Johnson responds to critics
Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson made for pretty entertaining radio Wednesday night on his weekly show on 790 the Zone. Johnson took calls from listeners who challenged him on all matters regarding the team and its disappointing 3-5 record. Johnson even proactively addressed issues that have been raised by fans and media about the team before they were brought up, namely quarterback Tevin Washington.
I’m not sure how these read, but I wouldn’t call his tone defensive. Even-keeled and firm, certainly. Perhaps defiant. You can listen here through the Tech iTunes page.
On the season:
“We’ve lost two games in overtime. It isn’t making excuses, it’s just facts. We’ve lost two games in overtime. We lost the one at Clemson after being ahead in the fourth quarter. Is Sammy Watkins a really good player? Yes. Is DeAndre Hopkins at Clemson a really good player? Yes, but all in all we played with them to toe to toe until we fumbled the snap on 4th and 1 from the 7-yard line. If we don’t fumble the snap, maybe we go up two scores in the fourth quarter and it’s different. It wasn’t like when we lined up, we couldn’t line up and they were knocking us off the ball.”
On the BYU loss:
“We were horrid on third down in that game but if you go back and look for the rest of the year, we were probably tops in the league or second in the league. Last year, we were second in the country. We’ve been pretty good on third down.”
On recruiting:
“If we want to be honest, recruiting’s about the same as it has been. We can rewrite history, but the facts are the facts. I think we have some good players. We’ve got to be better. If we don’t play better, your point will be proven. If we do, mine will be proven that we’ve got some pretty good players.”
On recruiting and talent level:
“We’re trying to compete in the conference that we’re in, and if you look at it, we’ve played five times, we’ve been ahead five (times in the fourth quarter). If the talent level is that bad, then we must be doing a hell of a job coaching to stay in there and I don’t think that’s the case. So I think that the talent level is not as bad as you think. We’ve got to finish the games. Now, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. I got you – we need to win the games. I just don’t see the gloom and doom that everybody wants to buy into.”
On the team’s intensity:
“I think intensity has not been a strong suit of this team, I would agree. That’s something that we’ve got to find and I’ve got to do a better job of as a coach.”
On his record and quarterback Tevin Washington:
“There’s an overall body of work. When the time comes, if it’s not good enough, do what you’ve got to do but you don’t have to re-set your standards and you shouldn’t be judged on every series or every play or every game. And the quarterback shouldn’t be judged on every play, of every series, of every game.
He has an overall body of work. He can do what he can do. He can’t control punts getting blocked, he can’t control whatever, and the only thing I can tell you is the kid is busting his tail doing everything he can do for Georgia Tech. And I promise you, I go to practice every day, and if I thought the other guy would help us win, he would be playing.
And I’m not ready to throw away the season – and I’m not saying if we put the other guy in, we’ll throw away the season – he may very well play this week. But it’s not going to be because somebody tells me to do it. It’s going to be because I think he gives our football team the best chance. Because my job is to try to give us the best chance to win the game. I see those guys every day we practice. I know there’s a lot of people out there that can do my job better than I can. I gotcha. I understand that. But pardon me if I’m not going to listen to everybody who tells me who I should be playing, what I should be doing.
I’ve managed to survive for 34 years doing what I’m doing without getting fired and we’ve won a lot of games. If I’m going to go down, I’m going to go down doing what I do and knowing what I know. So that’s it in a nutshell.”
On play-calling:
“You try to call the plays that people can run. You can have 100 plays and if you can’t run ’em, it doesn’t do any good to call ’em. I don’t mean this in a bad way or whatever, but it’s not like PlayStation, where you just pick a play. You have guys out there who can do certain things. And if guys struggle pulling, you don’t run the pulling plays. If guys aren’t as good at throwing one way, you try to throw the other way. That’s all the things that you know from being with those guys every day in practice and going into the game plan.”
“People say, ‘Well, when Vad goes in the game, you call a different game.’ Well, I try to do what Vad (Lee) can do better as opposed to forcing something else. Now there’s a point that it doesn’t matter just what Vad can do, you have to do whatever everybody playing with Vad can do. That’s part of coaching. We’ve got a lot of plays and people have probably made it – and I’m probably my own worst enemy by saying, ‘Hey, we run five or six plays and we do variations.’ – it’s a little more complicated than that. But we try to run the plays that give us the best chance to win the game.”
In case you missed it…
Washington, Lee keep relationship smooth
Tech scrambling to prepare for Maryland QB
On Tech ending its kick-return drought
Johnson says it’s not time to panic
Heisman biography offers revealing history
Notes: B-backs struggling to produce
Notes: Johnson mum on starting quarterback
Thanks for reading.
Ken Sugiura, Georgia Tech blog
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439 comments Add your comment
Jackets81
November 1st, 2012
8:19 pm
olddog, please stop acting like your team is the TEAM that is the measuring stick, because they aren’t. Get off your SEC high and come back down to reality, that uga is lucky
Bad Dawg, Bad Dawg
November 1st, 2012
8:22 pm
If I hear “I’ve been doing this for 34 years” one more time I’m going to throw up. Facts matter….1-4 versus VT and Miami and soon to be UGA. 0-4 in bowl games. Now if you want to ignore facts you must support Obama. too.
drad gone
November 1st, 2012
8:35 pm
GT is too broke to fire johnson—they’ll have to put up with 5-6 loss seasons for a few more years till they get some money to do something
Clyde
November 1st, 2012
8:40 pm
Someone needs to make a movie about Georgia Tech football or something, bring the history back to the forefront and make Tech a cool place to play at again. Remember the pic of Marilyn Monroe wearing a GT sweater? Great PR.
JTK
November 1st, 2012
8:40 pm
While this season has been a huge let down, I still think Paul Johnson is a good coach and an excellent person for Tech. Can he coach? Well, yes he can. Those of you who complain that he could only win with Gailey’s recruits fail to say that he coached those recruits, used his own offense and had excellent success and put fun teams on the field. As for those recruits, it was not Gailey that was behind most of that. It was one of the assistent coaches that we later lost to a head coaching opportunity. It is way too early to call for a change. In my thinking, if we go to a similar offense that everyone else has, that only makes recruiting more of a problem. We will be going after folks with the same skills that the SEC and all other ACC teams want with no differentiation. That does not sound like a good thing to me. I believe we live through the rest of this season and see what can be done next year. If no improvement is seen, then maybe there is a bigger issue. I think that Paul Johnson will prove to be a good long term asset for Tech.
5150 UOAD
November 1st, 2012
8:45 pm
Watching Miami v VPI it kills me we lost those games.
We could have won both if we just played a little Defense.
JB
November 1st, 2012
8:54 pm
JTK…. no he won’t, for this reason. He’ll play 4 or 5 teams he can’t beat with the talent he’s attracting. End of story. 8-4, 7-5 will not do. Reality.
DC
November 1st, 2012
9:06 pm
I have been a GT fan since 74 and I was a huge PJ fan. I was ecstatic when he was hired. I have lost confidence in him. He is at a place he has never been before and that is a big time division 1 school. His recruits would be great and could probably win their division were he in a division 2 school. He has proven that. What he has not proved is that he can win, with his recruits, at the division 1 level on a consistent basis. He won an ACC championship with Gailey’s recruits, not his. That’s a fact. It’s also another fact that his recruits have not done much at the division 1 level. He has had 5 years. How long is enough? Does he deserve 6, 7, maybe 10 more years? We didn’t give Gailey that much time. Why does he deserve more time? I’m not so much a TW hater but I’m a realist. TW won’t be here next year and Vad will be. He either plays this year and gains experience or we enter next year with an inexperienced qb when that didn’t have to be the case. Elementary Watson, elementary.
ole yeller
November 1st, 2012
9:14 pm
After reading all this crap, how many G.T. fans would vote to bring Gaily back? He was as most of these blogers are stating was the guru of recruiting. Any Gaily fans in the house tonight?
NASC
November 1st, 2012
9:25 pm
Click your heals three times…….
5150 UOAD
November 1st, 2012
9:25 pm
I was not calling for Gailey to be fired but that is the past and we have to get this team turned around with CPJ.
Why Oh Why
November 1st, 2012
9:34 pm
Choice A: Pay this chump $10 million-plus to go away and hire another guy who, no matter how good he is, will probably struggle for another year or two just trying to get the team away from the option offense.
Choice B: Let this chump try to figure it out and save a ton of cash in the process.
DawgNole
November 1st, 2012
9:37 pm
juvenal
November 1st, 2012
4:19 pm
how come when i click submit twice all i get is a screen that says “Duplicate comment-you already said that”?
____________________
Because you posted twice. Duh.
TH
November 1st, 2012
9:39 pm
Watch ESPNU and tell us you could have beaten MTSU with some defense too.
5150 UOAD
November 1st, 2012
9:42 pm
DWagNole……Some people can double post. I like Juvenal get that message and I can’t double post. I see the Dwag & Nole education is showing.
OkieDawg
November 1st, 2012
9:46 pm
CPJ will tell you Yellow Jackets what to think..it is not time to panic. All is good in Techerland. Really, Techers isn’t it time for this arrogant
OkieDawg
November 1st, 2012
9:47 pm
Coach to go?
OkieDawg
November 1st, 2012
9:54 pm
Watch ESPNU tommorrow night. The next great UGA QB will play for Camden Co. against Lowndes Co. Techies remember the name…Brice Ramsey.
DawgNole
November 1st, 2012
9:56 pm
GTville
November 1st, 2012
5:19 pm
Take LSU and Alabama out of the picture and Saban is not much better than Gailey.
_____________________
Brain-dead comment. You CAN’T “take LSU and Alabama out of the picture,” athough I’m sure you’d like to. They’re history–and a huge part of his career.
Your comment is as relevant as saying “Take away all the Dawgs’ losses and they’d be undefeated.”
Well, no shi*, Sherlock.
K
November 1st, 2012
10:03 pm
Winning solves a lot of problems.
DawgNole
November 1st, 2012
10:08 pm
5150 UOAD
November 1st, 2012
9:42 pm
DWagNole……Some people can double post. I like Juvenal get that message and I can’t double post. I see the Dwag & Nole education is showing.
___________________
So “some people can double post,” but you can’t? Why in the hell would you WANT to double post? I see your absence of education is showing.
Truth be told, the “duplicate comment” messages likely mean the sorry-ass AJC filters are snagging the posts, which they often do w/o justification.
GT Lover
November 1st, 2012
10:11 pm
I think CPJ is right for Tech. He needs to get off the golf course and get on the practice field.
We had the same problem with coach Dodd, except his distraction was tenis.
Dodddam Uga!
CPJ will win our last four games!
Go Jackets!
Delbert D.
November 1st, 2012
10:20 pm
Math time:
Assume $65 per average ticket (which is low, unfortunately). Next, use the difference between 55,000 capacity and 35,000 = 20,000 no sales. That gives $1.3 million per game unsold. Now those are crude numbers, but the incoming AD can do his projections to derive more exact numbers. He will then do several projections that might show how much offset to the contract buyout that a coaching change could produce.
Now, I have to say that I am not in favor of a head coach change at this time (I’d like to see a bona fide offensive coordinator under CPJ), but a new AD that is hired with a specific agenda might be quick to make the numbers work.
GT Lover
November 1st, 2012
10:25 pm
Why do the dumb dogs write their &%$# on our blog?
Stay on your own blogs and write your ignorant rants there dumb dogs!
Dumb dogs, poor dumb dogs.
Maybe they don’t have enough crayons on their blogs!
Dumb dogs, poor dumb imbecilic (somebody with an IQ between 25 and 50 and a mental age of between three and seven years) dogs!
Dogs posing as Tech fans. Dumb dogs!
OkieDawg
November 1st, 2012
10:33 pm
GT Lover…Can you say incomprehensible?
GT Lover
November 1st, 2012
10:38 pm
It might be a good idea to wait until the season is over to fire the coach.
I can see us winning at least three more games. Possibly four!
That would put us in a bowl game that we would probably win!
Go Jackets!
GT Lover
November 1st, 2012
10:42 pm
OkieDawg, can you spell dog correctly?
By the way, the medic bilateral for every man perambulates the aberration of what he might have been!
GTBob
November 1st, 2012
10:42 pm
I guess if you’re and AD and you interview CMR and CPJ for your vacant head coaching job and after comparing perfomance and abilities you hire CPJ becuase CMR never won at Georgia right?
I would hire CPJ simply because he is a good coach and CMR isnt. There is little chance CMR could win 6 games at GT and there is almost no chance he ever would have won more than 3 games at Navy. The guy has the most talented team in the country every year and he wins 10 games struggles against pretty much everybody. I seriously doubt any AD at a big school would ever take a chance on him. He would have no idea what to do if he had a group of normal kids to coach.
GT Lover
November 1st, 2012
10:45 pm
Well said GTBob!
GTBob
November 1st, 2012
10:47 pm
Assume $65 per average ticket (which is low, unfortunately). Next, use the difference between 55,000 capacity and 35,000 = 20,000 no sales.
Even bringing in a new coach we would very rarely sell out the stadium and im not sure you can use $65 as the average ticket sale when most of the unsold tickets are upper deck seats which are less expensive. It would be a stretch to financially justify CPJ in the next two seasons.
1 4 GT
November 1st, 2012
10:56 pm
Hey guys. Mighty VT has one claim to fame this season. They stumbled into a win against us. They just lost to Miami to go to 4 & 5 for the year with FSU coming to town next week. The Heisman pretender L Thomas reminded me of Tevin. Both good kids that go all out for their team. They just go about it in different ways. Thomas “called his own number” ala Tevin. He had 22 or 23 runs tonight. (tongue-in-cheek sarcasm implied)
zgoldatl@gmal.com
November 1st, 2012
10:59 pm
I like PJs attitude. He is the right man for the job
Old Fashioned
November 1st, 2012
11:16 pm
I don’t have the knowledge or qualifications to be critical of any coach as to play-calling,recruiting, choices of assistants,etc. I only have the perspective of a Tech fan for 64 years. (I don’t think I’m senile yet,but maybe so.) My one criticism of Coach Johnson ,which I believe to be valid , is that he appears to me to be just about the worst coach ever in terms of being almost completely void of any skills for public relations. ” In the day” we had a coach who was able to have a positive story in the paper every day about some aspect of GT football. He showed nothing but positive and optimistic points to the world. Grouchiness doesn’t help recruiting. I wish Coach Johnson was able to relate better to fans,students,faculty,alumni,the press,high school coaches,good players he’d like to recruit,etc. I love GT and hope things improve someday as to football. Things otherwise are mostly quite good.
fuzzybee78
November 1st, 2012
11:26 pm
Hey— Just remember—-we could be Auburn fans this year, with all those top recruiting classes— MMM—-MMM—–MMMMUH!
Buzz Kill
November 1st, 2012
11:32 pm
Oh H…give Johnson one more year. After that,if he goes 7-6 NO more talk out of him.
1 4 GT
November 1st, 2012
11:40 pm
Old Fashioned….you triggered a thought in my head. While I would love to cheer for & support a team similar to LSU & Bama, alas, GT is my lot in life. Technically, you are a longer lived Tech fan than I am. Although I was taken home from the hospital in a Tech sweater (which I kept until it literally fell apart) after my birth in 1944, I probably didn’t know GT from anything else until I was 8 to 10 years old & became a fan from hearing them on the radio & the games as a Boy Scout usher. Like you said, everything in my life except for Tech football & basketball is pretty dang good. The thought you triggered is this. In the grand scheme of like, if all I have to really fret over is my “ball” teams, “life ain’t so bad”!! I’ll take that as it comes & hope they do well. Selah!
stony
November 1st, 2012
11:53 pm
I love GT, and will continue to pull for them, win or lose, with whoever coaches them, until I take my last breath. There have been coaches I liked, and coaches I didn’t like, just as there have been players that became favorites, and players that I didn’t mind seeing graduate and move on. Through good years and bad, I have and will continue to pull for the team to win. No team wins all the time, and true, some win much more than others, but If winning percentage is the determining factor for whether I continue to give my loyalty to GT, then I’m not a fan of GT, but just a fan of winning. I like to win, but I like GT win or lose. As long as PJ remains the head coach of GT, then he’s my coach. If anyone here only wants to support a team or coach that wins, then go support Alabama. And when Alabama has a few down years, you can switch to ND. Then when ND falters, you can pull for Texas. I’ll still be here pulling for my yellow jackets, ecstatic with each win, and agonizing over each loss. Because that’s what a true fan does.
Tech notes: Return home excites Attaochu | Georgia Tech
November 1st, 2012
11:57 pm
[...] Johnson responds to critics [...]
1 4 GT
November 2nd, 2012
12:12 am
stony….VERY WELL SAID!!!!
gt40pinhd
November 2nd, 2012
12:19 am
old Fashioned: i always thought b dodd was positive too. i remember listening to him in 61 or 62 before we played usc in la. should have heard him talk up sc and downplay gt. then we crushed them. dodd was always a gentleman. an ok tennis player, he always played with bitsy grant, a great player in his day. fun watching them, bitsy at maybe 5′ 6 or 7 and dodd at 6′ 6. what a doubles team.
stony
November 2nd, 2012
12:26 am
14GT,
I’m slightly younger than you(born in 58), but I also left the hospital in a GT sweater(gold with a simple white T on it). My first toddler picture had me sitting with one of those little plastic GT footballs in between my legs. I did not attend Tech, as I did not want to be an engineer, and was living in SC when I graduated from high school. I did get a tryout with Pepper the summer before my senior year, but failed to impress enough to be offered a scholarship. Nevertheless, my family has always bled gold and white, as have I.
Animal Control
November 2nd, 2012
5:44 am
Until CPJ acknowledges that defense is the problem, we will continue to lose. Any offense that scores 30 points or more per game should have a W when its all said and done; but when your defense allows the other team to come back from a 3 possession ball game in the final minutes of the 4th quarter, theres not much you can do…except look at the poor defense…and its not just “missed tackles”.
Old Dog
November 2nd, 2012
6:08 am
To Hell with Tek, today,tomorrow and every other day!
Georgia Cracker
November 2nd, 2012
6:09 am
It is recruiting. Great players make plays. Great coaches recruit good players and coach them up and on game day they call the best play they can for each situation. GT does not have the players. Nick Saban would have about the same record this year at GT with 2012 GT players. CPJ makes millions, he should give most of it back.
dry dirt road
November 2nd, 2012
7:02 am
CPJ uses whats called “intellectualization” to defend his ego when he explains why Tech isn’t winning. Intellectualization is a pathological ego defense mechanism. He uses this to sell the AA, to sucker them. but they see Tech losing as well as everybody else. In mathematics, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and this is how the shotgun works. The qb faces downfield and releases passes or handoffs while facing the goal line. CPJs qb does a 180 and then runs the opposite way, using up time while dls rush in and dbs get closer to receivers. There’s no question that percentage wise 99.5% of all teams from hs to the pros use shotguns. The shotgun clinic was put on for CPJ in on Grant Field by NC State with Russell as their qb. They kindly used the shotgun the entire game except in the red zone to teach CPJ how a modern shotgun offense should work. Also, CPJ goes from white unis with old gold stripes to the shocker unis of the Chick-Fil-A Bowl, and went downhill ever since, except for this year in my opinion. I like the white helmet unis b/c Tech wore them when I went there during the ‘71-2 seasons. We didn’t have the jacket nest hexagons though. Thos are cool art. The gold helmets were getting boring, and were associated with losing to Georgia too many years.
wreckbone
November 2nd, 2012
7:19 am
I have to agree with Johnson’s points. I think he’s a great coach and excellent leader. I age with him. We’ve been competitive. Except for two games this year and uga last year and a few Miami games we’ve been competitive. All guys that are so upset are unhappy because we are not in the SEC. Get over it. The legend here mid-century made a call based on integrity and with hind sight it was the worst decision ever made sure to the amount of money their football generates. I agree with Johnson the talent level its the same. Look it up. Chan recruited well his plan did booty compete well and we were blown out of the water too much. If Johnson goes well have 3 coaches on buyout. Who would want to come here? I would not. WE can’t fill the stands. Out fans can’t get over the fact that we are the red headed step child of the state in football. Do I support tech.yes do I go to football games yes.do I want Johnson gone no. I don’t think we can do better. What about up the road. Clemson had high recruiting each year.yet they do less than uga and the other sec elite. Of Johnson leaves or gets shoved out we wool not be relevant for four years or more. Bottom line we have less girls (more pretty ones now than before) less parties and academic requirements 5 start athletes don’t like. Recruiting had and will be the same. And if we get a really good coach by your standards. They will probably leave like oleary did. To me Johnstone only mistake was nit being able to retain tenuta. In my opinion he was the reason our teams were good in that time. And a few running backs. I dislike how mini own fan base talks so negatively about its own team. Its a privilege to play big tone football not a right. And my point with that is you can’t expect to win ask the time.
Friday morning buffet | Get The Picture
November 2nd, 2012
7:22 am
[...] The offensive genius gets defensive. [...]
hedgepruner
November 2nd, 2012
7:36 am
Oakie dawg – Watch ESPNU tommorrow night. The next great UGA QB will play for Camden Co. against Lowndes Co. Techies remember the name…Brice Ramsey
I hope he is better than that QB you have in athens right now , cause he sucks !!!!!
THWG !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
GTJeff
November 2nd, 2012
7:39 am
So let me get this straight. If you don’t kiss this arrogant jerk’s a.ss & complain about his HORRID decisions this season then you are not a real fan. You CPJ nut swingers need to wake up. Our program is sinking faster than the Titanic.
TechLB
November 2nd, 2012
7:47 am
I appreciate his viewpoint and it’s easy to know it all when your ass is in a recliner and not on the field.
However, the bottom line is improvement; win some, lose some but get better. Be fundamentally sound, play with passion, show some toughness, all those things. AND Beat some decent teams…not the teams you should always beat but a good Utah team in the Sun Bowl for example.
Next year had better be a break-out year or he’s seriously going to be on a much hotter seat.