What He Said

I couldn't have said it any better than this guy. Get a grip people; the triple option is not "figured out." Tech just played a terrible game.

Georgia Tech head football coach Paul Johnson might as well turn in his headphones for an earpiece, his red flag for a red pen, his touchdowns for a teleprompter. According to the national media, he’s been figured out. After a 17-point offensive performance against fast-rising Miami, now in the top ten, defenses have been given the blueprint for how to stop Johnson’s once-vaunted triple-option attack.

At least that’s what some will have you believe.

For the first time since week nine of last season, Georgia Tech is out of the national polls. The aforementioned 33-17 loss to the Hurricanes dropped the Yellow Jackets from 13th to unranked. Like all opinions in regard to Johnson’s offense and his team, that reaction from the voters was a bit exaggerated. Let’s look at this logically. The 13th ranked team in the nation lost on the road, at night, to a now top ten ranked team and fell 13 spots? That same week, the third ranked USC Trojans lost to previously unranked Washington (who went winless last season) and dropped just seven spots in the USA Today Coaches’ poll. Wait, there’s more. Back in week two, 6th ranked Oklahoma State lost to unranked Houston by double digits, giving up 45 points at home. They fell just eleven spots to number 17.

A comparable point of reference would be Nebraska, who lost on the road as a ranked team, to a ranked team much like Georgia Tech did. The Cornhukers dropped from 18th to 24th, falling just six spots after their loss to Virginia Tech. Yes that game was closer than GT/Miami, but the team the Yellow Jackets lost to is undefeated and currently ranked inside the top ten. The ‘Huskers fell six spots, the Jackets over twice that – 13 spots.

College football has become a game of overblown, polarizing responses. In one week, Washington went from receiving zero votes for the top 25 to 194 votes after a three-point win over Southern Cal. A tremendous win for the Huskies, but this is a program with two BCS conference wins since September 2007. If that game-winning field goal is one more foot to the left, keeping in mind UW still played the exact same game, Washington likely doesn’t see the national polls all season. In today’s college football, fans want coaches fired after one bad performance, quarterbacks benched after one bad throw and teams flipped in and out of national favor like a young grade schooler picking his future occupation. One day a Trojan warrior, the next day a Cowboy. Hmm…

One could make the argument that no team, no scheme, no football ideology has felt the consequences of that mantra more than Paul Johnson and Georgia Tech. After every subpar performance, pundits cite that the Yellow Jackets’ offense has been exposed, justifying their longtime stance that the triple option offense could never work in BCS conference football by pointing to isolated figures, limited numbers and slanted statistics. Case in point; many identified the fact that the Jackets scored just 17 points against a Hurricane defense that was torched by Florida State the week prior as evidence that the riddle known as the triple option had been solved. My problem, and the proof to me that Johnson and his offense are often unfairly criticized, is the fact that such a sentiment isn’t applied across the board. If Miami holding Georgia Tech to 17 points is a sign that Johnson’s offense doesn’t work, why isn’t Washington holding Southern Cal to 13 points a sign that Pete Carroll’s offense doesn’t work, Texas holding Texas Tech to 24 points a sign that Mike Leach’s offense doesn’t work? More so, was Jacksonville State holding Florida State to one offensive touchdown a sign that Jimbo Fisher’s offense had been figured out? The Seminoles scored 54 points the next week at 7th ranked BYU. The “Paul Johnson Theory” of a poor performance being a sign of impeding doom is not generalized to other coaches and other offensive schemes. Why not?

The bottom line is that teams have good games, they have bad games; oftentimes the other team just plays a better football game (see Miami). At one point in time, that was understood. With millions of dollars at stake every week and an overflow of media experts waiting to flex their opinion and overbearing ego’s, there is no longer room for ebb and flow. As mentioned above, this is especially true with Georgia Tech. Many media members scoffed at the idea of Johnson’s option working in the ACC and have been waiting for moments of inconsistency to pounce on so they can prove themselves, the schematic football elite, right.

With Georgia Tech set to welcome North Carolina to Bobby Dodd Stadium this weekend, many will bring up the fact that the Tar Heels held the Yellow Jackets to just seven points last season. Fewer will bring up the fact that GT rushed for 423 yards in that game, but turned the football over at three inopportune times.

The embellished takes on Johnson’s triple option offense are ridiculous. Johnson is a fabulous coach. He won 62 games and two national championships in five seasons at Georgia Southern. After going 2-10 his first season at Navy, he won 43 games in five seasons. He led the Midshipmen to ten wins in 2004, just the second time they had reached double-digit victories in over 115 years at the Naval Academy. The two seasons before he arrived, the school won three games. In his first season at Georgia Tech, Johnson won nine games. In six seasons on The Flats, his predecessor Chan Gailey reached that plateau just once. Gailey never beat archrival Georgia. Johnson did so on his first try, 45-42, in Athens. On Gailey’s first try in Sanford Stadium, he got 44, that being a 44-point beatdown at the hands of the Bulldogs.

Paul Johnson’s offense works. But like all other offenses, it doesn’t always work. Why is that so difficult to understand? For as much as people praise the spread, the triple option isn’t that much different. Both offenses spread the field, look to attack weak points in the defense and try to maximize opportunities for the playmakers at the skill positions. But the triple option is for some reason met with an odd, exaggerated reaction. Critics constantly talk of how and why it doesn’t work, then pat themselves on the back and talk of the mystery being solved on the few occasions when it doesn’t thrive.

Georgia Tech fans, enjoy the many wins to come in the future. Paul Johnson is a tremendously successful head coach. Then again, you’ve probably already figured that out.

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