Updated Paul Johnson Q&A: Tech capable of winning ACC
On the day before his team will report for the start of fall camp, Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson was in his newly renovated office, showing off his “smart glass” windows that look onto Bobby Dodd Stadium. At the flip of a switch, the panes transform from clear to tinted.
“Recruits like it,” Johnson said. “They think it’s pretty cool.”
Johnson also addressed more substantive topics Wednesday in an interview with the AJC, including his prospects for various players, the team’s work over the summer and his hopes for the season. Questions and answers were edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: Are you more optimistic about this team than years past?
A: I’m always optimistic. I think that this is a good group. They seem to have worked really hard in the offseason. They’ve got a good attitude. We’ve got a big challenge early, but I think we’ve got a good nucleus of guys that we’ve played and they’re providing pretty good leadership and (I’m) really excited about some of the young guys. I think we’ve got some real athletic kids.
Q: Is there any reason to think this team isn’t capable of winning the ACC?
A: No. I think we’re capable of doing that. We were close last year.
Q: What will be the biggest challenges between now and the start of the season?
A: The big thing is just getting good quality work and trying to keep everybody healthy. You want to find that happy medium where you get game ready and you do those things but you don’t want to lose a bunch of people in practice. That’s always a challenge.
Q: Do you expect B-back Charles Perkins to make more of a run at the starting spot than last season?
A: Well, it’ll be interesting to see. I thought he would probably make more of a run maybe in the spring. But he’s very capable. He’s got ability and he’s just got to be consistent and do some of those things. There’s probably not a huge drop-off probably between him and David (Sims) right now.
Q: You mentioned at ACC Media Days that you could see quarterback Vad Lee playing this year. What are your plans for him?
A: I don’t have any particular plans to use him in any certain way right now. I’m just saying that, depending on what happens in fall camp, he could be the backup. I’ve never had a season where the backup quarterback didn’t play, especially if (quarterback) Synjyn (Days) ends up playing some other spots.
Q: What’s the timeline for deciding on moving Days? You had said that if he doesn’t beat out Tevin Washington in the first two weeks of fall camp, “I don’t want him standing over there in a baseball cap.”
A: It’s not two weeks. Synjyn’s going to take reps at quarterback probably every day in practice, but if he’s not playing quarterback, then we’ve got to get him some reps at some other positions and see if we can get him on the field.
Q: Do you feel like wide receiver Darren Waller is close to figuring things out?
A: I think he’s like a lot of young guys. He just has to mature. Physically, he’s got all the tools.
Q: You had also talked about highlighting A-back Orwin Smith.
A: I just said that there’s situations where he’s been good with the ball. If it’s even up, we’ll try to get him the ball more. That’s about it. He’ll determine how much he gets the ball by how much he plays.
Q: Are there ways to do that in an option offense?
A: There’s all kinds of ways. You can throw it to him, you can hand it to him. There’s all kinds of ways you can give it to him. It’s like I’ve told people before. ‘Well, why wouldn’t you give it to him if he’s averaging 10 yards a carry?’ Well, if we just handed it to him, he wouldn’t be averaging 10 yards a carry. You’ve got to get it in the right spot.
Q: What kind of progress do you expect the defense to make?
A: I don’t know. I think like everybody needs to play better if we’re going to be successful. We need to be better on third down. There’s no big secret there. I think at times we played well last year. In the latter half of the year, we gave up a lot of points.
Q: How much of a burden is on nose tackle T.J. Barnes to produce?
A: I don’t think any more than anybody else. You hear fans say that and the media and this, that and the other, but it’s just a position like anything else. If you go back and look, the production we’ve had from there has not been like we’ve had a ton of production. The system doesn’t really warrant itself to that. He’s just got to be solid. He’s worked awfully hard. So I’m hoping he’ll have his best year.
Q: Did anything happen with recruiting Penn State players?
A: Not really. We didn’t get into it a whole lot. There was a kid from Atlanta, I think a defensive end (C.J. Olaniyan, who moved to Michigan), that we talked to his high school coach. That was one kid and we didn’t pursue it (further) and he didn’t either. That was about it.
Q: What concerns do you have about replacing Julian Burnett, not just his play but his leadership?
A: I think anytime you lose a player of his caliber, it’s a blow to the team, and he was a leader on the team. Not only was he a good football player but he was a leader. So, yeah, it’s a big loss.
Q: Have you been watching the Olympics?
A: Occasionally I’ll flip it on, but I haven’t seen a whole lot. I watched the gymnastics thing last night with my daughter. My daughter told me who won. It was a little anti-climactic.
(This is the print version. I’ll add the rest Thursday morning.)
Thanks for reading.
Ken Sugiura, Georgia Tech blog
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255 comments Add your comment
Dawg48
August 1st, 2012
11:18 pm
SS, I missed it.
Supersize that order, mutt
August 1st, 2012
11:20 pm
48, watch them if you get a chance later this week. She’s not even supposed to be the best player on the team either. But she was on today
Dawg48
August 1st, 2012
11:20 pm
This is a heck of a race in the relay right now.
Supersize that order, mutt
August 1st, 2012
11:21 pm
yeah, it is
Supersize that order, mutt
August 1st, 2012
11:22 pm
damn, the US girl has taken charge in this race
Dawg48
August 1st, 2012
11:23 pm
Schmitt from UGA just pulled out in front.
Dawg48
August 1st, 2012
11:23 pm
SS, she is from UGA.
Supersize that order, mutt
August 1st, 2012
11:24 pm
the girl before Schmitt had closed the gap, but Schmitt just really took charge and won it
Supersize that order, mutt
August 1st, 2012
11:24 pm
48…..during the Olympics, I don’t care where the athletes are from
5150 UOAD
August 1st, 2012
11:24 pm
That was CLOSE to a DQ with her getting in before the other girl touched the wall…..
yeller bug
August 1st, 2012
11:25 pm
Schmitt swims like a scalded dawg! Outstanding job—Go USA! Congrats to the UGA grad.
Dawg48
August 1st, 2012
11:25 pm
She was getting after it for sure.
Supersize that order, mutt
August 1st, 2012
11:26 pm
is she a grad or still in school?
5150 UOAD
August 1st, 2012
11:26 pm
During the Olympics colleges are not mentioned much.
Dawg48
August 1st, 2012
11:26 pm
DQ? Dairy Queen?
Supersize that order, mutt
August 1st, 2012
11:27 pm
Felt sooooo sorry for those two American gymnasts earlier tonight.
Dawg48
August 1st, 2012
11:27 pm
SS, she took this year off to train for the olympics.
Supersize that order, mutt
August 1st, 2012
11:28 pm
thanks, 48
Dawg48
August 1st, 2012
11:28 pm
SS, that one guys mom just got up and walked out. She was tore up.
Dawg48
August 1st, 2012
11:29 pm
Ok guys I’m out. Good night to all.
Supersize that order, mutt
August 1st, 2012
11:30 pm
yeah, 48. saw that. have a good night
Big Crimson 75
August 1st, 2012
11:32 pm
51 — I don’t have a pic, but their is a Croation beauty on their basketball team thats worth the google!!
5150 UOAD
August 1st, 2012
11:34 pm
Bi Cri just look at the link and search Slukova
Clyde
August 1st, 2012
11:39 pm
Coaches call the schemes, players make the plays. It doesn’t matter how complex Al Groh’s schemes are, if the players don’t get to the ball then it doesn’t do any good. They have to step up to the next level.
Big Crimson 75
August 1st, 2012
11:57 pm
Later boys.
Roll Tide.
Go USA.
William
August 2nd, 2012
12:44 am
I notice GTBob has not made a comment on this blog, but he is all over the Georgia blogs. I guess GT doesn’t claim him. I hope Tech has a good year until that last game in Nov. Go Dawgs.
GTBob
August 2nd, 2012
12:48 am
I notice GTBob has not made a comment on this blog, but he is all over the Georgia blogs. I guess GT doesn’t claim him. I hope Tech has a good year until that last game in Nov. Go Dawgs
Sorry, I am my own person and I am not looking to be claimed. I hope UGA loses every game they play this year by double digits.
WnE
August 2nd, 2012
2:45 am
re:
Supersize that order, mutt
August 1st, 2012
4:59 pm
Don’t know how many of y’all are aware of this but former Tech track star Angelo Taylor is captain of the US Olympics track team. It was announced last week, but I just heard about it today
http://www.ramblinwreck.com/sports/m-track/spec-rel/072512aaa.html
____________
Would this be the same Angelo Taylor?
=============================
At 29, Atlantan Taylor still has his hurdles to clear
By Jeff Schultz | Wednesday, August 13, 2008, 04:09 PM
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Beijing — The alarm would go off at 4. The work would start at 5. The alarm used to trigger the athlete’s training day. Now it was talking to an electrician: “Get up. You need the money. You lost your Nike deal. Get up. Now.”
“I did mostly low-voltage stuff,” said Angelo Taylor. “Up and down the ladder. We did the new dorms at Georgia Tech.”
Did they know him? How often would somebody walk by at Tech, a school Taylor once attended, and never realize the guy on the ladder doing the low-voltage work used to be a world-class athlete?
How many times did somebody walk by the parked Honda in a track stadium behind Turner Field in the early afternoon and see a man asleep in the car? A coach would arrive at 2 p.m. and bang on the window so the man would wake up. Another alarm. “Get up. You’re not that fast any more. You’re not that young any more. Do you really want to go back to the Olympics? Get up. Now.”
The alarm went off in Angelo Taylor’s head.
He is up now. Against a backdrop of physical, emotional and legal problems, the two-time gold-medalist from Southwest DeKalb High made his third Olympic team in the 400-meter hurdles.
He is 29 years old. Of the other 25 athletes in the 400, 21 are younger than Taylor.
It wasn’t that long ago when he was the young one — 21 and four years out of high school, he won two gold medals in Sydney. He won the 400 hurdles and ran a prelim for the 4×400 relay team. U.S. track officials named him winner of the Jesse Owens Award as its athlete.
Taylor made the Olympic team again in 2004. But soon after, his career deteriorated and his life went with it. Hurdles, the literal and figurative kind, nearly destroyed him. He had stress fractures in his shins. Doctors suggested surgery but Taylor passed, opting to take a year off.
Other damage was self-inflicted. In 2005, Taylor was arrested for having sex with a minor. He eventually pled guilty in 2006 to contributing to the delinquency of two underage girls and was sentenced to three years probation and fined.
“Sometimes in life you have your ups and downs,” Taylor said. “In my life, I’ve always had to go down that rocky road. But I’ve tried to stay positive.”
At some point, he realized he needed to grow up. He felt he needed to be a better example for his twin sons, Xavier and Isaiah, now 3. He knew he wanted to get back to the Olympics. He met with a coach, former Nigerian sprinter Innocent Egbunike. The two formed a partnership. Taylor became more spiritual. He worked in the morning and trained in the afternoon.
But these things never start out well.
“He was out of shape,” Egbunike said. “To be honest, he would throw up a lot and lie flat on the ground. But when I would say, ‘Let’s stop right here,’ he would say, ‘No, I’m going to continue.’ And he would still be throwing up. He struggled, but he did it. He had a vision.”
Taylor was asked what he considered the low moment. Easy answer.
“It would be [getting up at] 4 in the morning and going to work,” he said. “I was like, ‘I can’t do this.’ But I kept praying, asking the Lord to please just give me another chance. I never thought I would make it this far.”
It took a while. Promoters wouldn’t let him into meets, mostly because he hadn’t been competing. The sport seemed to turn its back on him.
“It embarrassed me at first,” Taylor said.
He left the electricians job in early 2007 to devote more time to track. His times dropped. Remarkably, he finished third in the trials with a time of 48.42 to make the team.
Don’t trust the time? Taylor wears a bracelet that reads, “Test me. I’m clean.” He’s an advocate of cleaning up the sport. Unfortunately, it’s too late to save one of his golds. Antonio Pettigrew, a teammate in the Sydney relay, admitted using EPO and HGH. The IOC has stripped the team.
“I was on the relay team with someone who was dirty,” Taylor said. “That’s just the way it is.”
There are no relay teammates to worry about this time. Taylor made it here on his own. If it doesn’t work out, there’s a ladder and an alarm clock waiting for him.
WnE
August 2nd, 2012
2:49 am
Well Supersize, is it the same Angelo Taylor?
=================================
Olympic medalist Angelo Taylor arrested for sex with minor
Associated Press
Updated: January 14, 2005, 12:15 PM ET
Email
Print
DECATUR, Ga. — Two-time Olympic gold medalist Angelo Taylor was arrested when a police officer allegedly found him having sex with a 15-year-old girl in a parked car.
Taylor, 26, of Decatur was charged Thursday with one count each of child molestation and enticing a child for indecent purposes. He posted $2,000 bond at the jail, DeKalb County police spokesman Dale Davis said Friday.
Taylor won gold medals in the 400-meter hurdles and 4×400 relay events at the 2000 Sydney Games.
The former Georgia Tech track star placed second at the 2004 U.S. Olympic Trials in the 400 but didn’t qualify for the final at the Athens Games.
Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press
Robert
August 2nd, 2012
7:29 am
Oh, I thought this was a article about Virginia Tech…Good luck with that GT!!! Lord knows you will need it with CPJ calling his 9 plays of offense.
LETS GO HOKIES!!
G
August 2nd, 2012
7:45 am
Capable of winning the acc. lol Big accomplishment.
Gonna be funny to watch big breasts squirm when vt clobbers you 37-17
Enjoy another season with a really boring qb and offense.
Reality
August 2nd, 2012
8:00 am
VT has always had problems stopping CPJ’s offense. If our D is improved, we should take down VT without too much trouble.
HighTech
August 2nd, 2012
8:03 am
Right on time. Gollum posting something negative about a former Tech athlete at 2:45 am.
Flounder
August 2nd, 2012
8:32 am
Q: What kind of progress do you expect the defense to make?
A: I don’t know.
C’mon Paul!?! Aren’t you the HEAD coach?!? That commentary doesn’t inspire much confidence. I’m a big GT fan, but when is PJ gonna wake up a little and realize that DEFENSE is just as important as OFFENSE?!?
Talk amongst yourselves.
gt4ever
August 2nd, 2012
8:47 am
WnE
Do you have a point in publishing that article…. Unbelievable…
Triangle Hokie
August 2nd, 2012
8:49 am
Of course Tech is capable of winning the ACC. Virginia Tech, that is. Just pulling your chains guys. Look forward to seeing you in the Burg this year. Should be a great game. Be safe!
Sugar Shack
August 2nd, 2012
9:01 am
Ole Fish Fry…
BS Patrol
August 2nd, 2012
9:10 am
Let’s get this straight,Triangle. Tech is Tech. VPI is VPI.
GTfan 2012
August 2nd, 2012
9:40 am
WnE, you sicken me as well as sickening every real GT fan here. Your only purpose to posting those articles is to try to defame GT in some way. I always believed that your unnatural hatred was primarily for CPJ, but now I’m beginning to see that your hatred extends to the entire GT family. I suspect that you suffer from an extreme inferiority complex related to GT. In fact, my guess is that you have “daddy” issues.
Let me postualte a theory that may go a long way towards explaining WnE behavior. WnE’s father is a GT grad, and WnE, the dutiful son, followed in his father’s footsteps, always trying to gain approval of his dad. However, WnE has clearly suffered emotional and perhaps even physical abuse at the hands of his father for his entire life. His coping mechanism for coming to terms with this is to lash out at GT in the only way he can truly satisfy both his self-hatred as well as lash out at his father.
Just my amatuer psychological analysis, but you guys have to admit, my theory would explain a lot of his behavior if he truly is a GT grad like he claims. Conversely, he could just be a mutt fan posing as a GT fan, It could be either one,
5150 UOAD
August 2nd, 2012
10:20 am
WnE is NOT a Tech fan and he doesn’t go to the games. Who really cares what he has to say? If he were a fan I am guessing he would have accepted an invite to meet at a game by now. As much as he posts he would have been there to meet Ken at the game last year.
melanie
August 2nd, 2012
10:30 am
GT is the best team in the ATL. Coach Johnson is a class guy. I think this team will surprise a lot in the ACC & in the country. GT has always risen above bad media & biased media. They will show everyone what they are capable of this year. GO YELLOW JACKETS!!
Supersize that order, mutt
August 2nd, 2012
10:45 am
Did WnE have something to say AGAIN? I wouldn’t know; I no longer read anything that he posts. As far as I am concerned, he doesn’t exist. Nothing appearing under that name on these blogs merits my reading or commenting. I would wish the rest of y’all would say the same.
5150 UOAD
August 2nd, 2012
10:52 am
Super he posted a Page of crap at like 2:30 am…. I didn’t read it either but it was to YOU about Angelo Taylor.
GT1971
August 2nd, 2012
10:53 am
I hope Angelo Taylor is able to keep his life on track; that will be a real success story.
WnE – You’re a sick man. Go to hell.
Supersize that order, mutt
August 2nd, 2012
11:02 am
@ UOAD…..I’m sure it was his usual worthless, anti-Tech garbage. He’s a dwag, and there’s no doubt about it.
Supersize that order, mutt
August 2nd, 2012
11:02 am
@ GT1971……welcome home. Or are you still in J’Burg?
FormerGTNationalChampPlayer
August 2nd, 2012
11:03 am
I think to sum up Tech’s season is that if we are able to throw the ball effectively each game, we will have a good season. If we cannot throw as we have showed in the past then the results will be the same. We all know that we can run the ball but the key is that we need to have an explosive passing game . The VT game will be the test. We will not beat them without some big plays in the passing game.
yeller bug
August 2nd, 2012
11:09 am
Heard rumor from Tech Athletic Office that GT may be ranked 21 in pre-season poll for whatever that is worth. I would think that maybe 4 ACC schools may be in the top 25 but all outside the top 10—VPI, FSU, GT & Clemson.
Need a fast start on Labor Day—a figurative lightning strike not the literal one that hit Le Corso’s car—I was there at that non-game. An early lead would quiet the crowd and good ball control would keep them quiet. Maybe a good special team’s play that wins the game would be fitting irony at the home of Beamer ball.
Big Ol Stinger
August 2nd, 2012
11:09 am
Browns DT Kiante Tripp arrested in Georgia on burglary charges
Posted by Darin Gantt on July 3, 2012, 1:34 PM EDT
Browns defensive tackle Kiante Tripp was arrested in College Park, Ga., on charges of burglary.
According to a short report by MyFoxAtlanta.com, Tripp and two other men were accused of threatening people inside an apartment and ransacking the apartment, in an apparent effort to reclaim money they believed was stolen from them.
Neighbors told police officials that men with guns entered the apartment. The report said that one member of the party was also changed with possession of marijuana.
The 24-year-old Tripp grew up in Atlanta and attended the University of Georgia. He went to training camp with the Falcons last year, but signed with Cleveland’s practice squad, and played in three games late last year.
FlakBum
August 2nd, 2012
11:16 am
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