Georgia Tech Football: Comparing Offensive Production For The First 5 Games Of Each Paul Johnson Season
by Winfield Featherston on Oct 4, 2011 9:26 AM EDT
in Georgia Tech Football
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Keeping Georgia Tech under 50: Say what you want about Georgia Tech’s schedule, but the Yellow Jackets beat a North Carolina defense dotted with a few future NFL players. Paul Johnson’s team averages 50 points a game. That’s not a misprint. Maybe Oregon East can be found in Atlanta. They have a ridiculous eight one-play touchdown drives. They scored 45 points Saturday against North Carolina State — with the help of a defensive touchdown — even though quarterback Tevin Washington had a subpar game. It is difficult enough for any team to prepare for the triple-option in one week. Maryland must do it with a reduced practice schedule of 17.5 hours this week and an injury-depleted defense.
I think the quote about "Oregon East" is very relevant to what I am about to break down and show you. I wanted to compare Georgia Tech's offensive numbers for this season to that of 2008, 2009, and 2010. What we will see is that the Georgia Tech offense is good, it's going to move the ball, and it's going to score regardless of how successful the season is going.
As we have discussed during the offseason, the 2011 Georgia Tech football season would finally be the season where Paul Johnson has 100% of the credit. We are running his entire system with his players, save for a bare minimum. We have passed the 1/3 mark of the season and are quickly bearing down upon the halfway mark itself. How does the 2011 football team compare to that of its three predecessors?
As you recall the schedules went like this:
2008: Jacksonville State, Boston College, Virginia Tech, Mississippi St.
2009: Jacksonville State, Clemson, Miami, North Carolina, Mississsippi St.
2010: South Carolina St., Kansas, North Carolina, NCSU, Wake Forest
2011: Western Carolina, MTSU, Kansas, North Carolina, NCSU
I'd love to dive into some FootballStudyHall EqvP and Success Rate statistics but we'll take that for another day. This morning we'll just take it from a high level view.
Observations:
1. 2010 was a sucky year against the ACC
2. Offensive yardage bunches up in the 4th and 5th game regardless (6 of 8 ACC, 2 Miss State games)
3. Even with 2010 reminding us why it was so bad, we still put up offensive yardage numbers that some teams would drool over. This means that even when we are bad, we're going to move the ball and teams are going to struggle to contain us.
4. Five games per season is a pretty small sample size
Here is a graph that shows offensive points per game through the first give games of the season.
Observations:
1. We are scoring at a good clip
2. 2010 yet again was obviously bad
3. Big difference between 2011 and 2009, our ACC Championship year
The differences between 2011 and the other Paul Johnson seasons are illustrated very well in accumulation graphs.
Now that's a good trend.
2008: 2,060 yards offense
2009: 2,028 yards offense
2010:1, 941 yards offense
2011: 2, 935 yards offense
2008: 142 points scored
2009: 150 points scored
2010: 148 points scored
2011: 258 points scored
With Georgia Tech moving at this good clip, an emphasis should be placed on continuing defensive improvement. In Paul Johnson's words, "I'm happy as long as we score more than the other team."
What else do these graphs tell you?
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I'm looking at only the ACC games.
Between 400 and 500 yards and about 40 points a game against our ACC bedfellows so far. It would seem to be on par with 2009, but 2009 saw defensive improvement throughout the season and had heavy hitters like Derrick Morgan and Morgan Burnette. The question for me ends up being the same as yours. Namely, can our 2011 defense get an adequate number of stops per game to have the same effect (or better) than our defense in 2009? To answer this I’d hope the coaches can focus on run defense. We hadn’t much of an answer for that in 2009 either as I recall, and I therefore recall georgie and Iowa making us pay dearly for that. I still wonder why Clemson’s run game didn’t sink us the way georgie’s did. They must have been so frustrated by that. I think the NC State game showed that we can make a team who doesn’t run well look quite good on the ground. They gained 110 MORE yards against us than their per-game average heading into the contest. I think if that’s not some kind of defensive strategy of ours to keep them from passing, we need to bottle that ground game up. That goes for every team we play, despite our scoring efficiency, in my mind. It’s unsafe in college football not to be able to defend the run.
I remember us very distinctly holding onto dear life in both of those Clemson games in 2009. Spiller and Ellington carved both carved us up, especially in the ACC title game.
It seems we’ve been more susceptible to the short and intermediate passing route indicative of the Spread or Pistol offenses, and 2-min no huddle offenses as well. I fear that dual threat QB that will be able to pass on us and make huge gains in the running game when we start playing zone.
But at 50 points per game, you’re going to build leads that will allow you to play 2nd stringers, as well as not be as aggressive on defense.
by TBuzz on Oct 4, 2011 12:07 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
Defense appears to be much better this year
What I am struck by is that not only are we scoring a lot of points, we seem to be putting them up very quickly this year compared to previous years. As a result we are not always wining the time of possession this year and even when we do it is not like 2009 where sometimes the other team went almost an entire quarter without touching the ball. My impression is that our defense this year has been asked to make a lot more stops than previous years and is actually doing that a higher percentage of the time. Before the season started we were saying things like, “Just give us a defense that makes one or two more stops than the other team makes.” I think the defense has more than lived up to that expectation.
But that is just an impression.
by Atlanta's original team on Oct 4, 2011 12:22 PM EDT reply actions
Yes.
One or two more stops per game over last season is perfectly fine when the offense is humming. What worries me is that we haven’t faced a particularly balanced team with a great offense and good defense just yet. With the possibility of fumbling against a bigger defense and the shaky special teams play strapped to our backs, I’m worried a shootout against an offense like Clemson’s might not go our way. Then again. We just won’t know until we get there.
What I see
The 2009 team was trending upward at this point in the season. After the gaffe against Miami, that team steadily improved through the year. I see the 2011 team coming back down to earth after a light schedule in the first few games. Will they be better than the previous three teams? That’s still TBD, but it looks promising. What I’d like to see is a team that’s improving like the 2009 team when the tough part of the schedule rolls around.
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