A great mailbag for thinkers mulling over the entirety of Georgia Tech Football
holvey1234: What does it take to get a decent pass rush at GT? Kyle Kennard from last year (now at USC) has more sacks through 4 games (5.5 sacks) than the entire Tech team in 5 games (5 sacks).
Jack: Fixing depth in a position group like that for most teams will take multiple years through recruiting. We’re arguably better on that front, but we all can see it’s not making a relevant difference still.
Jellopacket98: Well, that didn’t take long. Thoughts on the UNLV QB situation?
Chris: Always get important things in writing! I’m sure this is happening all around the country and this is just the first big public blowup – ideally someone is educating the athletes on contracts, but part of the whole problem is that the programs themselves are incentivized to do this nebulous “we promise you sacks of money, trust us” thing. Without explicit rules and oversight it’s only going to keep happening.
Logan: I’m not shocked that it happened. I’m expecting to see more of it in the future. There need to be more rules in place for NIL, and honestly players should probably have contracts in place if they aren’t getting paid what they’ve been promised. It’s going to take a while until all the issues with the NIL system are fully addressed.
TkTheGoat: If our rushing attack was as good as last years, could we be 5-0 right now?
Chris: I think there’d be a very good chance yeah. Give me that ground production and a 10% better defense I think we’re comfortably 5-0.
Logan: I think defenses might be getting savvy to what we currently do on the ground. I’m not sure our rushing attack is necessarily worse than last years, but the play calling I see seems predictable in terms of what downs we rush on and where we rush (mostly rushing to the inside of the line). I think we need to change up our play calling to facilitate more successful runs. As far as the actual question goes, I certainly think a better rushing game would’ve helped us win against Syracuse as we could have converted in some critical downs and also kept the ball from McCord. Louisville was a case of us getting killed by our own mistakes, so I’m not sure if more rush yards would’ve won the game but it might have helped.
chilidogringsFO: I understand that more teams go for it on 4th more often now as that’s what analytics shows should be the case. However, it seems like we tend to be on the wrong end of that metric on both sides of the ball, failing to convert them on offense and failing to stop them on defense. What adjustments would help fix that issue?
Logan: I’m not an analytics expert but the 4th down issues seem to be on play calling. I think back to some of the 4th downs in the Syracuse game in particular. Syracuse had multiple play calls available for their 4th downs with the Orange getting big success on passes and option plays on 4th down. When GT was faced with a 4th down, our strategy was to run the ball up the middle and the defense knew exactly how to line up to stop a run up the middle. On offense in particular the play calling bothers me. Everyone on this site knows defense isn’t GTs strong suit; but our offense should be capable of moving the ball in multiple ways, so why do we keep going back to running the ball up to middle when everyone expects us to run the ball up the middle? I don’t know if there is an actual fix, but I’d like to see more creativity in our play calling.
Jack: The only fix is actually converting those chances, whether it be Birr’s long field goals or as Logan said, getting better in the playcalling.
YellerBug: Five games in, what’s the new floor and ceiling for this team?
Chris: The floor is probably four wins, and the ceiling is probably seven or eight. I’d be shocked if we didn’t get one win from [Duke, UNC, Virginia Tech, NC State], but I haven’t seen enough consistency from the team to “guarantee” two from that group even though I think if we play to our potential we have a decent chance of getting all four. It’s a crapshoot; it all depends on what version of the team shows up each week.
Logan: I think the floor is probably 5 wins and the ceiling is 8 wins. Miami and uga are the only games I struggle to rationalize us winning. Everyone else on the schedule is at worst a toss-up at this point (I guess we’ll see if my opinion on Notre Dame changes after this weekend).
GTalbatross: How many data points are required to observe adverse effects before enacting a process change? Trust the process until it is evaluated and needs to change.
Answers could apply to football, taste preferences, entertainment viewing preferences, or your favorite process to be evaluated.
Chris: Depends on the thing. Sometimes it only takes one; if some critical issue happens at work for example, we hold a post mortem where the main goal is to change processes to prevent similar issues. If I get food poisoning at a restaurant, it’ll probably be at least a year before I go back. Sometimes it takes a few; you can forgive a small mistake or two, but when it starts to become a pattern then it’s time to start thinking about how to adjust. For me personally, two data points are usually enough to indicate a pattern – a lot of stuff can happen once but if you don’t learn from that one time then it’s bound to happen again.
Jack: I feel like it really depends on who has the final decision making ability in a process change, because people will have different points at which they are comfortable with a change. Take Arthur Blank for example: Falcons fans would’ve gotten rid of Dan Quinn well before Arthur did in 2020, and in a sense it worked out because Quinn got some unexpected wins that probably would’ve been unrealized if he had been fired, but it instilled extra trust in Quinn’s process that probably wasn’t warranted and continued the Falcons’ spiral.
YankeeJacket: Has it been worse to be a UNC fan or a Georgia Tech fan since 2019?
Chris: Football-wise? Tech by far; UNC has had only one losing season since 2019 and it was because they lost a bowl game. Sure they’ve had some weird losses in there and have maybe fallen short of expectations, but 2024 is overwhelmingly likely to be their fifth straight year making a bowl.
Logan: Since 2019 at Tech we watched an average/good football program evaporate into the worst team our school had seen in possibly its entire history. We had some bright spots the last 2 years, but up till then we have been rock bottom. UNC has been ranked multiple times and played in the ACC championship game once in that period. Fans might be upset about the fact that UNC had so much talent and didn’t do much with it (which is how GT fans feel this year), but UNC still made it to a bowl each year and had some impressive wins along the way. GT has had it worse and it’s not even close.
gtbadcarma: Since it was requested but with a little tweaking. I think the team would be 3-2 at this point but how Tech has made it there is unexpected and concerning. My worry is that over the last 5 games I continue to see a lot of the same problems, slow/lack of adjustments and what I see as a lack of preparation or game planning. Given that the only teams that Tech has beaten are not the best teams (I doubt any will be bowl bound) and tech will be moving into playing better teams, are you uneasy or optimistic about what the rest of the schedule brings?
I would also ask if you caught the post game interview with Key? He was quick to point out players sloppy play but no accountability for coaching. To me this was dangerously close to player blaming (imo only losers blame players). Does that concern you at all?
Chris: I think I said last week that I was “uneasily optimistic”, and I’d probably downgrade that to “uneasy” now. I really want to see how we can come out of the bye week after hopefully making a lot of adjustments, but I’m at a point where I’ll only believe we’re improving when I’ve seen it for several games in a row.
Logan: I am at about the same level of optimism as after we loss to Syracuse. I still think we are going to make a bowl game, but it will likely be a stressful ride. I think we have the talent to compete in most of our games, and if we avoid getting in our own way I think we can win at least 3 of them.
Regarding Key, I do think the Louisville loss can be associated more with player mistakes. We had a few big ones that led to opposing scores. The fumble for a Louisville touchdown, the FG block for a Louisville touchdown, the defensive pass interference where the receiver was allowed to keep moving and score on the play… so I get his logic coming from the Louisville game. I do think the Syracuse loss had more to do with play calling though.
tyler_pifer92: Why does the ACC scheduling team hate Georgia Tech? 5 straight games to start the FB season and we open ACC play with UNC and at home vs Duke without students for basketball.
Chris: I feel like we’ve always gotten weird scheduling quirks, and I don’t have any evidence for this but my impression is that we often tell the conference “whatever’s best for you, don’t worry about us!” while other schools do a lot more self-advocating.
Logan: We also seem to play a lot of neutral site games, I think money plays a factor in the decisions for those neutral site games. I think GT has a tendency to just agree with what the conference suggests as Chris points out, maybe we need to be pushing back more on our scheduling.
Jellopacket98: Is Aidan Birr becoming a liability? 3 for 7 on FGs and despite having a “big leg”, can’t seem to hit anything over 40 yards. Sure, he hit the one against FSU (barely), but his earlier miss is why we were tied. His miss against Syracuse was the difference and his misses against Louisville also played huge.
Chris: Yeah on the one hand I think we could be setting him up a lot better (especially with the Louisville ones I feel like we could’ve gotten him at least 5 yards closer each time with better play calling), but on the other hand you wanna see him hit something beyond 40 yards. At some point we need to stop trying 45 yard FGs and start keeping the offense on the field with better play calling when we know we might go for it on 4th.
Logan: Aidan Birr seems to be in his own head and struggling with the way the holds are lined up. I do think he can make closer FGs but has certainly struggled with the longer kicks. It stinks because I do want Birr to keep getting chances, but we can’t keep giving up field position missing FGs. It might be time to re-evaluate our kicking strategy.
Anuj Bhyravabhotla: Will we see Georgia Tech pass on first down more?
Jack: Possibly? Things got better after our bye week last year, and if anyone is aware that the passing game is working, it’s Faulkner & co. I genuinely don’t care how we are successful on first down as long as we actually have a positive success rate on first down, and I think we have the tools to enable many different options in that situation.
Logan: Most of this mailbag has been me complaining about play calling. This is another case where I hope we start passing on first down more often so that we can at least diversify how opposing defenses will need to plan against us. To Jack’s point, I don’t really care what we do as long as it works, but it feels like we need to try some new strategies so we aren’t predictable.