s needed. It’s what most of us do in our businesses unless we’re wanting to fail. I like GT being competitive & having a chance to beat everyone on our schedule. It used to be that way this entire century.

Exhibit #1 that something can be well written and sound reasonable yet be off base.

 

[SOWEGA Jacket]

I like GT being competitive & having a chance to beat everyone on our schedule. It used to be that way this entire century.

I agree with everything you said except this last line. In no way is or was this true. Their have been many games where we knew going in (even with our optimistic gold colored glasses) that we had little chance to win the game. Sure, we could because in sports you always have a chance but to paint it like us getting manhandled is something new is just not accurate.

I’ve stated before I think we may struggle this coming season, but I can also see us pulling a win or two from games no one expects us to (like the 2015 FSU game). So going in to this season I feel much the same as I have for the last 20 years - if our QB plays well and our defense can make a few plays then we have a shot. If our QB throws 2 or more picks or we are forced to run 31 QB keepers then we’ll probably lose. But I will say I was always at my most confident when Johnson was facing a FCS team. I knew that would be a butt kicking.

 

[Ibeeballin]

I’m still baffled by the BC comp. You keep talking BC talent on the OL yet when someone mentioned those guy were getting P5 offers coming out of HS unlike our core guys, you scoffed at it.

Even the FSU example is not a great bc they still did not have the scorch the earth and learn foreign task like “How to get in a stance?”

By @LibertyTurns logic of run blocking is run blocking, a civil engineer should seamlessly transition into aerospace engineer and still perform at a high level. There is nuances to the game of football which makes it so beautiful yet so complicated that a special skill set for it.

 

[Pointer]

I’m not sure why we’re comparing our O-Line in year two to Boston College’s. Maybe it’s oversold (and I think it is), but BC has a reputation of grooming and growing NFL-ready linemen. Haven’t they been running essentially the same blocking scheme for twenty years?
At the beginning of the season last year, BC’s line was considered one of the ACC’s best, if not the best (which is a tall order). They’ve had years of consistent training in technique and physical conditioning. Even if they had some younger linemen, they have the ability to be in a “get old-stay old” format on their lines. We haven’t had that ability, since we’ve only been in this scheme for two years. Year 4 or 5 of Key will be the first real “get old-stay old” year at Tech.
To me, FSU is a better comparison. We are both in an offensive line transition—theirs, because Jimbo Fisher left the cupboard bare, ours because we had a massive scheme change and we also graduated and lost key players on the offensive line. FSU started their transition in 2017. Geoff Collins started in 2019. Even though FSU is two years ahead of us in reworking their offensive line, they seem similar in progression to me. It feels like they’re one year ahead of us in rebuilding their offensive line, even though they started two years earlier.

I get that and that's a logical view. I always appreciate your rational and thoughtful approaches to your responses. But if you look at GT's line from 2019 and last year, most of the players really only played in the old offense for a year or two. If you look at bc's line, it was pretty much the same thing with a couple of freshmen (I think true freshmen sprinkled in) as well. Then if you go and look at their ranking, height, weight, you'll see that those were also pretty similar. If you look at our line least year, there's even less players who had significant time in the old system. Further If you remember, the last few years before CPJ left, we were getting bigger and bigger on O line. I think I'm also right in saying we certainly had the pieces this last season to have better than the 123rd offensive line in the country (not saying we should have been top 25, but come on). What is also interesting is that the staff has come in and claimed they want to run ""NFL offense and defense" and "run plays that take advantage of players strengths", it kind of has me scratching my head as to what the hell we are doing then if they truly believe (which I don't) that the jimmies we have are so bad and completely inept at blocking the way we are asking. There's a disconnect here between what is said, and done, as well as truths and misinformation regarding players abilities.
It just stinks of the same ideology currently in the pros of blowing it all up to start from scratch, which if you go look at said pro teams, it usually does not work out. Teams like the Patriots, Miami Heat, Spurs... They want to continue winning. They take their lumps in down years, but they get back to competitive form much more rapidly than teams who blow it up and start from scratch. Not saying that they don't change direction or change their style of play or whatever, they have. The difference is that they have done it more gradually with the key ideology of always trying to be the most competitive they possibly could be along the way, instead of the mindset of we're welcome losing now, but one day when everything is perfect we'll win. I'm sorry, I can't get behind that. I was at least happy to see cgc angry towards the end of the year, at least there's some sign of wanting to win. I'm just tired of all the excuses.

I think some fans see that it's not so much the players not fitting what we are trying to do (not saying this is not the case, because it somewhat is) but it's also, maybe moreso, the staff generally not having much experience at this level. I'm just so tried of constantly hearing the excuses of it's all the players fault, we didn't have this and we didn't have that. Maybe our coaches weren't all ready for this level yet? That's fine too because we have a certain budget and we can afford what we can afford. That may mean we need more patience to get them up to speed, which is also fine. Two things however, continuing to have less than 5 win seasons should be unacceptable and people need to quit blaming the whole situation on players because it's a lame excuse.

 

[Pointer]

I’m still baffled by the BC comp. You keep talking BC talent on the OL yet when someone mentioned those guy were getting P5 offers coming out of HS unlike our core guys, you scoffed at it...

For the hundredth time, by that posters own logic, those players put their top choices in the top four. If they really had offers from p5, why would they not list those instead of East Carolina and such?

Edit: btw I've been working in aerospace for several years now and I can assure you there's plenty of areas where civil engineers would excel in the field right away (and do for that matter, I work with a few people with civil degrees). Aircrafts have framework as well. It's all a matter of putting people in a position to be successful.