Paul Johnson Q&A

Opening statement:

Anytime you lose, it’s certainly disappointing. I give Georgia a lot of credit. They’ve got  a good football team. They showed up and they played very well. For us, the margin of error was small and we didn’t take advantage of a couple of opportunities we had early and when we didn’t do that, we got behind and we never could claw ourselves back into the game.

It was kind of a tale of two halves. The first half, we had a hard time getting them slowed down and the third quarter, we kind of self-destructed offensively, turning the ball over. But like I said, I give them credit. They came in here and they did what they had to do. I thought their kids played hard and they won the game.

On lack of pass rush:

They did a nice job of protecting their quarterback. We didn’t get to him much. We’ll have to look at the tape. Anytime guys get that open at times, we turned a couple guys loose in coverage, especially crossers. A couple times, they just beat us. They ran a post-corner (route) and beat us down on the goal line. … The play where the tight end caught the touchdown in the back of the end zone in the third quarter, we called the play. We knew the play and they still completed it. So you’ve got to give them credit for that. The bottom line is they made plays when they had to.

On Synjyn Days‘ play:

Tevin Washington has been our quarterback all year. I’m excited about Synjyn. I think he can bring something to the game. It’s not fair to evaluate him on the two series he got to play in that game.

On reverse pass play to open the game:

It’s a play we’ve worked on all year. It’s just a reverse pass. It went about as planned except we didn’t complete it. We had some guys open, I think. It’s something (that) you’ve got to execute those things. It was one play in the game. It certainly didn’t determine the outcome of the game.

On expecting so much passing:

Not really. We game planned for whatever. I was just trying to look (at the stats). I mean, they ran the ball 28 times out of 57 plays. That’s about half the time. It got a little heavy towards the end, but they were having much more success throwing it than running it. I don’t know that was so much by design. You kind of do what you’re having success with. I’m sure if they were gashing us running the ball, they would have run the ball, although they ran it pretty good on us that last drive at the end there when they were trying to run out the clock.

On Georgia’s special teams:

They’ve got a really good kicking game with both those kickers. They just kind of rotate and they both banged it six yards deep on kickoffs. The punter hit some great punts, pinned us down. They didn’t punt the first half but in the second half he pinned us inside the 10 twice. The field-position game was not as favorable as you would have liked. We actually started the game out getting a pretty good punt and pinning them back, but they kind of flipped the field on us. Even with the interception, we ended up back on our end.

On the timeout negating the missed field goal:

It just seems like sometimes that’s the way it goes. There’s nothing you can do about it. Sometimes it goes that way. Plenty of times I’ve seen where you call timeout and the guy makes the field goal and they have to kick it again. Trust me, if I’d have known they would have a bad snap, I wouldn’t have called timeout.

On play of David Sims:

I thought David Sims played really hard. He made some really nice runs. He had a nice run on the goal line on a touchdown, he had a nice run on a screen pass. I thought David played hard.

On the start to the second half:

It wasn’t good. It’’s not exactly the way you want to start the second half. The guy got outside our contain guy. Our guy couldn’t get off that block. It was a good one. (Johnson was being sarcastic about the block.)

On defense not being able to get a stop:

It’s deflating. I think it deflates the whole team. The other thing that’s deflating is giving up the score before halftime after you score. That’s probably the third or fourth time that’s happened this year, where you grind the thing out, you make a fourth down, you go down, you score with a minute left and – boom – they come back and score. And even thought it was a field goal, it changes the momentum and changes the way things go. We tightened up in the third quarter and played better defensively, and then the offense went helter kelter there with turnovers.

On if Washington’s first interception was a broken play:

It wasn’t a broken play. I don’t know till you look at the tape. We need to hit some of those plays. When we’re really successful, we hit some of those and stay on the field and get some big plays. I think there was another time – you were talking about the reverse –  the first time we ran the play action off the toss, they turned the wheel route loose and we missed that, too, down the sideline. It could have been a huge play.

When you’re playing a good team and they’re a good football team, you’ve got to hit those. When you get a chance, you’ve got to take advantage of them.

On Roddy Jones playing his last game and setting the school record with 51 career starts:

Roddy’s just a great person besides a really good football player, and a model student-athlete. He’s got tons of character. He’s got tons of it. He’s going to be very successful at whatever he decides to do. He’s been a big part of a lot of real positives for Georgia Tech while he’s been here, both on the field and off the field. Personally, I’ll miss him a lot. He’s a great kid.

On if losing to Georgia hurts more:

It hurts every time. Anytime, if you’re a competitor and you lose, it hurts. I hurt myself, but I also hurt for those kids, because they wanted to win that game badly. They wanted to play well and win the game, and you hurt that you couldn’t help them find a way to do it.

On the problems covering crossing routes:

Usually if guys are running wide open it’s (a mistake in) coverage. I don’t know the specific one you’re talking about; they hit a couple of crossers. We’ll have to look and see. I think that and, again, with the calls I’d be just trying to guess without going back and looking at the specific defensive call and seeing what happened on the tape. But, yeah, we had trouble covering them, especially in the first half