Nov. 23, 2012
By Matt Winkeljohn
Sting Daily
– Without diving too deeply into statistics before today’s game at Georgia, it stands to reason that if Georgia Tech is going to beat the No. 3 Bulldogs and derail their hopes of competing in the BCS national championship game, the Yellow Jackets are going to have to make converts out of disbelievers.
Tech has been very good on third down during the four-game ACC winning streak that has pushed the Jackets into the ACC Championship Game, and outstanding on fourth downs as well.
They’ll likely need to convert at a high frequency in Sanford Stadium as well, and/or register a bunch of takeaways.
It’s not like the Jackets haven’t turned the tables in Athens before.
Here is a pretty nice mashup of Tech’s comeback win in Athens in 2008, complete with Wes Durham calls and some of his post-game interviews.
While beating Boston College, Maryland, North Carolina and Duke, the Jackets converted 38-of-63 third downs, and on nine of the 15 that they didn’t convert they went for it on fourth down and gained a first down or a touchdown on eight of those occasions.
That’s a 73-percent conversion rate on combined third and fourth downs in the winning streak.
Speaking of conversions, Joe Hamilton and his teammates were good on a few on this drive in Athens in 1998 to set up Brad Chambers’ game-winning field goal. It’s kind of fun to listen to the late Larry Munson’s misery as the Jackets stole the Dogs’ money.
The defense is going to have to make some plays. Takeaways, like Morgan Burnett’s Pick Six in the beginning of the first video listed above, and this, ahem, fumble by Jasper Sanks in overtime in 1999. Does Jim Donnan look sick, or what?
Even with takeaways, Tech will need some timely stops like this look at linebacker Brad Jefferson’s goal-line hammer of Knowshon Moreno in ’08 will help.
There will be plenty of occasions for the Tech faithful to bust out THWG, which you can warm up for here. This is solid compilation of digs at the Dogs.
It wouldn’t hurt to have a few out-of-box plays like Ray Beno’s rumble last week against Duke, which you can watch again here.
And before, during and after the Jackets pull off the upset, there is, of course, the fight song which can be heard here.
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