The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Defense seeks sharper start against Tar Heels
Past two games began by allowing easy scores to foes.
There doesn’t seem to be a discernible reason for why Georgia Tech has given up relatively easy scores to start their past two games. It hasn’t been the case for most of the season in defensive coordinator Nate Woody’s first year with the Yellow Jackets.
Regardless, Tech coaches and players are eager to bring an end to the glitch when they play at North Carolina on Saturday, hoping to earn a fifth win and draw one shy of bowl eligibility.
“It’s just we’ve got to tighten up at the be ginning,” defensive end Desmond Branch said. “It’s weird that we can’t get it done the first drive. It’s cool that we’re able to tighten up at the end of the game, that we’re able to stop ’em, but giving them that momentum, giving them that hope that they can play with us really puts us behind the eight ball.”
Two games ago, Duke tore through the Jackets on the opening drive. Starting from their 48-yard line after a long kickoff return, the Blue Devils covered 52 yards in four plays to take an early 7-0 lead. The Blue Devils seemed sharper. On the first three plays, Duke quarterback Daniel Jones fired on-target passes to open receiv- ers, once gettingoffa throw just ahead of a blitz and on another taking advantage of a breakdown in coverage.
Last Thursday against Virginia Tech, the Hokies started the game by moving the ball with ease similar to Duke, powering through the Georgia Tech defense
for touchdowns on their first three possessions — 73 yards in five plays, 70 yards in three plays and 73 yards in a comparatively pedestrian 11 plays.
Early on, “they just didn’t play very well,” coach Paul Johnson said of the defense.
But just like that, the faucet ran dry. The tackling improved, and when the Jackets missed tackles, team- mates rallied to the ball to cover up. The Hokies made mistakes — dropped passes, a bobbled snap, penalties — and Anree Saint-Amour made one of the plays of the game, exploiting an appar- ent missed blocking assign- ment to drag down quarterback RyanWillis on a keeper on a third-and-2 in the third quarter when the Hokies were trying to cut into the Jackets’ 35-21 lead.
After giving up 10.8 yards per play and 21 points over the first three possessions, the Jackets yielded 3.2 yards per play and no points over the next five before Woody began to sub out on Virginia Tech’s final possession.
“I feel like we kind of got off to a bad start and everybody was on their heels,” Saint-Amour said. “We kind of got settled down, saw what they were doing and just did what we had to do.”
But, Saturday, it would be particularly helpful for the Jackets to start out crisply. Tech could go a long way toward disrupting North Carolina’s plans by stopping its up-tempo offense, getting an early lead and eating up the clock. Playing from behind in a low-possession game is not how the Tar Heels would choose to play.
Further, as is perhaps universally true, the Jackets do better with a lead. Dating to the start of the 2012 season, Tech is 34-13 when it scores first and 12-26 when the opponent does.
“Going against North Carolina, we have to be able to stop their offense in the beginning,” Saint-Amour said.