What I'll miss about Tech football … and what I hope to see

takethepoints

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I'll come right out and say I wanted Monken but I wasn't either blown away or discouraged by our choice of Coach. He's a good candidate and I hope he does well. But there are things I'll miss about Paul's offense:

• I'll miss hearing our opponents bellyaching about how Tech was their most physical game of the year. I'm an old school OL and it was nice to hear them complaining about actually being hit for once. And facing complex blocking schemes that can change literally from play to play.

• I'll miss watching an offense that was designed to produce success instead of depending on having great players at the skill positions who can out-athlete the defenders. I particularly enj0yed a Pitt player's response when he was asked pre-season if he feared anyone in particular in Tech's lineup. Quoth he (I'm paraphrasing), "No. Everyone they run onto the field is as good as the last guy you had to face. They just keep coming at you."

• I'll miss watching an offensive that was actually deceptive and required an investment of time to learn to watch. Watching our games was an analytical as well as an emotional experience. The way people around here would complain about what a play on film actually was and the analysis provided by Longest, in particular, made watching Tech play really engaging. (Btw, I think this is 0ne reason some around here didn't like the TO. Most fanbases can simply gloat about how good or lament about how bad their players are without having to think about it much. The much anticipated "sidewalk fans" are like this, of course.)

• I'll miss seeing a team with regularly lower recruiting rankings whip supposedly superior teams because the players fit a system that was both hard to figure out and optimized their talents.

• I'll miss things like the last 6 minutes of the UVA game this year. Where we got ahead, held on to the ball, and watched the other side slowly come to terms with the fact that they would never get the ball again.

As to the D and special teams … well, I won't miss that all that much.

As to what I hope to see:

• I hope we actually do see an uptick in recruiting and in the basis of it: more money for the football program. I'm not sure there is actually a big pool of high ranking recruits waiting to play football for Tech that was held back by the TO. Could be, however, and if we put the money into it we might see an uptick in our recruiting, despite the greater level of competition for those players. As a recent analysis here has shown, better attendance and higher donations could get us past our present barriers. Then it is up to Coach.

• More consistent and better Ds. Coach is a D maven and should be able to insure higher levels of play and more consistency from year to year. This is what I'm looking for first from the new regime.

• An offense that will utilize the players we still have so the disruption in the roster will be minimized. Something like UVA runs would do the trick, I thin; we have several Perkins clones on roster. We can start fooling around with other schemes as the recruiting matures. (An example of what I mean: Let Owens play both ways. He was a crusher at TE in high school and two TE sets a la Stanford with him and (probably) Camp occasionally would be quite interesting to watch.)

• OL play that turns to drive blocking and doesn't "push and dance" to get the job done. Keep hitting them hard, in other words.

Well, that should be enough to sustain present levels of success. Then we can build off of that, provided that we all pony up. Now.
 

4shotB

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Like you, I loved a lot about CPJ and his offense. WTBS, it seemed to have a lot of moving pieces and parts such that the phrase "when the leaves start turning, the offense starts churning" was used frequently. I know that was somewhat TIC, but unfortunately we do play several games before peak leaf season. I also want an O that isn't dependent on good weather conditions, because sometimes games are played in the rain and the slop. (Didn't we say we would have won in Miami if it hadn't started to rain in '17?) Another, I don't want a system that it takes a QB 2-3 years in the system to get familiar with it, then leave after 1-2 years in the system. I saw two FR QB's in last years natty. A FR QB wasn't likely to play in Paul's system because of the complexity. Again, there WAS a lot to like (I generally applaud his 4 downs to go 10 yards mindset, even if it didn't always work)...but these were the things that I won't miss.
 

Yaller Jacket

Ramblin' Wreck
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955
This could be fun.

Here's one of each for now.
  • I'm gonna miss: around every other game on average the defense forgets an A back is a receiver and one is wide open running down the field and all we have to do is throw him the ball.
  • I'll enjoy seeing: without the emphasis on blocking, maybe we can have deep threat wide receivers again.
 

Andewa

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
257
I will miss the offense as well as CPJ's *insanely* adept play calling.

Anyone remember the game against Vanderbilt a few years back? Our first offensive play was a touchdown. When asked about it, CPJ responded with something like "Well I was walking around before the game, and I saw their corners doing (some type of) footwork drills, and I was like 'okay, if that's the coverage you're going to use, I can work with that.' "
 
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Like you, I loved a lot about CPJ and his offense. WTBS, it seemed to have a lot of moving pieces and parts such that the phrase "when the leaves start turning, the offense starts churning" was used frequently. I know that was somewhat TIC, but unfortunately we do play several games before peak leaf season. I also want an O that isn't dependent on good weather conditions, because sometimes games are played in the rain and the slop. (Didn't we say we would have won in Miami if it hadn't started to rain in '17?) Another, I don't want a system that it takes a QB 2-3 years in the system to get familiar with it, then leave after 1-2 years in the system. I saw two FR QB's in last years natty. A FR QB wasn't likely to play in Paul's system because of the complexity. Again, there WAS a lot to like (I generally applaud his 4 downs to go 10 yards mindset, even if it didn't always work)...but these were the things that I won't miss.
The ironic thing to mean about those rain games last year is that under Pepper, the Wishbone seemed to thrive in the rain (1974 in Athens, for example), but Johnson's offense, which is similar to the extent that is run-centered, failed in the rain in 2017. I just didn't understand that.
 

Techster

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What happened? Are they shutting down our football program?! We just got a new coach...

(I kid, I kid...)
 

TampaGT

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• I'll miss watching an offense that was designed to produce success instead of depending on having great players at the skill positions who can out-athlete the defenders. I particularly enj0yed a Pitt player's response when he was asked pre-season if he feared anyone in particular in Tech's lineup. Quoth he (I'm paraphrasing), "No. Everyone they run onto the field is as good as the last guy you had to face. They just keep coming at you."
This is what worries me the most. Assuming we run some version of the NCAA offense, are we going to be able out athlete the teams in our conference?
 

takethepoints

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No offense is predicated on just "out-athleting" the defenders. Where do you guys get this stuff?
Almost all conventional spread Os in college football are dependent on putting superior athletes into one-on-one matchups with D players. There's plenty of scheming for this to get the right matchups, but the great spread Os depend on superior athletic talent making plays.

The TO Paul runs is fundamentally different. What it depends on (I'm using the present tense, btw, because I expect to see Paul running it again) is placing D players in positions where they are outnumbered at the point of attack. It isn't a matter of having superior athletes one-on-one, though no one would turn that down. Instead, it a matter of designing the plays to actually disarm the athletic ability of the D players by forcing them into mistakes. That's why opposing Ds hated playing us. It wasn't the cut blocks; it was the way their best D instincts betrayed them.

I think this post shows pretty clearly that you haven't understood this.
 

TampaGT

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No offense is predicated on just "out-athleting" the defenders. Where do you guys get this stuff?
Sorry I didn’t mean out athleting the d although I agree with @takethepoints about the fundamental differences.

If you have the same O as everybody else, how is our O going to be better than the other team O. Yes you might be able out execute the other teams O. On any given game you might out execute team, but I think over the long haul if you have a reasonable similar execution the athletes make a huge difference. Yes we will get better athletes, my concern is will be able to consistently get better athletes than the teams in our conference. If we do, then we will have to consistently get 7-10 4 star every year. I think the number may need to be on the high end, Since it is hard for transfers to qualify. We probably won’t be able to get guys like the QB at uva to transfer into GT.
 

Animal02

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Almost all conventional spread Os in college football are dependent on putting superior athletes into one-on-one matchups with D players. There's plenty of scheming for this to get the right matchups, but the great spread Os depend on superior athletic talent making plays.

The TO Paul runs is fundamentally different. What it depends on (I'm using the present tense, btw, because I expect to see Paul running it again) is placing D players in positions where they are outnumbered at the point of attack. It isn't a matter of having superior athletes one-on-one, though no one would turn that down. Instead, it a matter of designing the plays to actually disarm the athletic ability of the D players by forcing them into mistakes. That's why opposing Ds hated playing us. It wasn't the cut blocks; it was the way their best D instincts betrayed them.

I think this post shows pretty clearly that you haven't understood this.
I have to wonder about the decreasing effectiveness of the O in the last few years......IIRC, we seemed to do double teams at the point of attack, with the "chop block" rule seemed to hurt us a bit, and have not seen a lot of double team blocking.......then most recently was the new cut block rule. Seems the NCAA was doing everything they could to neuter the Option offense.
 

MidtownJacket

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I have to wonder about the decreasing effectiveness of the O in the last few years......IIRC, we seemed to do double teams at the point of attack, with the "chop block" rule seemed to hurt us a bit, and have not seen a lot of double team blocking.......then most recently was the new cut block rule. Seems the NCAA was doing everything they could to neuter the Option offense.

I know this wasn’t directed at me, but I’m interested in a similar point. I do think there were some obvious rule changes which affected us more than most offensive philosophies (you named two of the major ones with “chop”blocking being called in lieu of holding on defensive line and the dreaded “ref’s can’t count 5 yards” downfield cut blocks).

That being said, the fundamental principles of misdirection, delaying the decision point for a QB till after the snap (reads coming off what the defense does in the second or two they begin to react), overloading sides of the field then using motion to identify man v zone coverages and all the other elements CPJ was a master at allowed his scheme to overcome a lot.

I couldn’t agree more with @takethepoints when discussing how much intellectual enjoyment I got from watching, learning, studying and breaking down the offense CPJ runs. He is a once in a lifetime mind for this type of sport. Watching him pace the sidelines and take in information about the opposing team, while having the confidence to adjust the O on the fly was a thing to behold.

That is part of the reason I was so all in on Monken. I think he was evolving the spread veer option is ways CPJ wasn’t.

While I appreciate CPJ for his accomplishments both on-field and off, I am excited to see what Coach Guice can do. The two are not mutually exclusive.


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