Sports

Tech has ‘option’ for improvement

• New Georgia Tech football coach Paul Johnson has shown his new team the triple-option offense is more than three yards and a cloud of dust.

Paul Dehner Jr.

MACON — On Day 1 of the Paul Johnson era at Georgia Tech, the Yellow Jackets lined up in the triple option for the first time and began with the basics.

Like, relearning how the snap count works.

Receiver Correy Earls looked back on those first days with a knowing smirkT uesday as he addressed the media at the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame’s Pigskin Preview.

That’s because months removed from the infant stages of a spring season he entered unaware of Johnson or any aspect of this rare, ball-control offense, Earls now understands the capacity of the attack.

“It has come a long way from us not even knowing the snap count to actually being able to adjust to the defense we get at practice now and just be successful,” he said. “It is really amazing how far we came.”

It would have been easy for Earls to leave and never see the development of this scheme. As a top returning wideout, however, the redshirt sophomore never considered transferring as quarterback Taylor Bennett did.

He wanted to be a team player. He wanted to be a member of the new Ramblin’ Wreck.

And Tuesday, with a black and gold Tech polo proudly draping his 6-foot, 190-pound frame, he was proud to be a receiver in what he initially heard rumored to be a “run, run, run offense.”

Not just because of his new understanding of it, but the potential of the man running it.

Or not running it.

“After practice and working with it, you realize it is not as much running as people think,” Earls said.

Earls then added: “Then you know what coach you have, one that is all about winning and is going to win. So, he is going to get to the ball to the player that needs to have it in order for us to be successful. If it is a receiver, the receiver will have it. A running back, then a running back will have it.”

That’s caused fits for the Tech defense attempting to stop it all spring.

“It is crazy, you can call it the triple, but I don’t think it is the triple option,” defensive lineman Darryl Richard said. “I think it has more like six or seven options on every play.”

Johnson, who won two national titles at Georgia Southern in 1999 and 2000 and turned Navy around to go 43-19 during the past five seasons, has gained the respect of a team he inherited from a fired Chan Gailey.

Johnson didn’t attend Tuesday’s event, but his presence could almost be felt in the room just by listening to Richard.

The senior has been invigorated by Johnson’s intense on-field approach and made a believer by his mad scientist mentality.

“You are talking about bringing in one of the best minds in football,” he said. “I don’t live my life in a vacuum. I watch a lot of football. I have seen what his Navy teams did. I have seen some of the Georgia Southern clips in the past. You watch some of his football games in the past, the way he is attacking people … you can actually see there is a method to the madness. That is really important. When you do those types of things, you can help build something that is big.”

Richard says Johnson’s offense has not just changed the mindset of players like competing quarterbacks Calvin Booker and Josh Nesbitt.

It has even affected the approach of a defensive front four he is a part of that appears to be the strength of this year’s team.

“When we first started this spring, the offense actually got the best of us,” he said. “It was a new offense; we were not familiar with it at all. I had the mentality that every now and then I got to go make a play. (Johnson) is going to find those type of people. That is who he is going to attack, the most productive guy on defense can actually become a weakness because he wasn’t playing team defense. It forces you to play football that way. That was real big.”

For a Tech team that has lost seven consecutive games to rival Georgia, most around the program admit a change was needed.

Earls is thrilled to be part of this new era and hopes to represent the type of unselfish group of players his new coach needs to rebuild a winner.

“They say receivers don’t get the ball, but it takes a real team player to work hard,” Earls said. “It is all for the team. If the option is what we need and is going to work, then I am all for it.”

More Sports>>