Why we need Coach Charles Kelly to succeed as Defensive Coordinator

Charles Kelly (left) will be coordinating the defense with a completely new coaching lineup.

Technical Tidbits 10/9/12: In Which Pink Slips are Distributed

As you may know, we fired Al Groh yesterday. Here's what the broader internet had to say about it.

Heather Spinich spits her usual retardery. Let's break this down a little bit:

• "How many coordinators out there want to coach a defense that has to practice against the triple option every day, only to face an offense like Clemson one week and Virginia Tech the next?"

Are you kidding? Have you ever heard of a scout team? PJ addressed this exact question in his news conference yesterday, its hardly a surprise she didn't take her time to do her research and find out, that this is in fact not true at all.

• "How many coordinators out there more knowledgeable than Groh will take that job?"

As was addressed here yesterday, knowledge wasn't the problem, it was the communication and transfer of the knowledge to the players. As long as we find a good communicator who's even slightly less knowledgable, we'll have fixed the problem. I could go on. You get the idea.

Here's the link to CPJ's press conference yesterday if you want to see the whole thing for yourself.

To all the folks that are clamoring for CPJ's head, Jeff Schultz and Dan Radakovich are handing out free muscle relaxers.

Bill C. continues his normal pattern of using facts and sense to make his argument in his hot seat ratings, but Bud Elliot, we really expect better than this from you. He's making practically the same arguments as Spinich, which as any ACC fan knows, is the kiss of death.

Paul Johnson gives an interesting interview with the Macon sports talk guy (Bill Shanks) and talked about the firing. Interesting points include changing from a 2-gap scheme to a 1-gap scheme and what he thought went wrong.

At least we can our coach hasn't given like this yet. Charlie Weis practices without seniors on Sunday, to ‘develop younger players for the future’ | Dr. Saturday

Ken Seguria does a piece Examining Groh’s work at Tech.

And, in your having-nothing-to-do-with-Georgia-Tech story of the week, make your life a little better by reading Drew Magary's Deadspin funbag.

Technical Tidbits EXTRA: The Groh Conference

This isn't your average Technical Tidbits, folks. This here's a special edition, one that's less on links and more on content. But I called it the tidbits anyways because there's a lot of TIDBITS of the press conference in this story. Confusing? Yes. Less interesting? Hopefully not.

The first thing I want to touch on is why this happened in the first place. Johnson said that obviously the defense "needed to go in a different direction" because he "wasn't seeing improvement." That, I hope, we all figured out by now. But CPJ gave us a little insight in to why this happened. To Joey and I, it sounded like a communication issue. "Al's very smart. The problem was is what was in Al's head just wasn't trancending on the field" said Coach Johnson earlier. To me, that sounds like a 70 year old man not being able to stay in touch with 20 year old kids, or, like most tech professors, not being able to effectively explain something he was a top expert in. Communication issues can KILL a team of any kind, that's what happened here.

My next point of interest is how CPJ intends to handle to coaching situation moving forward. He made it sound like it was going to be coordinator by committee, with PJ saying that he will be more involved in defense, Coach McCollum coaching ILBs, Coach Walkosky will coach line, and Coach Speed coaching OLBs. He also says that there will be a lot of simplification. Haven't we heard that before? All this simplification seems to make sense after all if the problem was the players being unable to understand Groh's philosophy. But it also provides an interesting insight into Coach Johnson's attitude about defense. "To me, playing defense is playing defense. If you line up in 3-technique, and the guy blocks down, then you pinch." Its very segmented, technical, and process-oriented to him. I think he might think its a little TOO simple, to be quite honest. Last time we tried to keep simplifying (under coach Wommack), players were joking on twitter about running 4 plays the whole game. That's not the kind of defense I want to see run. But CPJ also said that defense is about physical consistency and speed. Flying to the ball, hitting hard, that sort of things. "We're going to spend more time in practice on [tackling]" he said. I'm glad he's committed to that.

All in all, I think a lot of this end of the season period is going to be about two things: getting the defense fired up like they were at the very beginning of the season, and getting ready to play Georgia. Let's hope they do those two things successfully.

Press Conference Notes: Al Groh Relieved of Duties at Georgia Tech

We'll be updating this as the conference goes on. Stay tuned.

Opening statement:

"Bottom line is I felt like we needed to go in a different direction."

"Haven't seen an improving trend."

"We're not ready to give up, we have six games left and are looking to move on."

On when the decision was made:

"This morning, I took some time and watched the game tape and went over it. There's no question Al knows defense, but the communication part wasn't transcending to the field. Lots of errors, struggles getting lined up, errors that kept repeating themselves. As I said a couple weeks ago, I don't think he forgot everything he knows about defense."

Interim Coordinator:

"Charles Kelly will probably run meetings, Andy McCollum will coach inside linebackers, Dave Walkosky will coach the defensive line, Joe Speed will coach the outside linebackers."

On CPJ's role moving forward:

"Will set some perameters and framework, depending on how it goes I'll step in. They've all been coordinators before."

Other miscellaneous quotes:

"I don't want to come in on Monday and watch 40 missed assignments."

"It was inevitable, at least to me, that it wasn't getting any better."

"If you can coach offense, you'd better be able to coach defense."

Al Groh Fired As Defensive Coordinator At Georgia Tech

After only 2.5 years on the Flats, Al Groh has been fired as defensive coordinator at Georgia Tech following a horrible start to the season on the defensive side of the ball.