The Genius Behind Georgia Tech: How Paul Johnson Bucks Convention and Wins

ATLANTA — Before the Truthers got busy investigating the birth certificate of President Obama, and before they crafted their thorough treatise on climate change, they were trying to unriddle Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson and disprove everything the football sorcerer believes in. They have been rummaging through the man's brain going on 15 years, from Georgia Southern to Navy to Tech.

Johnson is not helping much by saying things like "we're not hard to find." He needs to be hauled to the confessional.

Georgia Tech is on a national stage this Saturday because it is playing Notre Dame, and, of course, you are dissecting this matchup by pondering the athleticism of the Irish versus the hocus pocus of Tech and its option offense. The slyboots Johnson is the most unconventional man in his industry, and he may be the smartest football coach in America, too.

What he does works when everyone says it won't.

Coach	Wins
Frank Beamer	274
Steve Spurrier	227
Brian Kelly	218
Dennis Franchione	211
Bill Snyder	189
Gary Pinkel	188
Nick Saban	184
Bob Stoops	170
Paul Johnson	167
Terry Bowden	151

There are always questions about how the boogeyman Johnson does solid business with an offense that runs the ball 88 to 90 percent of the time with formations straight out of the leather-helmet era. Tech is so counter-narrative to what you know about big-boy football. And that's what makes Tech cool, especially when it gets on the big stage (3:30 p.m. ET, NBC).

Here are some tidbits to add to the allure:

• Tech had an All-ACC center, Sean Bedford, who played under Johnson and studied to be a rocket scientist (aerospace engineering). It is probably the hardest major on the campus.

• Tech's blocking in 2014 was led by an All-ACC tackle who was a relative midget. Shaq Mason is 6'1" tall. The Jackets averaged 6.1 yards per carry because of him, among others. Mason is in the NFL, which shows Johnson knows what he is doing on the recruiting trail when it comes to projecting talent.      

Elise Amendola/Associated Press

• The most accomplished player sent to the NFL by Johnson and his run offense is not an offensive lineman or running back but a wide receiver (Denver's Demaryius Thomas).

• The play whisperer Johnson does not use hand signals to call in plays. He talks into the ear hole of the player to carry the play into the huddle. Johnson is given a play-call sheet before every game, but he never uses it. He sticks it in a folder. He still wants it delivered to him because he is superstitious. The honest truth is you can fit Tech plays on a 3x5 card.

• His recruiting classes are never talked about, but Tech has averaged 8.3 wins under Johnson and played in three ACC championship games in seven seasons. The Yellow Jackets finished 11-3 in 2014, and you should note they are working with 12 senior starters in 2015, which is a lot in this day and age of Power Five football.

Here is something else. Johnson, 58, is not so different from other coaches who have been around 35 years. The man, after all, has disciples and a coaching tree, just like Bear Bryant. OK, so the tree has just a few limbs: Army coach Jeff Monken, Navy coach Ken Niumatalolo and Kennesaw State coach Brian Bohannon.

Bohannon and the Owls are 2-0 in their first season of football. Guess what they are doing? Crushing teams with the option (a 56-16 win over East Tennessee State and 58-7 over Edward Waters). That's right. The Owls don't fly. They grind, just like Tech.

It's not schematics or witchcraft.

Lisa Marie Pane/Associated Press

"It's tough-man football," Bohannon said. "Once it gets going, it is hard to stop."

Here's why it is tough to stop. Johnson figures out a defense's tendencies, according to Bohannon. He watches and makes a mental note on how a cornerback behaves on a certain play, or how a linebacker reacts to motion, or how a defensive front slides. He knows that defense will repeat itself, and when it does he will have the right play in the game where he has three blocking your two. Tech has scored 29 touchdowns since the start of the 2014 season with drives of two minutes or faster.

"It's the sequence of the calls; he is three steps ahead of what's going on," Bohannon said. "He sets something up. He has a great knack for it. The man is special on game day. He sees who is making the play, and he remembers and uses it. The timeliness of his calls is what's uncanny."

Bedford, the ex-Tech rocket scientist, remembers a game on Halloween in 2009 with Vanderbilt. The Jackets were up 42-31, and Vandy wouldn't go away. The offense was gathered on the sideline when Johnson came over to them and said, "You want to score a touchdown?"

Johnson then made up a play, as if he was drawing it up on dirt in the mountains of his native North Carolina.

"We ran the new play, which we had obviously never practiced before, on the first play of the next drive," Bedford said. "Just as coach promised us he would, the safety came flying up to stop what he thought was a counter option, which allowed [quarterback] Josh Nesbitt to hit Embry Peeples in stride for an 87-yard touchdown pass."

Here are some other things about Tech you need to know before the Jackets play Notre Dame:

• The program does not fill in holes with junior college transfers. The credits simply don't transfer in. No shortcuts allowed.

• Urban Meyer is his friend. The Ohio State coach consulted Johnson on the option, not the other way around.

• There are Tech players in a business administration major, which must be a "cluster" for football guys, right? Just like the football factories, a place to hide a kid who doesn't want to work, right? Except there is a course requirement for this major called Math 1712 or 1711. Look it up. That's calculus. You have to pass it and make progress to a degree.

• Tech has 13 former high school quarterbacks on its roster. Johnson figures the quarterback at his high school is going to be the best athlete, so the coach recruits him. Give the 5'11", 6'0" guy a chance to play quarterback, and if he doesn't work out, he can go to the secondary or play receiver.

Here is another counter-narrative. Tech is a mecca for foreign students studying engineering, among other things, so Johnson has a football clinic every spring for international students. He has as much fun as the students from the Middle East, Europe and South America who grew up on futbol, not football.

Johnson was explaining to them why yellow flags in football are thrown compared to red cards in futbol that are raised.

"Holding is, well, holding," he said. "Unsportsmanlike conduct is being a jerk."

Johnson was about to explain another rule to the campers and then said in his North Carolina mountain drawl, "Aww, I'll just make something up, you won't know the difference." He laughed, and then the class laughed with him.

Chuck Burton/Associated Press

He stumped them when he was trying to explain how teams get a first down.

"We use four downs to get a first down," he said with a sly smile. "Most everybody else uses three."

His campers must have thought, "This guy must be special if the rules allow him an extra play." No, the frequently unconventional Johnson just goes for it on 4th-and-2.

Bohannon said there is something about Johnson that will ignite Georgia Tech emotionally against Notre Dame on Saturday. Like his players, many of whom were not recruited by Alabama, Auburn or LSU, Johnson has a chip on his shoulder.

Was Johnson on the verge of being fired before the 2014 season? He was 28-25 in a four-season span and there were rumblings, but then came a 10-win regular season, which included a victory over Georgia.

"Just don't tell him he can't do something," Bohannon said. "He's competitive that way."

That competitiveness is surely fueling some of the drama this week. Brian VanGorder, the Notre Dame defensive coordinator, became the Georgia Southern coach in 2006, replacing Johnson's friend, Mike Sewak, who was fired. VanGorder ridiculed the option game Georgia Southern had run with great success under Johnson.

"He said something about bringing them into the 21st century," Johnson said. "And I said, 'There's a [scoring] record there, shoot for it.'"

VanGorder finished 3-8 at Georgia Southern and then quit after one season and went back to the NFL. Johnson, meanwhile, is still running his not-21st-century offense and received a four-year contract extension last December (through 2020) that will pay him about $3.02 million per year, third in the ACC.

So Georgia Tech vs. Notre Dame will have some spit to it, matching Notre Dame's pedigreed recruits on defense against Johnson's cleverness. No matter how it turns out, the Truthers will not be satisfied that there really is another way to play the game.

Ray Glier covers college football for Bleacher Report.