SouthernPigskin.com Senior Editor B.J. Bennett takes a quick statistical look at the Georgia Tech offense.
Forget fashion and pop culture, it's been trendy the past 24 months to belittle the triple option offense of Georgia Tech. Despite Paul Johnson's many efforts to explain that, in principal, it's not much different than the ever-popular spread attack and his repeated attempts to not address the issue of his offense being "figured out", the effectiveness of the triple option offense remains an issue many in the media just refuse to let go. Long, ardent supporters of Johnson and his offense, we figured we would showcase some numbers that detail just how efficient the Yellow Jackets have been this season.
The last few weeks, in games against Florida State, Virginia Tech and Virginia, Tech has been remarkably dominant on offense. In those three games, GT has rushed for 1,072 yards. Against the Seminoles, the Yellow Jackets didn't punt once. Against the Cavaliers, they held the ball for over 42 minutes.
MLB manager Lou Pinella once said that statistics are like a bikini, they show a lot but not everything; with these numbers, we are getting a pretty good look.
Attempts: 452 (3rd in the nation)
Yards: 2,333 (1st in the nation)
Average: 5.16 (10th in the nation)
Touchdowns: 26 (2nd in the nation)
3rd Down Conversions: 51.8% (5th in the nation)
4th Down Conversions: 72.7% (11th in the nation)
Time of Possession: 278:36 (1st in the nation)
Yards per pass: 11.5 (1st in the nation)
"Like I said earlier, in the last two games, we've hurt ourselves early on with penalties. It would interesting to go back and see how many times in the last three or four games where a drive hasn't been stopped by a penalty. I think you would see that it hasn't happened a lot. We've kind of inflicted that on ourselves, which is tough to overcome," Johnson said after the UVA win.
This offense works and is working as well as any in college football. See above.
