Georgia Tech Vs. Jacksonville State

It is hard to believe that the first game of the college season is over. Months of constant buildup, from reading the barrage of recruiting news, listening to expert opinions and forecasting to watching the spring scrimmage have now gone out the window as the season is now in full swing. I am sure that there is a collective sigh of relief from ESPN, FoxSports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, CBS Sports as well as the multitude of sports themed websites and radio stations as they can now shift from guessing about the season to completely botching their coverage of it.

I could go on a tear about how the sports media has really dug itself into a whole so far but then I would miss out on the opportunity to talk about some football!!

I was fortunate enough to go to the first Georgia Tech game of the season, even if it was against Jacksonville State. No offense to the State but the match up did not get the hype or level of expectation as the Georgia vs. Oklahoma State game or even the Florida State vs. Miami game. Really?

This did not dampen my spirits as my crew and I made our way to our seats with the anticipation of seeing a quality outing from the Jackets. There were several things that I was eager to see, but we ended up getting there a bit late because of herding problems. Don't ask. Needless to say, we missed the first touchdown of the season as Jonathan Dwyer took the first play from scrimmage and rocked 73 yards for a touchdown! You know, he could have waited till I was in my seat to do that. I really should talk to CPJ about this.

Here are a couple of points I would like to make before going any further, as they are non-football related (sort of):

The new Mega-Tech-Tron is truly impressive, not Dallas Cowboy impressive but it is a true upgrade over the previous version. The pictures were crisp so that you could easily see the multiple Tech fumbles. The best part of the new MTT is that the overall production of the game experience is better, from the AT&T text message postings to the scoreboards from across the country. It is really first class.

The new uniforms are so much better now that they have gone to the pure gold look and gotten away from the French's Mustard color scheme. Georgia Tech has never done a great job in maintaining a look and overall color scheme. Don't believe me? Go into Tailgater's Alley and see if you can count the different color jerseys or T-shirts. My quick survey counted four main color combinations: black and yellow, mustard and white, black and mustard, gold and white. Oh, and I don't count the pink Tech stuff.

OK, moving on.

The game itself was not as impressive an outing as I would have hoped but it did provide some idea of how the team will grow as the year progresses. Again, I will not make any projections based off this one game, but will say that I did see a lot of improvement that you can hang your hat on.

Tarrant was a welcome addition to the team. By now, we have all heard his story and it was good to see him on the field. From the level of enthusiasm he displayed, I think he was glad to be back. He had several good defensive plays and made some very solid special teams play with one returned for a touchdown. His energy was really infectious as the rest of the secondary looked aggressive and solid.

The defensive line did pretty well as many expected that it would get pushed around, not because of a lack of intensity but by the overall lack of experience. While there is a lot of work to do, I think that there is great potential on both sides of the line. The one thing that stuck out in my mind is #90 (T.J. Barnes) would is a mountain of a young man. On one play, there were THREE Jacksonville State offensive linemen trying to block him. When it required three people to stop you from doing something, you know you got skills.

On the whole, the defense was good, mainly in the secondary and linebackers, much as we suspected.

The passing attack was actually a passing attack this time around. CPJ stated that he wanted to expand passing this year and I think it was a solid outing for the forward lateral. Nesbitt has never been known as a quarterback with touch, but he did a good job of putting the ball into the right hands (namely Thomas) as Tech racked up about 150 yards of passing offense. I actually got tickled when the offense lined up in a more traditional formation once or twice.

Because Tech went nuts in the first half and then played a lot of the backups, I got a chance to see many of the players I had only read about: Allen, Peebles, Washington. These are young players and I know the game time did them a service. Other than a lack of a killer instinct, the replacements on the defense looked pretty good but I was disappointed by the lack of aggressive play.