Clemson Football Opponent: Scouting Report vs. Georgia Tech
1) First, Tech’s season hasn’t gotten off to the start that most Yellow Jackets fans would have hoped with losses to USF and Pitt. What’s gone wrong so far for GT?
Dylan: You’re right it’s been a rough start on The Flats for the Yellow Jackets and the locals are not liking it one bit (rightfully so). So far the season feels comparable to that of last season when the Jackets went 5-6. But when narrowing it down to a few key issues, there are three places I’m looking.
The first major place is turnovers; right now through three games, the Yellow Jackets have eight turnovers on the season, which over the course of the season would put them at over 30 turnovers. This rate of turnovers is probably not sustainable for the Yellow Jackets offense but it’s been a weakness. The biggest problem regarding the turnovers however is that they always seem to come at the worst of times for the Yellow Jackets.
The second area is the Yellow Jackets defense which to the dismay of fans has not come around as fast as they would’ve hoped. The Yellow Jackets are in their first year under defensive coordinator Nate Woody, who had a tremendous tenure at Appalachian State prior to coming to The Flats. Woody’s defenses are known for being aggressive and creating big plays consistently, unfortunately though for the Yellow Jackets, the big plays have yet to come.
The Jackets as a team have just three sacks and five forced turnovers so far this season. They have been able to rack up 12 tackles for a loss though which is considerably better rate than last season. But the point is with the defense, is when they fail to make that big play, they often pay for it by giving up a big play.
The third and final spot for the Yellow Jackets is just a lack of execution all around. Coaches can only coach so much and when they can’t it all comes down to execution. The Yellow Jackets on all sides of the ball have been unable to execute routine plays so far this season and it has killed them each of the last two weeks.
The offense struggles to execute in the passing game, the defenses seems to struggle in executing a regular tackle at time, and the special teams outside of punting can’t seem to execute all that much. Against USF, the Jackets gave up back-to-back kickoff returns for a touchdown and no field goal attempt is a guarantee right now either. In a way, a lot has gone wrong for the Yellow Jackets and there may just be too much to fix for the Yellow Jackets to salvage an above .500 season.