Tarrant Playing Key Roles in Jackets' Success

(You might not know, but that's Jerrard Tarrant, and he's good at football.)

Playmakers.

It's a popular buzzword in common football nomenclature, meant to describe those among us who affect change in the outcome of a game through sheer talent or force of will (also the name of a most-regrettable ESPN television show).

Jerrard Tarrant is one such individual.

When Michael Johnson, Vance Walker, Daryl Richard, and plenty of respect left Georgia Tech's defense last spring, the Jackets were suddenly a unit without enough playmakers.

They had plenty of hands to put the ball in offensively, but there were few names who could earn more than just a passing mention for their play—Morgan Burnett, Derrick Morgan, that was about it.

Enter Tarrant, who added a fumble-recovery-for-touchdown to his resume Saturday against Mississippi State. That brings his touchdown tally to three in five games if you count two on punt returns, including those pooch-punt theatrics that left Dabo Sweeney redder than Georgia clay some weeks back.

Tarrant certainly wouldn't be a likely candidate for such production. He almost wasn't on the team at all.

In July 2008, Tarrant was arrested and charged with rape, and Paul Johnson almost immediately suspended him accordingly. The Carrollton, Ga., native, then a redshirt freshman, sat out the entire '08-'09 season while the case ran its course, and the average observer (like me) assumed that Tarrant had gone from battling for a starting spot to never seeing the working side of a football field in a Tech uniform.

But, after the dust settled, so to speak, Tarrant was cleared, and he made his return to the Georgia Tech roster. He won a starting job at cornerback (obviously), as well as punt returner (obviously, again). 

Since that time, he's become a man with a penchant for making things happen when the ball is in his hands.

Now, to be fair, it would be easy enough to say Tarrant is just a good punt returner who finds himself in the right place at the right time often enough. But if I'm a football coach and I've got a guy who can average 0.6 points per game from a defensive position, then I'm just going to keep letting him do his thing.

Georgia Tech's defense isn't great. Really, Dave Wommack and crew do good work under the circumstances, but between the three linemen, Jahi Word-Daniels, and Kyle Jackson, Georgia Tech lost five starters or potential starters to injury and graduation.

On-field results bear out as much—just last Saturday, the Jackets gave a woeful Mississippi State offense almost 500 yards and 31 points. Yow.

The best way to make up for such deficiencies—if you can't fix them, of course—is to be able to make game-changing plays from the defensive side of the ball with regularity.

Tech has Derrick Morgan up front running an impressive show, and Morgan Burnett is a hard-hitting ballhawk with an almost-certain future on Sundays.

But teams will double up on Morgan, and they know not to throw toward Burnett, so somebody else has to step up. Jerrard Tarrant looks like a good bet to do that right now.