It was Saturday night at Georgia Tech's Bobby Dodd Stadium and, as they say down South, it was gettin' late. Georgia Tech was in overtime with Wake Forest and everything -- and I do mean everything -- was on the line.
Wake Forest had scored first in the overtime to take a 27-24 lead. A Georgia Tech loss would have been beyond devastating. It would have probably cost the Yellow Jackets a Coastal Division championship, a shot at the ACC championship and the opportunity to at least be in the BCS title discussion come late November.
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| Paul Johnson's fire and fearless attitude have helped Georgia Tech get to 9-1. (AP) |
Paul Johnson has never read that coaching manual. He doesn't even own one. He sent his offense back on the field and first tried to draw Wake Forest into an offside penalty. Didn't work. Johnson called timeout.
That same coaching manual says that now you have to kick the field goal. It's the percentage play. While the upside of going for it is big, the downside for not making it is immeasurable. If you don't make it, there are not enough adjectives to describe how dumb you are.
During the timeout, Johnson looked at his quarterback, Josh Nesbitt.
"Whaddaya think?" asked the coach.
"I can make it, coach," said the player.
"I know you can," said the coach.
So Johnson sent his quarterback onto the field. Nesbitt ran for the first down. On the next play he ran for the touchdown. Ballgame.
"I really didn't think it was that tough a call," Johnson said Sunday afternoon. "You have a bunch of options on a play like that. I just thought our offense against the defense they were running was our best option."
Because Johnson dared to fail, a trait not often seen in the coaching fraternity, Georgia Tech has won big. The Yellow Jackets are 9-1, ranked No. 7 in the BCS, and are one win (Saturday at Duke) from locking up the ACC's Coastal Division championship. Georgia Tech has not won an ACC championship since 1990, when Bobby Ross led the Yellow Jackets to the UPI national title.
But understand that Johnson didn't just win a big game with his boldness last Saturday. He sent a message to his current players and to those who will come to play for Georgia Tech from this point forward.
• Georgia Tech 30, Wake Forest 27 (OT)"If I expect my players to play to win, then I have to be willing to play to win," Johnson said. "The easiest thing to do in that situation is to kick the field goal. If he misses it, you can just blame the player. My job is to put our guys into the best position to win every week."
The message has been received by the Georgia Tech players, who are now feeding off Johnson's confidence.
"He believes in us," said running back Jonathan Dwyer, the 2008 ACC Player of the Year. "Who doesn't want to play for a coach like that? It makes us go out there and play harder for him and harder for each other."
Georgia Tech's players are not the only ones who have bought in to the boldness of their second-year head coach. The Georgia Tech fans are absolutely giddy.
"Our fans love the guy because he is confident in his ability. In that respect he has some Steve Spurrier and some Barry Switzer in him," said Wes Durham, the longtime radio voice at Georgia Tech. "He doesn't need a script. He doesn't need a play sheet. He sees the game and makes the adjustments he needs to make. And he is competitive. Man is this guy competitive."
To understand Paul Johnson you have to go all the way back to his home in Newland, N.C. He didn't play college football but looked at the game and had the audacity to think he could coach it. More than once he heard that he needed to limit his vision and his ambition.
"When somebody told me I couldn't do something, that made me want to do it more," he said.
Johnson began his coaching career at his alma mater, Avery County High School, as the offensive coordinator and line coach. Johnson got his first college job at Lees-McRae Junior College in Banner Elk, N.C. When Erk Russell began building his Division I-AA national championship program at Georgia Southern, he hired Paul Johnson in 1983 as the defensive line coach.
Russell saw something he liked in the kid from western North Carolina. Johnson was coaching the defense, but he was also watching and learning the Georgia Southern offensive attack. It was a version of the wishbone/option and, from time to time, Johnson would offer some good ideas. In 1985 Russell promoted Johnson to offensive coordinator. In 1985 and 1986 Georgia Southern averaged 435 yards and 36 points per game and won a pair of Division I-AA national championships.
After stints at Hawaii (1987-94) and Navy as an assistant coach (1995-96), Johnson came back to Georgia Southern as head coach in 1997. The program had struggled since Russell's retirement after the 1989 season. Don't go there, people said. You can never match what Erk did.
Johnson immediately turned Georgia Southern around, winning 62 games and making three trips to the Division I-AA national championship game (two titles) in only five years.
Then he answered the call from Navy, which had just gone through the worst two-year period (1-20) in the history of the academy. Don't go there, Johnson's coaching friends told him. It's a graveyard. You can't get enough players. Too many restrictions.
"Call me dumb, but I thought our offense would work there," Johnson said.
It did. After a 2-10 record his first season (2002), Johnson's Navy teams won 43 games and made five consecutive bowl trips.
When Georgia Tech began looking for a coach to replace Chan Gailey, the thought of bringing Johnson's option offense to the ACC was considered to be a huge gamble. Don't go there, people told Johnson. The option may work at Georgia Southern and at Navy, but it will never work in a BCS conference. Too much speed.
"We played fast teams at Navy," Johnson said. "We didn't win every game but I knew if the offense was run correctly, it would work."
Georgia Tech went 9-4 in Johnson's first season, which included a memorable 45-42 win over archrival Georgia in Athens. The game was memorable because of the way Georgia Tech won it. Georgia led 28-12 at halftime and appeared to have total control of the game behind quarterback Matthew Stafford and running back Knowshon Moreno. In the Georgia Tech locker room, Johnson didn't scream. He didn't implore his team to do something extraordinary.
"He just showed us a couple of adjustments he thought would help," Nesbitt said last summer. "He just told us that if we settled down and executed the offense just a little bit better, we'd be fine."
In the span of just over seven minutes in the third quarter, Georgia Tech wiped out the deficit and took a 35-28 lead.
Since then Johnson has earned a reputation as the King of Adjustments. After Georgia Tech lost at Miami on Sept. 17, he simplified the defense and changed a couple of things on offense.
"We were terrible at Miami. We basically didn't block anybody on the perimeter all night long," Johnson said. "But we changed a couple of things and started having some success. Then the kids really bought in."
Now Georgia Tech has a chance to win its 10th game, something it has not done since 1998. The Yellow Jackets have a chance to go to their second ACC Championship Game. (The first was in 2006, a most forgettable 9-6 loss to Wake Forest). They have a chance to beat Georgia for the second straight year, which hasn't been done at Georgia Tech since George O'Leary beat the Bulldogs three straight from 1998 to 2000. And with Georgia struggling at 5-4, there are rumblings that the balance of power has shifted in the state, an unthinkable thing just a few years ago when Mark Richt's Bulldogs were winning SEC championships.
In short, life is good at Georgia Tech and the rest of the country is finally starting to discover that Johnson isn't a pretty good coach with a gimmick offense. This guy is a helluva coach with an offense, when run correctly, is just about impossible to stop.
"He's a ball coach," Durham said. "He's won every where he's ever been. That is not a coincidence."
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