Saturday night’s win against North Carolina was one of the more stunning performances in recent Georgia Tech football history as the Jackets dominated a ranked team in three phases of the game after the first quarter. Tech fell behind 7-0 and then went on a 27-0 run to take control of the game. The Jacket defense tied a school record for the most sacks in a game with eight (Auburn 10/17/1987) recording the first five-plus sack game since 2017 (UVA). They tied a record for the most fumble returns (3) in a game as well with the 1998 team (FSU).
It was a good old-fashioned beat down of the Heels and their future NFL quarterback Sam Howell. Hope it is a major turning point for Geoff Collins program as they nearly upset Clemson the week before in Death Valley.
The biggest takeaways are the defense playing well with a good plan that takes advantage of the personnel. They moved to the 3-3-5 defense to get Charlie Thomas, Ace Eley, and Quez Jackson on the field together because having an extra linebacker gives them more versatility than the defensive tackle they replace and Andrew Thacker’s defense was able to confuse Howell with coverage and pressure using the six bigger bodies in different ways throughout the game and the linebackers did a great job of shooting the gaps as run blitzers and in passing situations to get additional pressure to mix things up. I thought Thacker has done a great job for the last three weeks after a tough day against NIU where they needed to the offense to pick up the rope.
A couple of other guys who had really big games on D were Djimon Brooks at NT, Jordan Domineck (again), Jared Ivey (again) and Juanyeh Thomas.
It was great seeing Jeff Sims look like the player from the end of 2020. He was confident and playing with purpose. He looked so tentative in the NIU game and he just let it all hang out on Saturday and showed what he can do. With Yates sitting there he also doesn’t have to play so careful in the run game so that adds another element I think to his game. I feel like last year he would often pull up a little early and not be as aware of the sticks, he was not pulling up yesterday and that is how he has to play. His running ability adds such a different dimension to the offense. I was happy to see how happy Yates was for him as well. That speaks volumes for the culture that Collins preaches about so much being much deeper than just talk or posts on social media. The buy-in is clearly very high across the board.
I think Tashard Choice is doing a great job of mixing and matching the running backs to the situations and we finally saw some extended use of the two-back set and some power running sets with six OLs in the game as they brought KJ Kirby in as an extra OL. Kudos to Dave Patenaude for mixing things up. They are using Dontae Smith like a closer or late reliever now which makes a ton of sense to me, bringing him in late in halves or in the second half with fresh legs when the opposing D is a little tired. Jahmyr Gibbs looks to be a hair slower right now, wondering if the added weight he has put on is taking some time for him to adjust to, but he had a couple of nice runs and Jordan Mason finally broke one off as well. Too bad the refs screwed Smith out of his touchdown, that might’ve been the ESPN play of the week.
Other offensive guys who stood out were Nate McCollum, Malachi Carter, Kyric McGowan and Ryan Johnson who had his best game of the season. I’m still curious about the false starts on Devin Cochran and what was causing that and if they were legit or not. I could not tell from my angle.
The special teams did their jobs except for the one blocked punt. I still can’t believe they didn’t call roughing the punter on the hit on David Shanahan later in the game. The officials were really dogshit in the game. I had coaches at other schools pinging me today talking about how bad it was and how they hoped to never get that crew for one of their games. You rarely get even that much of an opinion about it, but it was very bad and very titled against GT for whatever reason.
All in all it was a very good game and a good showcase of what GT can do when they have a good plan on defense and execute on offense. Collins has to keep this team rolling because the ACC is up for grabs right now with Wake Forest in the driver’s seat. No one they play until UGA is very good with maybe ND being a question mark as a possible contender. Collins and his staff could really clean up in recruiting if they stick with the plan of playing hard and fast on D, running the ball to set up the pass on offense and avoiding mistakes.
Now comes a good test against Pitt who have given the Jackets fits under Pat Narduzzi who seems to have a golden horseshoe in his pockets ever since the fumble game at Pitt. The Panthers have won games in bizarre manners with FGs clanking off uprights, 50+ yard field goals and passes bouncing off defenders into other receivers arms. Both games under Collins against Pitt have been close relative to where the team was at and this is the same Pitt as always, window dressing on offense, weird rushing attack and an old QB who can be a magician at times for no rhyme or reason. The team were not happy with the way the game ended and some of the calls last time and I expect them to be fired up in the same way they were for Clemson and UNC.
One other aside, Narduzzi has quite the mouth on him, he would make GOL blush with his use of language on the field. GT fans felt disrespected by the Pitt players last year as well, so I’m sure those that are there will be loud and pissed next week as well.
It was a good old-fashioned beat down of the Heels and their future NFL quarterback Sam Howell. Hope it is a major turning point for Geoff Collins program as they nearly upset Clemson the week before in Death Valley.
The biggest takeaways are the defense playing well with a good plan that takes advantage of the personnel. They moved to the 3-3-5 defense to get Charlie Thomas, Ace Eley, and Quez Jackson on the field together because having an extra linebacker gives them more versatility than the defensive tackle they replace and Andrew Thacker’s defense was able to confuse Howell with coverage and pressure using the six bigger bodies in different ways throughout the game and the linebackers did a great job of shooting the gaps as run blitzers and in passing situations to get additional pressure to mix things up. I thought Thacker has done a great job for the last three weeks after a tough day against NIU where they needed to the offense to pick up the rope.
A couple of other guys who had really big games on D were Djimon Brooks at NT, Jordan Domineck (again), Jared Ivey (again) and Juanyeh Thomas.
It was great seeing Jeff Sims look like the player from the end of 2020. He was confident and playing with purpose. He looked so tentative in the NIU game and he just let it all hang out on Saturday and showed what he can do. With Yates sitting there he also doesn’t have to play so careful in the run game so that adds another element I think to his game. I feel like last year he would often pull up a little early and not be as aware of the sticks, he was not pulling up yesterday and that is how he has to play. His running ability adds such a different dimension to the offense. I was happy to see how happy Yates was for him as well. That speaks volumes for the culture that Collins preaches about so much being much deeper than just talk or posts on social media. The buy-in is clearly very high across the board.
I think Tashard Choice is doing a great job of mixing and matching the running backs to the situations and we finally saw some extended use of the two-back set and some power running sets with six OLs in the game as they brought KJ Kirby in as an extra OL. Kudos to Dave Patenaude for mixing things up. They are using Dontae Smith like a closer or late reliever now which makes a ton of sense to me, bringing him in late in halves or in the second half with fresh legs when the opposing D is a little tired. Jahmyr Gibbs looks to be a hair slower right now, wondering if the added weight he has put on is taking some time for him to adjust to, but he had a couple of nice runs and Jordan Mason finally broke one off as well. Too bad the refs screwed Smith out of his touchdown, that might’ve been the ESPN play of the week.
Other offensive guys who stood out were Nate McCollum, Malachi Carter, Kyric McGowan and Ryan Johnson who had his best game of the season. I’m still curious about the false starts on Devin Cochran and what was causing that and if they were legit or not. I could not tell from my angle.
The special teams did their jobs except for the one blocked punt. I still can’t believe they didn’t call roughing the punter on the hit on David Shanahan later in the game. The officials were really dogshit in the game. I had coaches at other schools pinging me today talking about how bad it was and how they hoped to never get that crew for one of their games. You rarely get even that much of an opinion about it, but it was very bad and very titled against GT for whatever reason.
All in all it was a very good game and a good showcase of what GT can do when they have a good plan on defense and execute on offense. Collins has to keep this team rolling because the ACC is up for grabs right now with Wake Forest in the driver’s seat. No one they play until UGA is very good with maybe ND being a question mark as a possible contender. Collins and his staff could really clean up in recruiting if they stick with the plan of playing hard and fast on D, running the ball to set up the pass on offense and avoiding mistakes.
Now comes a good test against Pitt who have given the Jackets fits under Pat Narduzzi who seems to have a golden horseshoe in his pockets ever since the fumble game at Pitt. The Panthers have won games in bizarre manners with FGs clanking off uprights, 50+ yard field goals and passes bouncing off defenders into other receivers arms. Both games under Collins against Pitt have been close relative to where the team was at and this is the same Pitt as always, window dressing on offense, weird rushing attack and an old QB who can be a magician at times for no rhyme or reason. The team were not happy with the way the game ended and some of the calls last time and I expect them to be fired up in the same way they were for Clemson and UNC.
One other aside, Narduzzi has quite the mouth on him, he would make GOL blush with his use of language on the field. GT fans felt disrespected by the Pitt players last year as well, so I’m sure those that are there will be loud and pissed next week as well.
