Monday Morning: Facing the Reality

So here it goes. An attempt at postgame thoughts. The sky is not falling and the world is not ending. However.....

Saturday night straight up sucked. Right now it seems like it was just a bad dream and I'm wondering if the game was even played. Then I see the newspaper, the latest bowl ranking and that ugly crooked number 2 and uggh, it happened alright.

It was my last home game as a student, my final rideout at BDS@HGF. The day could not have been better on Saturday; it will easily be one of my favorite and proudest days to be part of the Georgia Tech community. I had the Reck out and about earlier than ever (12 miles around campus and 1/2 a tank of gas), hit more tailgates and socialized more than I had ever done. The pregame feeling is something I don't want to forget.  However, the game leaves a sour taste in my mouth as we come quickly to the end of what should be regarded as a successful season of football. Without a doubt, I know the question to "Would you rather beat georgie or win the ACC?". The answer is simple: Beat georgie. Because if we when we win the ACC, we can look and say "ACC Champs (but couldn't put away the 4th best team in the SEC). I am quickly hating these conference rivalries.

I continue to struggle listening to fans who lose and think they can still talk crap to fans just yelling out. We lost. Can't do anything about it. No "Well, I'm still smarter than you" is going to fix it.

The play-calling is a subject of confusion for me all-around. Defensively, from their first drive it was obvious that they weren't going to let Joe Cox ruin the game for them. We saw that as they promptly ran down the field putting together an impressive play for a 7-0 lead.  They forced us to prove to them that we could stop the run and we couldn't. Our defensive line continued to get manhandled as the running backs ran all over us and amassed 339 yards of RUSHING YARDS.  The injury to Ben Anderson completely changed up the flow for our defense and the mess continued throughout the game.

For the first time this year, the offensive play-calling gives me a big, blank, question-mark.  Did it seem relatively conservative to you all? From my point-of-view, it seemed their D-Line was keying in on Dwyer and we either we didn't adjust the option or continued to misread but I don't see why we took it to the outside more. Was it conservative play-calling because we couldn't risk injuries and the potential of losing in Tampa? More than one person thinks that as a possibility.

Lastly, the final 4 downs, the biggest "WTFs" of them all. First, if we complete those passes, CPJ is a genius and is lauded like no other. Unfortunately, the passes were dropped, overthrown, or caught out of bounds.  I don't know if I'll ever understand why we made those calls and refused to "dance [more] with the one who brought us."

I'll end in a positive, though a frustrating one. No matter how bad we played, we were in the position to win last night. We were in the process of that mythical "game-winning drive" and then it was snatched away. But nevertheless, we had that chance to take the game back. To Hell with Georgia!

This will be my last post on one of the biggest games I want to erase from my memory. Tomorrow I look towards Tampa and Clemson, the only other team in the country who could relate to us right now.