Jackets DC faces familiar opponent

Thacker fondly recalls coaching Owls under Brian Bohannon.

One of the quirks of facing a spread-option offense team, as Georgia Tech will do this Saturday against Kennesaw State, is finding an appropriate scout team quarterback to prepare the defense. With no one on the Yellow Jackets’ roster ideally suited to run the unconventional offense, the job has bounced around this week, defensive coordinator Andrew Thacker said.

Thacker himself has taken his turns under center.

“I want to make sure they get the right look,” Thacker said. “They’re not going to tackle me, but I have been (playing quarterback) at times — go out there in my little cleats and just want to give (the defense) a clean look.”

Thacker’s place in Saturday’s game is significant not only because he’s under center for the scout team offense or has an overarching role in preparing

coach Geoff Collins’ team to face KSU’S option offense, but also because he was on Owls coach Brian Bohannon’s staff in 2016, serving as his linebackers coach. In the first meeting between the two schools separated by about 21 miles on I-75, Thacker’s link to Bohannon and Kennesaw State is an intriguing element to the matchup.

“Just a phenomenal man,” Thacker said of Bohannon. “I loved working for him.”

Bohannon feels similarly about his former coach. Besides their shared employment, both grew up in Georgia and played high school ball for coaching legends in the state, Bohannon for his father, Lloyd, at Griffin High and Thacker for his stepfather, Bruce Miller, at Gainesville High.

“Coach Thacker came here and coached for a year and did a great job,” Bohannon said. “He’s a great coach, great person.”

In Thacker’s one season at the school — Kennesaw State’s second playing football — the Owls finished 8-3. Thacker’s service to Bohannon’s team played a part in helping the Owls become an FCS powerhouse, one that has the attention of the Jackets and their fans, particularly after the 22-21 loss to Northern Illinois.

KSU reached the FCS playoffs in 2017, 2018 and 2019, twice reaching the quarterfinals. The Owls are ranked 22nd in FCS, although they managed only a 35-25 win over NAIA Reinhardt last weekend, and the roster has been hit hard by injuries.

After Thacker’s one season at KSU, Collins hired him as his linebackers coach for the 2017 season at Temple, promoting him to defensive coordinator for 2018.

Collins brought Thacker to Tech after he was hired to replace coach Paul Johnson — for whom Bohannon coached several years — in December 2018.

“When we go out there on Saturday, we’re all competitive men and friendships will be set aside, and we’re all going to have the goal to go out there and win the game and be competitive and work against each other,” Thacker said. “But that being said, I just have a level of respect for those guys as men. They do a great job.”

On Bohannon’s Owls staff in

2016 was the offensive coordinator Thacker will match up with on Saturday, Grant Chesnut. “Coach Bohannon, coach Chesnut have been within the framework of that offense for years and years and years and years,” Thacker said. “So whatever you give them defensive structure wise, defensive scheme wise, they’re going to have answers. They’re going to be knowing what they’re doing at a high level.”

Thacker is not the only coach in the game who has been on both staffs. On Bohannon’s staff are

running backs coach Joe Speed, who coached nine years on the defensive side during Johnson’s tenure, and defensive line coach Liam Klein, who served at Tech in a variety of roles, mostly in recruiting, from 2003-13. Tech grad assistant Brenten Wimberly played linebacker at Kennesaw State in 2016-17 (his position coach in 2016 was Thacker) and then was a grad assistant for Bohannon after graduation, in 2018-19.

Thacker and Collins have tangled with the spread-option offense and other branches of the Johnson coaching tree. At Temple, the Owls beat Navy and coach Ken Niumatalolo in 201718 and lost to Army and coach Jeff Monken in 2017. In 2019, Collins’ first year at Tech, the Jackets stumbled against The Citadel, falling 27-24 in overtime in a game in which the Bulldogs’ option offense ran for 320 yards and held the ball for 41:50 of regulation.

Under Thacker’s leadership, the Tech defense has been spending time on the spread-option offense since spring practice and this week has dialed in on preparing for the cut blocks that are so integral to the offense. Another element to Thacker’s plan is relying heavily on his most disciplined players — the least likely to stray from their assignment and bite on ball fakes — to defend Kennesaw State.

“It’ll be dependable guys with reliable eyes and just disciplined players that we’ll put out there,” he said.

Thacker said he intends for the game plan to be complex, but not complicated.

“What (Kennesaw State) would like for us to do is to sit in one front and one structure, and we’re not going to do that,” Thacker said. “I’m not giving away any game plan. I hope (KSU coaches) hear that. I hope they chase ghosts if this gets to them. But we’re not going to be so complex that we confuse our kids. Because we’re asking them to be really detailed in their assignment, really detailed in their technique.”

As for the strategic value of having spent time on Bohannon’s staff, Thacker demurred.

“I’m not over there stealing signals because I was inside,” Thacker said. “I just have a framework of how they practice, of what their identity is and what they’re trying to do.”