Technical Tidbits 8/31: Week 1 is finally here

The last week before Georgia Tech football starts is finally here. We’re just four days away from kickoff. Tech will be hosting Northern Illinois Saturday evening at Bobby Dodd Stadium. Kickoff is set for 7:30 PM. With that said, let’s get into the first article of this week’s Tidbits.

Sometimes it’s the smaller news outlets that feature good articles that end up headlining the Tidbits. Today’s first article is from The Covington News and focuses on year three of the Geoff Collins era. In their coverage of the Yellow Jackets football team, a lot of news outlets are addressing how Georgia Tech needs to show significant progress in key areas. This article does a good job of breaking down several of those aspects where Tech fans are hoping to see improvements.

The two areas mentioned in the article that I think Tech really needs to improve on in order to assure its success this season are its penalties-per-game performance and its offensive/defensive line performance. Penalties are the kind of self-inflicted wounds that reflect an undisciplined team and there are few if any teams that go on to be successful that are not focused and well-disciplined. I’m sure Collins realizes this and seems to address it in his statements.

Gone are the days of the smaller, more mobile/agile offensive linemen that former head coach Paul Johnson relied on to run his beloved triple-option. As the article notes, both the offensive and defensive lines will be “beefed” up this year, and the offensive line should average well above 300 pounds. But just having a bigger offensive or defensive line doesn’t guarantee success. The linemen will have to be athletic and their performance will directly affect their units. On the offensive side, their success should translate to the success of Tech quarterback Jeff Sims and the many talented running backs the team has. Defensively, Tech has a lot of talent in the secondary. They can benefit from a disruptive, defensive line that can put up a good fight in the trenches and cause a lot of disruption for the opposing team’s quarterback. If Geoff Collins is to indeed be the Minister of Mayhem, then the defensive line will need to cause some chaos in the trenches.

We’re close to season 3, less than four days now. Soon we’ll be able to see just how much the team has been able to improve.

This is more of a bonus article. It’s an article with some cool multimedia from the past month. In case you missed any of the football team’s press conferences or media releases, you can catch up with them here. They feature interviews with both players and coaches.