Mailbag 6/30

Ben is off today inventing the 32nd flavor of Baskin Robbins ice cream, so in the mean time you're stuck with me to answer your (and my) mailbag questions. Let's get weird.

As a combo Father's Day/Birthday gift, I've been blessed with two, count'em two tickets to the Eric Idle and John Cleese madness.
Question The First: How should I, and DHiWaG Jr., dress for the occasion?
I’m considering: King Arthur and Percy (with coconut shells)
Lumberjacks in drag
Something with a DEAD PARROT

/Googles "Eric Idle and John Cleese"

/Immediately realizes how uncultured I sound now

I'm more partial to "Brave Sir Robin" and the page that follows him around mocking him in song, or perhaps Arthur (King of the Brittons) and Roger the Shrubber. But, to each his own.

Question the Second: if DHiWaG Jr. follows through on his threat/offer that if he participates in this costume madness, DHiWaG must accompany Jr to a Rave (he’s a BIG electronic music aficionado), which Rave do I attend, OR DO I GO IT ALONE IN A SUIT, BOWLER, AND A NAME TAG FOR THE "MINISTRY OF SILLY WALKS"?
Sign me: René Descartes, drunken fart, "I drink; therefore I am"

I've never been to a rave, so I can't say for sure, but I think it's supposed to have neon colors somewhere. So as long as it's some neon green or orange suit, you'll fit right in!

If you HAD to put a number on it (no "range" allowed for purposes of this questions), how many wins do you see our Yellow Jackets getting on the gridiron this Fall?

I think Georgia Tech enters bowl season with 9 wins. I won't say whether they'll win a bowl game, and I won't commit to this including an ACC Championship Game appearance. But 9 wins by mid-December sounds right to me.

With the new personnel on offense, would you expect CPJ play calling to shift and if so how?

The biggest factor in this will be the perimeter blocking of the A-Backs and Wide Receivers. If the new guys can do it within reason, you won't notice much difference from last year. If not, you'll probably see more runs between the tackles (B-Back dives, QB Isos, maybe even A-Back dives) and a bit more passing, mainly to avoid running to the outside.

The early ga tech lines are out. Tech is actually getting a little respect as far as Vegas is concerned. How do you expect tech lines up against Notre Dame given their preformance against Navy?

I'm guessing this is in reference to the offense? I wouldn't expect much of anything to change. Coach Johnson doesn't have a track record of changing up starting lineups purely to counter a defensive front, nor does the play calling tend to noticeably change from the outset of a game from week-to-week. The only patterns that become particularly noticeable are when something is working and CPJ wants the defense to prove that they can stop it before he'll do something else. (Think about the belly play they ran about 20 times in the Orange Bowl game.) Other than that, they won't be coming out in three-receiver sets or anything. There's a good chance it'll just be business as usual.

Which one of Cade's 'adventures' do you wish you could actually do?

I've always been curious what it would be like to check into Hotel California...but then again, I may want to leave sometime, so...maybe not.

Why do the functions not work on guest articles like the FSU one? I get tired of seeing that there are 20 new comments on an article from SB Nation only to find that the new comments are not colored coded and the C key or Z key functions to skip to new comments do not work.

Those are articles we link from other sites when they're relevant to Georgia Tech. You only get the comment features to work if you're a member of the site, I believe, so join them if you want to participate!

And why is it a bad idea (that you would definitely advise against) to join another team’s site (FSU) just so you can offer one comment about how they are full of crap about Tech using chop blocks?

I won't ever call that a bad idea, but I will say that there's a chance they won't like your droppin' of knowledge bombs in the middle of their ignorant, narrative-driven echo chambers. (There's another popular phrase I wanted to use in place of "echo chambers" but won't in the interest of keeping the Mailbag a family-friendly feature.)

Rate how you're feeling at this point, regarding the 2015 football team:
1) Other Tech fans would call you a "homer"
2) Optimistic
3) Cautiously optimistic
4) Neutral
5) Mildly pessimistic
6) Pessimistic
7) Other Tech fans would call you a "hater"

That's a great question, Other Joey. As you mentioned in the comments, I'm at a 3 right now -- I'm cautiously optimistic. A lot of the hype surrounding Georgia Tech makes sense -- coming off of a huge season, returning an awesome core of quarterback, offensive line, and almost the entire defense, a lack of credible threats in the ACC Coastal. I'm very wary, though, of the B-Back situation (starting a guy who's spent the last two years as a linebacker, backing him up with a guy who's hardly seen the field in college and played in massively different systems, requiring some play of a true freshman who made it to campus in mid-June), and it doesn't help to be replacing both starting wide receivers (who were each NFL-level talents) as well as almost half a dozen upperclassman A-Backs. If it were just one or even two of the positions that needed replacing, I'd be a lot more optimistic, but I'm pretty scared of the unknown in this case and I'll be uneasy until I see something that makes me feel otherwise.

Do you agree that these are the 2 overriding questions upon which the 2015 season pivots…
1) Will JHD be eligible?
2) Will we have a "Smelter like" go to WR?

Honestly, I'd be more concerned with the second question than the first. JHD is going to be really good if he plays, but he won't be an absolute one-man wrecking crew. The defensive line should be improved over last year anyways, which is good considering they were the weak link of the defense.

I'm more concerned with establishing a go-to wide receiver. I don't know that they need to be "Smelter-like" so much as a legitimate mid-to-long-range threat in the passing game and a solid blocker. I like the freshmen that are coming in and think we're going to see some of Christian Philpott, who has potential to be a true gamebreaker. Of the returning trio, Micheal Summers is a seasoned veteran who understands the offense well, Ricky Jeune is probably the most polished in terms of catching passes and blocking, and Antonio Messick has the most athleticism of the group. Establishing any of the above names as a go-to receiver type is going to be crucial to the offense's success, probably the most important key issue at play outside of perimeter blocking.