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The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets defeated the Alcorn State Braves in blowout fashion, 41-0. The defense played great holding the Braves to only 69 passing yards and 146 total yards. It should be a good feeling for the team and its fans but head coach Paul Johnson was not impressed.
“I think anytime that you can win a game and win it in pretty dominating fashion, that’s a positive. At the same time, I was disappointed in the way we played offensively, for sure. I thought the defense, we played pretty well for the most part,” stated Johnson.
“We did miss some opportunities, missed a couple turnovers we could have had. Missed a few tackles. Some organizational stuff, we had to burn a couple timeouts there in the second half with 10 on the field.”
Johnson wasn’t done there.
“All that stuff should get worked out and get better. So we’ve got to make a ton of progress from week one to week two as the competition will continue to ratchet up as we continue to play. For as many guys as we had returning on offense, that was a pretty sloppy performance.”
Johnson’s opening statement to reporters after the game came with a look of dissatisfaction on his face. It raised questions of how can you be disappointed with a blowout win to open the season? Like coach stated, the offensive side of the ball looked a bit out of sorts.
Georgia Tech’s quarterback, TaQuon Marshall, finished the game 9-18 for 104 yards through the air and 77 rushing yards with two total touchdowns and an interception. Marshall looked bad in some instances, missing wide open receivers, throwing to the wrong spot and throwing too wide towards the sidelines on curl and comeback routes.
The numbers look ok but they were skewed. Marshal had five of his nine completions on a single drive in the third quarter. That included maybe his best pass of the day to tight end Brad Stewart for the touchdown. That would be Marshall’s last drive of the game.
On all the other drives, he was 4-13 for 25 yards and one interception. When coach was asked about the extra passing before pulling Marshall, he responded, “Gotta get some confidence in him [Marshall]. We’re gonna have to be able to throw the ball when we play better teams and we need to be consistent. Just trying to give him some confidence in routes, receivers and pass protection, you know the whole nine yards.”
Their competition will get better next week when they take on the University of South Florida Bulls. The team will have their work cut out for them versus USF, who held Elon to a dreadful 42 yards passing in their opener.
One thing is clear, Paul Johnson is not satisfied and like he said, they will have to make a ton of progress from week one to week two.
