3 Games In, Here Are 5 Things We've Learned About This Team

A quarter of the way through the season seems to me like a good checkpoint to see what questions we've had answered about this team. So without further adieu...

1. This team forgets nothing. 5 days after a loss to open the season, Tech aired a few grievances and opened up a can of whoopass on Presbyterian. A week later, they opened up an entire case of whoopass on a team that shouldn't have beaten them last year. It's comforting knowing that this is a team who won't come out sluggish the week following a loss, and is not likely to lay down for a team that they lost to the previous year. (That said, we play Miami this weekend...)

2. The Special Teams are much better...most of the time. Overall our special teams play has been much better, though at times they're still vulnerable to letting a big play break. Though, on that note, it's happened once in each of the past two games, and each time someone on the unit made a great hustle play to drag the ballcarrier down, which resulted in no points for the opponent. So if nothing else, we're seeing that "one play of energy" that Coach Walk was preaching before the season.

3. Our front 7 is vastly improved. I know that I continue to talk about them on here, but it's continued to amaze me the progress that we've seen in a year's time, and the impact that their success has on the secondary's success. A better front 7 means improved run defense, and improved run defense means the secondary can pay more attention to pass coverage...meaning our pass defense is better. Attaochu, Watts, Nealy, and Hunt-Days are a nasty group of linebackers, all very athletic and very capable of causing opposing offenses a lot of problems. Those guys may be the defensive MVPs to date.

4. We've yet to designate a single go-to receiver...and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Of 25 completions from our QBs so far this season, 8 of them have been to wide receivers (5 to Jeff Greene, 3 to Jeremy Moore). The other 17 have been spread across 8 A-Backs and B-Backs (Godhigh, Orwin, and Deon Hill have multiple catches, the others have a single catch). This is tough to deal with because we don't have that one guy on the outside who's a major threat, yet at the same time the defense isn't going to be able to focus their pass coverages on just one or two guys. Not sure how I feel about this one, and we may need a larger sample size to determine just how effective or ineffective this approach will be.

5. We're better than most thought we would be. I think most of this statement falls on the success of the defense, which I'm sure most onlookers determined was a "believe it when I see it" type of thing. Honestly, the defense could be what takes us from 7 or 8 wins and a lower middle-tier bowl to 9 or 10 wins and a Coastal Division Championship. That said, I'm not convinced at this point that anyone in the Coastal can beat Florida State, much less will beat them, if it comes down to that in the ACCCG.

What else have you learned about this team so far?