In which we pause to think a bit.
Welcome to bye week 1!
We’ve got three of these this year because of our stupid schedule, and this first one has arrived at a decent time at which to take stock of where we are and what we have left.
The Season So Far
I guess if you asked me to sum up the season in one word it would be: perplexing. Plenty of reasonable people figured 3-2 would be the record at this point, though I doubt many people picked the specific games correctly. The Florida State win sours by the day but a win is a win, even if it’s against the worst team in the conference (lol, lmao even). Georgia State and VMI were always going to be easy, but it’s good that we didn’t mess around. Syracuse and Louisville were dumb losses that could’ve easily been wins, but such is the life of a Georgia Tech fan these days.
Any discussion of what’s happened so far has to start with the offense; outside of the VMI blowout it’s been pretty lackluster and the run game in particular has fallen a good bit short of where I thought we’d be after last season. The silver lining is that Haynes King still looks like a very capable QB, though I do want to see him hit deeper balls with more consistency. I’m hoping that the offensive staff spent this bye week making adjustments and that we’ll see an elevated offense against Duke.
Defensively it’s been mostly the same thing we’ve seen for 15 years: hemorrhaging yardage, allowing long third down conversions, not getting any QB pressure, but somehow keeping the scoreboard reasonable. It’s not been fun to watch, but if we keep allowing only 20.4 points per game then it’ll end up being our best overall defensive effort in over a decade. All the same, I desperately want us to be just the 10% better it would take to win games like Syracuse.
The Season Remaining
At this point I have no doubt that the remaining seven games will be just as perplexing as the first give. Notre Dame, Miami, and UGA are probably out of reach (though who knows, ND and UGA have shown some weaknesses and Miami is bound to do something stupid), but I feel comfortable saying that the other four opponents are all perfectly beatable. Duke has looked bad in pretty much every game even though they’ve miraculously squeaked out five wins. UNC seems to be on the verge of collapse at any moment. VT did a lot for their image against Miami but I’m not scared of any team that loses to Vandy (the same Vandy that lost to GA State by the way). NC State has gotten roasted by the only two good teams they’ve played and has looked meh otherwise. I desperately want to say that we should win all four of those games, but the evidence so far tells me that we’ll do something weird like lose to two of them but add a win over Notre Dame.
No matter what order the wins and losses come in, I still feel confident that a bowl game appearance can be earned for the second year in a row. It’s going to take a little more consistency than we’ve seen so far but I still have enough faith in Key and the staff that they can make the right adjustments and make some good things happen down the stretch. Things need to be better, but I’m not ready to panic yet. In the seven games remaining I want to see:
- >200 rushing yards per game (and not just from King)
- A score in every quarter
- <25 points per game allowed
- <300 yards per game allowed