Big Play Ability
One thing about Chan Gailey's offense that has bothered me to an extent over the past few seasons is the lack of big play ability (or taking chances for those big plays). Something encouraging to me in the beginning of the season has been the teams ability to get down the field and break large gains - and not just to CJ.
In the UNC game, GT had 221 yards on 6 plays - each one of them over 25 yards and only 2 of them to Calvin. The ability to have game breaking players at both WR spots, the RB and the QB is going to make this offense much tougher as the season wears on, and gives us the ability for that one big play that can make the difference in close conference games.
P.J Daniels - 42 yard run
D. Bilbo - 48 yard TD catch
D. Bilbo - 26 yard catch
R. Ball - 33 yard catch (Bilbo on the WR option / throwback play)
C. Johnson - 43 yard catch
C. Johnson - 29 yard catch
That's a pretty impressive list from one game, and looks more like something F$U in the late 90's would have done than anything our grind-it-out style of offense has generated in the past few years. I, like every GT fan, would have loved to see Chan grind out the end of the 4th quarter on the ground, but I'm willing to overlook that if him opening up the playbook a bit is going to give us continual large gains during the course of games. This year's offense is capable of winning quite a few games, and especially with Johnson and Bilbo on the edges playing the way they are right now.
In the UNC game, GT had 221 yards on 6 plays - each one of them over 25 yards and only 2 of them to Calvin. The ability to have game breaking players at both WR spots, the RB and the QB is going to make this offense much tougher as the season wears on, and gives us the ability for that one big play that can make the difference in close conference games.
P.J Daniels - 42 yard run
D. Bilbo - 48 yard TD catch
D. Bilbo - 26 yard catch
R. Ball - 33 yard catch (Bilbo on the WR option / throwback play)
C. Johnson - 43 yard catch
C. Johnson - 29 yard catch
That's a pretty impressive list from one game, and looks more like something F$U in the late 90's would have done than anything our grind-it-out style of offense has generated in the past few years. I, like every GT fan, would have loved to see Chan grind out the end of the 4th quarter on the ground, but I'm willing to overlook that if him opening up the playbook a bit is going to give us continual large gains during the course of games. This year's offense is capable of winning quite a few games, and especially with Johnson and Bilbo on the edges playing the way they are right now.
posted by Nathan at 2:47 PM
Georgia Tech Sports
6 Comments:
The rise of Bilbo may turn out to be the most important outcome from the UNC game. Having two outstanding receivers could make the threat of passing so much important that the running game opens up. That said, I worry about depth at RB.
Well that's a new one since RB seems to be our only truly deep position. PJ, Choice, Woods (several nice receptions Saturday), and Grant. That's 4 guys right there and 3 of them have seen significant playing time in White and Gold and one of them beat out the other 2 for the 2nd spot.
I'm absolutely not concerned about RB depth. DL, LB, DB and OL have be petrified, but RB and WR are the two positions that I know we are actually deep at. Especially now that D-bo has emerged as another big play threat and Clark proved against Auburn that he's a posession receiver threat.
I'm worried about RB depth to the extent that nobody can replace P.J's fire and leadership on the field.
I think Choice and Woods are very capable backs, but this is clearly a different team when P.J is on the field.
If someone like Honeycutt or Henderson goes down though, we're in a world of hurt - so I do agree about the depth issues on the OL and DL.
Nathan I don't 100% agree, because we haven't seen enough of Choice or Woods to make that assessment. They have 7 carries and 4 receptions between the two of them.
I'm fine with it being that way as long as PJ stays healthy, but I don't think they've played enough for us to make a judgement that this year is like last year when PJ isn't playing.
Yeah, I'm basing that a lot on last year.
I would like to see Choice get some more carries against UConn, we're going to need him bigtime next year in addition to the end of this season.
I agree about the UCONN game. I'm hoping that we don't have to play the starters too much, because we finally step on somebody's throat outside of a bowl game.
We'll see though.
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