Dec. 8, 2010
ATLANTA –
Coach Johnson on getting the younger players into the mix
“Today we will return to practice and get back into the swing of things. There will probably be some carry over for the young guys on the scout team. I don’t know how much they will play against each other, we are still in the process of trying to break it down. There are a lot of similarities (between Tech and Air Force’s offense), but there are also differences as well. As we get more into it we will figure out how all of that is going to work. “
On Joshua Nesbitt’s return for the bowl game
“I don’t know if Joshua will be returning for the bowl, that is all in the doctor’s hands. We will play him when they say that he is good to go. I think that he has had a great career and you always want to see guys finishing it on the field playing. Certainly he is a tough competitor and has made a lot of plays in the last three years for Georgia Tech. If he could get out there that would be an added bonus, but we are not going to put him at risk to see if we could get him out there for one more game or series. He is going to have to be cleared by the doctors. They have to say that he has no issues and is good to go. “
On how both rushing offenses will impact the length of the bowl game
“You can never tell if this will be the shortest bowl game. There will probably be a lot of tv timeouts. I don’t think there will be a lot of passes thrown in this game. Maybe more than people think, but there won’t be a lot.”
On how the familiarity with Air Force will impact his preparation for the game
“It might, but it helps them as well because they have a familiarity with me and the team. I think we played them twice when Troy [Calhoun] was there. I think the other four times came when Coach DeBerry was the head coach.”
On the Georgia game
“I thought that we moved the ball fairly well. I was disappointed that we didn’t get more points off of production than we had. The turnovers were huge, just like the year before. We missed some opportunities in the passing game. “
On Tevin Washington’s improvement
“I think Tevin has done some positive things. He has played enough now where we expect him to be the starter. He is no longer the back-up. We can’t say, `ok you haven’t played much’. His level and standard is getting higher. The more he plays the higher the expectation.”
On scouting Air Force
“I haven’t had enough of a chance to really zero in on what they are doing yet. We will start that today. We just switched tapes at the beginning of the week and I have been out recruiting. I will be glad to answer that later on but right now I couldn’t give you a legitimate answer. They aren’t going to be much different than us. It is what it is. You are optioning people and blocking people. You might do it with a little different formation, but it is not going to be like us lining up against Miami, there will be a lot of similarities and carry over.”
On going for it on fourth down
“You have to weigh all of the different factors in. Conveniently, hindsight is 20/20. Everyone knows what you should have done after the fact. They forget about the times that you made it and went in to score, that gets discounted. If you are on your 45-yard line heading in, who is to say that if you punted the ball and it goes into the end zone they wouldn’t get it on their 20-yard line. Every time you do that, it doesn’t mean the other team has to score. The biggest joke was the three turnovers led to 21 points against Georgia. I guess literally that is true. But we neglected to say that one was a 95-yard drive, one was an 85-yard drive. It wasn’t like they picked the ball up on the five, ran two plays, and took it in. It all comes into play. You do have a better chance of stopping someone if you have them on their own five yard line than on the 45.”
