2011 Georgia Tech Football

After last year, I am tempted to begin with a Mark-Mcguire-style “I am not here to discuss the past” paragraph. To put it mildly, 2010 GT football was not good. It was almost as bad as my predictions. Ouch. I think I technically predicted 11 wins (although in that article I think I did point out that I was just making us the favorite in 11 games, and that since a couple upsets were likely, 9 wins might be more accurate). Either way you slice it, my blog should have very little credibility at this point. So I’ve got my work cut out for me this season. Here goes:

All offseason, the sense that I get from the media and many GT fans is that we struggled both on offense and defense last year, and that neither was good. In fact, the general sense seems to be that the offense was just as much to blame as the defense, and in fact the offense was the worst its been under Paul Johnson. The media’s theory basically holds that the loss of Dwyer and Thomas made our offense worse than the previous two years. And now, without Nesbitt or Allen, its likely to get even worse.

If you have noticed that the media is mistaken in this regard, I award you two points. Contrary to the belief that is held by at least some people, our offense was better in 2010 than it was in 2008. That is to be expected, because 2008 was our first year in the scheme, and we didn’t really know what we were doing. But don’t let anybody try to tell you that we just don’t have the talent anymore to be as good as we were in 2008. Fact is, 2008 will probably be the worst offense Paul Johnson will ever have at Georgia Tech. It is just very difficult to learn our scheme in one Spring. Yes the 2008 team did have plenty of talent, and that helped. But on the job training, questionable execution, and only using half the playbook prevented us from being very good on offense.

Of course, many people didn’t really notice that at the time. The main reason is that we were busy winning 9 games and exceeding everyone’s wildest expectations. Winning tends to have that effect. When a team is winning, everybody gets credit, whether its really deserved or not. The fact of the matter is that the defense was significantly better than average in 2008, and the offense was in fact below average. Yes, below average nationally. It was close to average, but it was clearly holding the defense back. I have to confess, at the time I really enjoyed watching the 2008 offense. It was new, it seemed exciting, and it seemed to work. But I have watched some old 2008 games now that I’ve seen the 2009 and 2010 offenses, and there is really no comparison. We looked slow, sluggish, and not very well organized. We didn’t execute very quickly or smoothly.

Many GT fans may already be aware of that general point, even if many casual football fans are not. But let’s take a closer look to see just exactly how the offense and defense have performed by year.

I want to begin by saying that I judge offensive and defensive performance in terms of points per possession. That is all that I think really matters. How many points did you score, or did you allow, given how many opportunities you had. The reason for this is simple. Some teams score quickly, some score slower. Some teams pass more, which tends to stop the clock. Some teams run more, which tends to run the clock. Thus, judging how good an offense or defense is in terms of points per game just doesn’t work. Some teams games are longer than others. I would be willing to bet that Texas Tech plays games that have many more drives, and more plays, than the games that Georgia Tech plays. In effect, they are simply playing a longer game, even though both are 60 minutes.

I would also be willing to bet that Georgia Tech, especially for the last 2 years, has had fewer possessions per game than most teams. But, I don’t like to just bet. I prefer to look at data. So I collected some. Here are the numbers.

	GT Possessions per game	National Possessions per game
2008
Offense	11.53	12.21
Defense	12	12.22
2009
Offense	10.64	12.18
Defense	10.92	12.14
2010
Offense	11.46	12.24
Defense	11.23	12.24

So Georgia Tech does in fact have significantly fewer possessions per game than other teams.

You might ask why the offense and defense numbers do not match up. Well, I did not include possessions where the clock ran out for the half or the end of the game. The majority of these possessions are largely irrelevant, as the team with the ball just runs out the clock and has no meaningful chance to score. There are some times that probably should count, but they are rare, and compiling a list that properly includes all of those would require me to go game by game for every team in the country. I don’t have that kind of time.

Anyway, the possessions do not match exactly for offense and defense because its possible for one team to get an extra possession in a game, due to not counting these possessions. Actually, its possible even if you count every possession, but I digress...

So what is going on here? Why does Georgia Tech play games with fewer possessions? Well, we run the ball, and that eats up clock. We run the ball almost every play. We also tend to have a good offense that rarely goes three and out, so we do not have many quick possessions. Additionally, in the last 2 years, our defense has not been very good. We do not hold our opponents to many quick possessions. We allow sustained drives. Both of those factors contribute to the average possession in a Georgia Tech game taking longer than it would otherwise. (These principles are further supported by the fact that in 2008, when Georgia Tech had its best defense and worst offense of the last 3 years, it was closest to the national average in possessions per game. Better defense and worse offense results in more possessions, because both teams are giving the ball up quicker. AND, further supported by the converse. In 2009, with our best offense and worst defense, we had the largest discrepancy in possessions per game, compared to the national average. We held onto the ball for longer, and we rarely got it back very fast.).

The primary effect of this fact is that it tends to make our offense look worse than it really is, and our defense look better. Common sense tells you that if you only have to defend 11 possessions per game, and not 12, then you should expect to give up fewer points. And if only have the ball 11 times in a game, you should expect to score fewer points.

Thus, the points per possession stats give you a more accurate picture.

Below is a chart showing points per possession for both the offense and defense, by year, compared against the national average. It also shows Georgia Tech’s offense and defense national ranking, based on points per game.

	Offense Pts/Poss	National Average	Offense Pts/game	National Average/GT Rank	Defense Pts/Poss	National Average	Defense Pts/Game	National Average/GT Rank
2008
	2.11	2.22	24.4	26.92/ 74th	1.69	2.08	20.3	25.62/ 28th
2009
	3.17	2.22	33.8	26.87/ 14th	2.27	2.08	24.8	25.45/ 56th
2010
	2.27	2.29	26	27.7/ 71st	2.25	2.15	25.2	26.49/ 57th

Thus, the 2008 defense was quite a bit better than either 2009 or 2010. That is probably not exactly “news” to most fans, but the margin is very significant.

Also of note is just exactly how good the 2009 offense was. 3.17 points per possession over the course of a season is a fairly ridiculous average.

You’ll also notice that, if you did not look at points per possession and instead focused on points per game, you would arrive at the same erroneous conclusion that many casual fans and many in the media have about 2010 Georgia Tech - that the defense was better than the offense. After all, the offense ranked 71st and the defense ranked 57th. However, remember the principle discussed above. Georgia Tech’s games are shorter than average. And that inflates the stats of our defense, while unfairly making the offense look worse than it really is. When you compare points per possession against the national average, you see that the offense was basically average, and the defense was significantly below average.

One thing that I find encouraging is that our 2010 offense, despite its struggles, was still significantly better than the 2008 offense. So, even when we struggle on offense, one would think we are capable of winning 9 games (or maybe even more) if we have a good defense.

Another thing that I find encouraging is that the defense in 2010 actually improved ever so slightly. Effectively, we were exactly the same, but when you lose two players as talented as Morgan and Burnett, you would expect some drop off. The fact that there was none indicates to me that Groh was in fact a coaching upgrade. Given that Groh runs a fairly complex scheme and last year was year 1, Groh may turn out to be a huge upgrade. (Remember how much progress the offense made from year 1 to year 2 in Johnson’s complex scheme? I expect similar results this year for Groh.)

So, how do we get more accurate national rankings of GT’s offense and defense? Easy. We convert the points per possession into the “average” points per game, by multiplying GT’s points per possession times the national average of possessions per game. That will give us a much more accurate comparison of GT’s offense and defense against the nation, and let us see which was better each year, and by how much.

	Converted Offense Points/Game	Converted National Ranking	Converted Defense Points/Game	Converted National Ranking
2008
	25.76	57th	20.65	29th
2009
	38.61	5th	27.56	76th
2010
	27.78	55th	27.54	67th

I think those numbers more accurately reflect just exactly how awful the 2009 defense was, and thus just exactly how much the 2009 offense carried that team to 11 wins. And, while the margin is not great, the 2010 offense was slightly better than the 2008 offense, at least suggesting that with better defense, we still could have had a very good season.

The last chart is also fairly obvious, but I think worth a look anyway. Let’s look at the average “adjusted” rank of the offense and defense, compared to our win total.

	Adjusted Average Rank of Offense and Defense	Season Win Total
2008
	43	9
2009
	40.5	11
2010
	61	6

This just in - better offense and defense equals more wins. OK, so that is pretty obvious, but I like to see the extent of the difference.

The plus side here is that I see both units getting better this season. Briefly, here is why:

Offense -

Last year the offense struggled largely due to a combination of factors, none of which are very likely in any given year. First, we got the turnover bug. 27 turnovers are a lot to lose. Georgia Tech was significantly below average in turnovers lost, and turnover margin. Both of those are, in my opinion, a result of execution, focus, and a decent amount of luck. I don’t think you should expect to be significantly below or above average in turnovers in any given year. So this factor represents one somewhat unlikely occurrence that hurt our offense.

Secondly, our WR’s played about as poorly as they could play. Looking back over the season, I counted more than 30 outright drops. I mean passes that hit us in the hands and clearly should have been caught. For a team with only 65 completions, 30+ drops is simply ridiculous. You’ll never convince me that GT all of sudden can’t recruit WR’s that are capable of catching the ball. Not when every other FBS and FCS team is able to do so. I don’t know if the cause was bad luck, a psychological block, or something else, but I am confident this phenomenon is not likely to repeat itself.

Third, its obviously not likely to lose your starting QB in the middle of the season, to a season ending injury. Yes it happens to some teams every year (like the turnover bug or a case of the drops...) but its not very likely.

So, we weathered all 3 of those somewhat unlikely events, and still produced a slightly above average offense. Is it possible we could have to deal with those three again? Sure. In fact, they could get even worse. But, its not very likely. I would expect us to float back towards average in all of those areas, and maybe even as far as above average.

With regard to everything else, I expect the offense to keep churning along. Paul Johnson does a pretty good job with it every year. This team will certainly have some strengths and weaknesses that may be different from years past. I don’t buy the argument that our talent is evaporating. Guys like Dwyer and Thomas were very good, but I think we have several young players with plenty of talent. The offensive line is young and thin, but thats been the case for 3 years now, and hasn’t slowed us down too much.

In short, I expect a pretty good offense. Very likely better than last year. Maybe about the same, possibly worse but that is the least likely result.

Defense -

Here we should get better simply because Groh is a good coach who knows his system very well, but it takes a few years to get the players to fully understand it. Specifically, Groh has stated it usually takes 3 years to get everyone on the same page. But, in year 2 we should be better than year 1. Everyone will be playing faster, reacting more, and thinking and hesitating less.

Additionally, we have the entire defensive line back, and most of the linebackers. The secondary is entirely new, and that is a big concern, but word there is that this young group is the most athletic and talented we have had in a long time. Plus, the entire secondary last year, starters and backups, was learning the new system. Many of the backups who will now be starting earned significant experience last year. So the loss of 4 starters, which often could be a disaster, may not be as bad as it seems.

All in all, I expect significant improvement from this group. It does tend to be easier to improve when you have not been very good, and this group has not been very good the past 2 years.

In the next few days, extending into next week, I’ll be making some other season preview type posts. Included in that group will be a game by game breakdown, and a look at our talent and experience in each position group. But for now, I’ll let on that I expect a better season than last year, and frankly I see no reason why we can’t be in the thick of the conference race. I fully expect the Virginia Tech game to decide the winner of the Coastal, as it does every year. At home, with an improved offense and defense, I believe we have a shot to win. But we are young enough that I expect some growing pains. 8-9 wins may be all that we can realistically expect. And that could become 6-7 if the breaks go against us, or maybe 10 if we get more than our share.