Or maybe, they weren't human at all. Were these men, or were they Football Warriors from another solar system? No way they could be mere mortals as the "great" GT defense wouldn't surrender 550 yards to just any old Mountain West Conference also ran.
Breaking News.....This telegram just in from the Georgia Sports Blog's research team....
BULLETIN [STOP] UTAH PLAYERS HUMAN [STOP]
PREVIOUSLY UNPRODUCTIVE NO TALENT
ASS CLOWNS [STOP] ALL DATA POINTS
TO GAILEY SUCKING [END]
Ratliff, the Utah QB, was making his second start of his career. He's a guy that was a Division III QB not too long ago. Yet he passed for 381 yards against the Tech "defense."
And it turns out that LaTendresse isn't super duper elite either. In fact, the less than juggernaut defenses of UNC, Colorado State and Utah State held him to pedestrian numbers such as:
vs. UNC - 3 catches for 32 yards
vs. Colorado State - 2 catches for 31 yards
vs. Utah State - 3 catches for 29 yards
And for the tricky, borderline illegal plays that Utah ran for every single TD pass...Most schools simply call that a "post pattern," and it has existed since the 1950s.
Tech lost because Tech flat out stone cold quit. I've said many times that Gailey might not be a bad Xs and Os guy, but he's a lousy motivator of college players. Hard to argue that a team capable of beating Auburn and Miami, but losing to NC State and Utah is well coached.
"They really quit on themselves," LaTendresse said. "They came out talking and jumping up and down, and slowly but surely, we put that knife in there and they gave up. That first quarter they had a lot of fight. The corners were talking, the d-linemen were talking, but slowly that talk diminished and their heads started to go down. That's what you have to do: make them quit." Source: AJC.com and Utah's official site.
"You could just tell that they didn't want to be here," Utah defensive back Eric Weddle said. "When we hung around them [during bowl week], you couldn't see the fire in their eyes." Source: AJC.com
If it happened once in a while, it would be one thing. But Tech comes out and wets the bed like this vs. a team with lesser talent at least once a year under Gailey. Here's to 5 more years and another Chantastic roller coaster season for the Jackets.
9 comments:
I watched the 2nd half of the Emerald Bowl just because I needed some football to watch -- for the college-football junkie it was the equivalent of going into the cupboard and drinking the vanilla extract. But boy, what a piss-poor performance. By the fourth quarter I saw GT defenders literally jogging in "pursuit" of Quinton Ganther. Did Tech not learn from KState '98, Tennessee '02 and '03, and Cal '04 that anytime a team goes into a bowl with the attitude that they're too good to be there, they get humiliated (and deservedly so)?
C.J gets it
Either make Reggie Ball throw the ball to C.J a lot freaking more (HEY WOW A GOOD WR AND THEY THREW HIM THE BALL A LOT) or find another QB. I don't dislike Reggie Ball, but he's killing this offense. We're peeing so much talent down the drain it's not funny. And yes, I'm madder than a hornet this morning after having to watch that national emberassment - way to piss away all the good things we accomplished this season.
Love the comment on the Post Pattern - I was laughing at the same thing during the game. I had my five year old son saying "that looked like the same play as before" every time LaTendresse ran free through the secondary.
Somehow I think the 2005 GT highlight video will stop after the moral victory against us.....
There are no moral victories against UGa - there's no way in hell that game is on any highlight video (other than maybe C.J's catch).
From the Hive:
Teams that scored more points against Utah than GT did
Arizona (24)
TCU (23)
Air Force (35)
North Carolina (31)
Colorado State (21)
San Diego State (28 )
UNLV (32)
Wyoming (13)
New Mexico (31)
BYU (34)
The only team that scored less against them than Georgia Tech was mighty Utah State.
Tech's drag-ass offense shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone; what flabbergasted me was just how awful the defense looked. Clearly Jon Tenuta can put together a good D, so what's his excuse for the secondary getting repeatedly torched by a play whose general simplicity ranks around high-school level? Other than the players not giving a rat's ass, of course, but again, he bears some responsibility there as a coach.
Toward the end of the season Tenuta was getting talked up as next in line for any number of potential head-coaching jobs, but he can kiss that goodbye, at least for another season. The conspiracy theorist in me almost wonders if that wasn't the plan all along: completely collapse on defense so that nobody would come calling trying to bogart the one bright spot on Tech's coaching staff.
Oh, and let there be no doubt that Reggie ball has sucked, sucks now, and will always suck. Hated him when he pulled his ass-showing performance in the '03 UGA-GT game, still can't stand him now. I read some Techie comments this morning saying that he's basically Gailey's Quincy Carter, but that's an insult to QC. At least Quincy could throw.
At least Reggie Ball isn't a drug addict. Quincy sucked, Reggie sucks and both are responsible for 3-4 of the worst years in recent memory for our two programs.
Gailey's offense with the Coybows did a lot of stuff in the passing game we don't do now - and that's largely because we don't have a QB who can make those reads and throws. I'm not willing to throw his playcalling under the bus quite yet - but I am willing to question his selection of QB's. He's handcuffed himself, and that's inexcusable.
It does seem that Gailey kind of bet the house early on Ball, and one of the questions I had thought about asking you in our UGA-GT exchange was why he decided to do that -- did he look at the '03 upset of Auburn and think, "Dang, this kid's gold"? If that was the case, shouldn't subsequent losses have prompted him to rethink that judgment? Or has the cupboard really that bare behind Ball all along?
The cupboard was Bilbo, and despite his recruiting rankings he turned out to not be a good QB (at all). So yes, that's part of it. Taylor Bennett doesn't look like he's it either.
Next year though, Jonathan Garner will be a redshirt freshman and should push Ball really hard, he's the future at GT.
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