Your winning Georgia Tech Eye in the Sky!

Virginia Tech=20, Georgia Tech=17 (in overtime)

1. we won!
1a. {shew}
1b. Georgia Tech almost hung around and stole that one…
2. see #1.
3. Bud Stout played its best game EVER vs. the Flex-Bone offense of Cyrano Jones or Coach Paul Johnson

4. The VT offense opened up full throttle, and then went up 7-zip and began playing the same ole G.O.P. blinking contest where he who blinks (or misQ’s) first blinks last. Coach P.J. stuck to his Flex Bone script and did not bat an eye. 63 minutes into the game Tevin Washington finally bilked and spit the bit on a borderline feeble and panicky lob overthrow that fell harmlessly right into K.Full’s lap to effectively seal the deal in OT.

63 minutes with no saline solution is a long time –last time I checked.

Though that is precisely how the Viceroy of margin of error –or one Frank Beamer- rolls. He 10^th decimal place epic at measuring precisely how many points he needs to win any given football game; and therefore precisely how much offense he must use. Labor Day nites magic number=181. 10-8 in blackjack or in our case Ten-Jack on a Cody Journall game winning FG attempt after 4 consecutive runs right up the Nixon raised to the Reagan right-wing gut.

1^st quarter 5:5o remaining:
Kan’t say I’ve seen this one before –can you? Note the wrist-band of #98 D.Hopkins on his left-hand side. You know things are getting complex on defense when a dLinemen has to wear a Qb ‘esque play-calling wrist-band indeed. D.Hop sure had a fine night collapsing the inside A-gap on either side of the Georgia Tech center as well. Likewise note how Bud Stout opened up the evening in defense of the Flex-Bone offense of P.J. You’ve seen it before –haven’t you? As in you saw it in the bowl game 3 years ago when Iowa employed a 4-3 Eagle look with the OLb’s (or ‘backer and Whip) cheating forward and the Mike (or Mlb) backed up to allow J.Tyler a little more room and space to roam free and make stops between the hashmarks without running into too much honeycomb helmet congestion or traffic outta the Wrambling Wreck run-blockers scraping to the O&M second level.

1^st quarter 2:52 remaining:
What a play this is by #58 Jack Tyler who is well known for numerous football attributes –speed not among them. Observe as “five-eight” reads T.Washington’s pitch-out on the 32-option play like a dime novel and all the while never charges upfield or into the Georgia Tech offensive backfield which even though it might have afforded him a shot at Washington on the pitch-out it would have proved taxing indeed as he would unconditionally have no angle left with which to pursue the mega speedster O.Smith outside though the C-gap on the right side of the Georgia Tech offensive-line. Instead Jack flattens out the play, and scrapes as hard as he can from his right-to-left in the direction of the short-side of the field. Whereby he effectively utilizes the Georgia Tech sideline as the 12^th defender which effectively pins O.Smith in and therefore allows Jack’s all out hustled funded pursuit to catch-up to the otherwise over-matched speed of O.Smith of the Yellow Jackets. I’d call this well-coached, or instinctive, or downright savvy, though none of that does a kid like Jack Tyler any justice. Accordingly, just when you thought that he had reached the very physical limitations of his game, he manufactures a way to elevate his ceiling yet again indeed. 17 total tackles, 7 solo, 1 TFL (tackle for a loss) says so!

1^st quarter 1:19 remaining:
Note the N.B.A. ‘esuqe knee-on-knee knock suffered by poor #18 D.J. Coles at the end of the sideline down-n-out pattern and reception by the same. Coles’ right-knee collides with the left-knee of the hard charging #54 for Georgia Tech thereby going bone-on-bone or patella (kneecap) on patella (kneecap). Now take a good look at D.J. Coles himself along the O&M sideline post-play. Is D.J. not one of the naturally thicker Wr’s you seen in a good long while at Virginia Tech? Dood is totally corpulent from head to toe which gives him a tremendous physical presence downfield in terms of blocking and bump-n-run play a like. This guy is only  6`4“ 228 lbs and when you get right down to it, #18 is next of kin to being a Te cleverly disguised as a Se at Vah.Tech. God Bless D.J. and what appeared to be his right-knee; and “yes” that is the same knee that went P.C.L. injury as before.

3^rd quarter, 15:00 remaining:
Note the 4-point stance and yesteryear old-school Ng (nose-guard) deployment of one of the Virginia Tech Dt’s (D.Hop) in the classical nose-to-nose zero technique head-up on the Georgia Tech center on this one. There are O&M depth-charts that ever so occasionally list one of our Dt’s as a Ng and that’s always a hint and a half for you regarding the up-coming week in schematic terms. Now notice that this is our very own 3-4 defense with both OLb’s cheating forward into what better resembles a five-two. As Shakespeare’s King Henry the IV himself once said regarding the chess match between P.J. and Bud: “the games afoot.” And somewhere the year 1984, Coach Dooley and Richmond Webb are all smiling.

3^rd quarter, 8:47 remaining:
Observe the elevated or deeper Pistol set. This is not the Nevada Wolfpac version of the Pistol as LT3 is a good 6 yards off the ball and Holmes a good 8 off the Line-of-Scrimmage (LOS) proper. This is really a hybrid set or a Pistol-Gun look if you will. It is also slow developing and vastly better suited to 2011 with D.Wilson and his blazing speed that far off the LOS. As this set in particular made us look passive and or tight as the night wore on down in the New River Valley.

3^rd quarter, 8:23 remaining:
First steal of the season and it’s not a good one. I don’t wanna dog Wang out too bad as he physically struggled at the point of attack for most of the evening. However, just watch the top of your screen as he gets rag-dolled right at the end of this Holmes carry on this one. Just like boxing pre-fight instructions tell us: “protect yourself at all times” indeed.

3^rd quarter, 7:56 remaining:
Watch this hyper artistic move by K.Full as he attempts to deflect the halfback pass trick-play intended for #81 along the Virginia Tech sideline while pirouetting and flailing gracefully enough with both hands in mid-air. Baryshnikov himself did not have much on this – as this is an extremely athletically Gifted play with a capital “G”. As there is almost a subtle whiff of Lynn Swann esque sideline leaping freakiness in play on this one. And do be sure … that is some major league freakiness indeed. Just ask the bicentennial Super Bowl of ’76 of you don’t believe me.

Game duration:
Wanna highlight #34 K.Jarretts’s tacking in this game. This kid sure has sure improved on hit, wrap-up and then mix in the utilization of  his very own body mass and gravity itself to wrestle Georgia Tech ball carriers to the ground. “Three-four” ain’t contact shy, he ain’t an open-field softie; as you seldom see a slightly smaller looking (5`11“ 196 lb.) Rover making this much first-contact at waist-level -or just above- and yet somehow managing to hog-tie this many ball carriers smartly enough. A.K.A. I fell a lot better about Rover than I did at this time just a week ago.

3^rd quarter, 3:49 remaining:
Watch as the left-G of Georgia Tech submarines #98 Luther Maddy with what I can only describe as an “arm-whip” (as opposed to the old-school leg-whip). Now notice that it is actually our very own #98 D. Hop who stunts into Maddy’s right-side A-gap and accidentally friendly-fires poor Luther’s left-knee up on what fundamentally amounts to a hi-lo and a defensive clipping penalty on his very own teammate all rolled into one. This knee injury is just an oddball one to put it mildly and it is not a good looking one to shoot straight. Maddy did return though he is now listed as being in blue. God Bless on that.

3^rd quarter duration:
Boy was this a game of attrition as I numbered no less than 5 starters combined from each side put out of the game in the third stanza of play. Wanna also mention that #43 Gee.Dub (Winslow) sure did a fine job of sniffing out the belly-play in the second-half as he was typically left uncovered by the Georgia Tech blocking scheme and therefore sliced over and over right into the A-Gap to make 6 solo stops in the final 30 minutes of play.

4^th quarter, 8:11 remaining;
Notice as big ole #51 for Georgia Tech plants his helmet right in the side of M.Davis and his latissimus dorsi right below his left-hand underarm at the end of this helter skelter politically incorrect so-called “slant” pattern that was twice only one downfield block away from going all the way for six! As Wr blocking was very moderate downfield on Monday nite down in the New River Vallye. It was not awful, anymore than it never got any better than flat-average in support of each other and in support of the VT Tb’s beyond the line-of-scrimmage (or LOS).

4^th quarter, 0:13 remaining:
I don’t wanna hit this one too hard; as we did win the football game after all. However, what in the “wide wide world of sports” were we doing running a 1-yard out pattern to R.Mallack the Te on 3rd and 4 with under 20 seconds, and the ball spotted just beyond mid-field and still needing a good 12-15 yards to give Cody Journell a reasonably makeable kick? I mean really folks? Really? That’s the best play we have up in the booth? Football still ain’t rocket-surgery men –no matter how many Saurn-5’s rockets we slaughter like wild pigs.

4^th quarter, 0:07 remaining:
#1 of Georgia Tech actually “executes” a simple open-field tackle on C.Full’ via maintaining his outside-in “leverage” and he (#1) would have marooned the Virginia Tech offense right at the 40 yard-line. That’s a 57 yard field goal and at least several yards outta Journell’s successful range and into a 4mph retarding head-wind of a kick. Brooks Abbot the all-state walk-on Kicker from Florida does have that kinda range and I know we were warming him up just in case. Amazing – isn’t it?

Time To Throw (T3):©
Virginia Tech:
Qb sacked=2
Qb pressures=1
Qb hurries=2
Qb hits=16

Georgia Tech:
Qb sacked=2
Qb pressures=11 (with 1 INT)
Qb hurries=nil
Qb hits=28

     Clearly the T3 is not meant to dutifully discover, or unearth any Flex-Bone gems as post-game Wrambling Wreck interpretative metrics go. The option Qb (#13, T.Washington) was gonna get hit, hit some more and hit again in this one. 19 carries says so. Though do note that he passed the ball 15 times, which is a semi-large amount for any P.J. coached Triple-Option offensive set. T.Washington threw the ball just a tad better this year than before and warrants some measure of flattery for such. Though do also note that he was pressured or sacked on 13 out of the 17 called Georgia Tech passing plays in the Yellow Jackets huddle. This year we will track that on percentage basis and according to my 36 hours of Calc’ and Stats’s that works out to getting good to great pressure on #13 76% of the time. Conversely Georgia Tech and the 3-4 pet alignment of one Al Groh only managed to effectively pressure Logan Thomas a mere 5 times outta our 40 scripted passing plays which amounts to 12.5% as pressure goes in this Coastal Division game.  Now consider that we just departed 8,063 cumulative starting oLine offensive snaps, we just sat our starting right-G Brent Benedict for the duration of the opening contest (thereby monkeying around with any and all synchronicity up-front) and we deployed a true cadre of rookie pass-blockers at Tb from stem to stern. One sack was on a blow assignment by the Paint-shop as he missed on a rudimentary outside-in count over on the right-hand side. The other sack was simply a coverage sack and those will happen from time-to-time. Or in other words that was some damn fine pass-protection upfront from Curt Newsome’s boys with such a tremendous amount of personnel flux in tow after seeing double-digit sacks routinely given up throughout spring-ball during our scrimmages just a few months ago. That’s code for A+ pass blocking if you ask me and there is no real reason to think it will do anything other than improve from here on out.

***

Long-field Management (Lo.FM):©
Virginia Tech:
positive= |||| |
negative= |||| |||| ||||
neutral= |||| (one GT penalty)

Georgia Tech:
positive= |||| | (one GT TD)
negative= |||| |||| |||| (one VT INT)
neutral= ||||

      Again, same drill as above. As the Lo.FM is really not all that shrewd of a post-game regression analysis vehicle as any option based offense truly goes. It is indeed important to make coach P.J. chase the sticks and inflict as many 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th and longs as humanly possibly. Though you also know that coach P.J. is not shy on calling 4 offensive plays to capture the prerequisite 10 yards when most anybody else is fundamentally only attempting to net 10 yards on 3 snaps. Such is the nature of the Coach P.J. Flex-Bone beast.

However, do notice from above the more than casual relationship between and the Lo.FM and this being a relatively even defensive struggle. Is that officially causality? No, or at least prolly not. However it is rather significant when you consider that Bud Stout and the twenty-twelve Virginia Tech defense only allowed coach P.J. to convert 38% of his 3^rd down Veer attempts and 1 outta 2 as his 4^th down attempts went. Such is quite reasonable when you are going up against such a senior and upperclassman heavy offensive huddle from the ATL. Accordingly Coach Foster and company held P.J.’s much vaunted Flex-Bone offensive set to almost 110 fewer total offense yards than on average in our four previous engagements; and that folks is code for a nearly staggering defensive betterment of a top-shelf 33% to the good overall! Or to put it another way, Coach Foster coached his F’n ass off and the 2012 Hokie stop-unit played the same! Such makes for a helluva an outstanding defensive effort by the good guys in orange and white on Labor Day night.

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Conclusions:
Someone wrote in their preview that if the hurricane remnant funded skies held off and if Monday evening remained dry accordingly…

“…otherwise, this game is closer than you think and that is code for this being a 1 play game either way.”

Yah; I’d say a 3-point overtime Hokie come from behind win fits that to the proverbial T. Likewise someone wondered out-loud if the 2012 Virginia Tech offense could really stand the vampy light of day and (finally) come out of it’s ensconced offensive shell?

23 inside zone runs outta 35 rushing calls later and we yet again had our Red-State offensive answer. This was something that Chris Coleman and I were debating before hand as the inserting of the more mobile, nimble and agile Michael Via into the starting offensive line-up upfront did seem to hint at a more outside oriented offensive attack. However, I stuck to my game-plan offensive guns and said that Virginia Tech would holster it’s big-state Pistol and turtle yet again on solo national TV. Now, to be fair to the Frank-n-Stiney offense, it is inviting indeed to attack on the inside when the twin starting Georgia Tech ILb’s are both in civvies and unable to participate on Labor Day night. I do get that as I do fully support attacking second-stringers and banging one out via testing their mettle good and hard. Though why not play your most powerful G (B.Benedict) if you insist on such a high-voltage internal approach? That too suits M.Holmes and his quick hitting Dive stylized approach to toting the pigskin; and this clearly suits M.Scales and his bowling-ball approach to smash-mouth football to the proverbial T. However, where was our Team Captain to be found on this night? As he clearly was not found when one consults the post game Box Score. So what exactly are we? Are we a turtle attempting to extradite or crowbar itself from its very own shell? Or are we an offensive one-trick leopard who simply can not change its spots?

I don’t know just yet –even though I do know that we now enjoy 20 consecutive eminently winnable quarters of football with which to find out.

“LETS GO!!!“

“Hokies!!!“

bourbonstreet**