Jan. 7, 2011
ATLANTA – Coach Johnson’s Opening Statement
” I don’t think anybody was satisfied with the way that the season went. Certainly we were disappointed, but, I am glad that it is over. You move on and start fresh this year. It is just like I told our team, every team is new. We will start to establish the identity of the 2011 Georgia Tech Football team when they get back to school on Monday. We talked about it after the bowl game. It was out of the norm, it was out of the norm for Georgia Tech and it was out of the norm for me. In 14 years as a head coach, this is only the second time that I have had a losing season and certainly we are going to work and make sure that we can do anything that we can to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”
On Georgia Tech’s below .500 season compared to his first Navy team
“I think there were some similarities but I think the thing that you have to be careful of is you don’t blow everything up because it has been successful and you know the model works. There are reasons why we didn’t do as well as we did and I think I know most of the reasons. I think you work off of those and try to correct them. That is all you can do really. There are similarities, but it is different.”
On why he thought Georgia Tech performed the way they did
“One of the things that you look at is that we turned the ball over way too much without getting as many turnovers. As I went back and broke things down. I think we had eight interceptions and 368 attempts against us. Not very good, considering four of them came in one game. On the flip side, we didn’t have any pressure on the quarterback .Offensively we turned the ball over way too many times, especially in the red zone, and we weren’t very efficient at throwing the ball. That is something that we talked about and we didn’t get any better at. We have to get better at it. People say that we have to throw more, but we aren’t (going to) until we get better at it. That is something that we have to look at as a staff. Ultimately we are all accountable for it.”
On special teams changes in the offseason
“I have looked at the special teams and for the most part we had one return against Virginia Tech that was a killer, but the kickoff coverage was fairly sound and really good early in the year. I think we have to take a good, hard look at what we are doing scheme-wise and personnel-wise on special teams. I haven’t decided how I am going to break it down but there are going to be some changes there, some changes of who is responsible for what and who is doing what and a lot of that will work itself out here in the next four or five weeks. There are certain areas that I have to get more involved in.”
On this year’s signing class
“You hope that you will be closer to balancing out the numbers. I think we will be able to sign 22 to 23 guys this time. There is a chance that you hope to balance out. We came in in December (2007) when I took the job and most of that class was committed. We probably added five or six guys that weren’t committed. We have tried to redshirt a large majority of the two classes that we did recruit in the hopes to build up some depth, but you are still going to be young because of the nature of what it is. That is not throwing anyone under the bus or anything else but there were some holes in positions in the upper class. And that is just what it was. Ultimately you would like to get those number back up. “
On the spring starting quarterback
“I think that Tevin has earned that (to be No. 1 QB in the spring). He will go into the spring as the number one guy. We will meet as a staff and look at some position changes and some people will have to play dual roles in the spring. One in particular is David Sims. I want to look at David in some different positions. He might have to play a little quarterback, too. I think that he has the ability to be a good football player at one of the other positions on offense. We will take a long look at Synjyn Days in the spring at quarterback, we will give him every opportunity. Right now, Tevin has the experience. He was the starter at the end of the year so he has earned the starting spot in the spring.”
On the A-Back position next year
“We are excited about the young players. I also think that B.J. Bostic is another good young player. We have to find a way to get him on the field. I am excited about those young guys.”
On moving forward to next year
“If they (the returning players) don’t understand what happened this year they aren’t very smart. You can talk about it all you want but sometimes it has to happen to you before you realize that it can happen. You move forward. You flush that, and you move forward. This team is a new team. We will have a team meeting on Tuesday and one of the things we will talk about is how good do you want to be and what are you going to do to get there? Everybody is going to say that they want to win every game but the bottom line becomes, what are you going to do to get there?”
