Georgia Tech Football: What We Learned This Week – Miami Edition
While the Yellow Jackets currently sit at 1-5 and are dead-last in the ACC Coastal Division, they have a prime opportunity get their second win of the season this Saturday against the Miami Hurricanes.
It has been relatively quiet this week thus far for the Tech football program. The Jackets are coming off a current four-game losing streak, and an ugly 42-23 loss this past Saturday to the Duke Blue Devils.
Miami Announces That N’Kosi Perry Will Be Starting Quarterback
Perry got his first start of the season last week against Virginia after starting freshman quarterback Jarren Williams was injured in their game against Virginia Tech. Perry came out victorious his first start of the season, but coming with a somewhat lackluster performance.
Perry went 16/27 for 182 yards, and one touchdown. He also had 9 rushes for 18 yards and one touchdown. The Jackets have a prime opportunity to shut Perry down if their early season defense decides to show up on Saturday, but in recent weeks it seems that the defense has fallen short of what they were producing early on.
Geoff Collins Weekly Press Conference
Head coach Geoff Collins had some interesting points on Wednesday in his weekly press conference, as it closes in on the half-way point of the football season.
When Coach Collins was asked about assessing all aspects of the team at the midway point of the season, Collins had this to say:
"“Every week we’ve gotten much, much better. I hate that the scoreboard doesn’t show it, I hate that the results don’t show it in the win-loss column. But you never can discount the effort that these guys are putting forward. We’ve gotten better in every single phase, and we’ve just got to understand that in critical moments, we can’t have setbacks. And the story of the [Duke] game was the second quarter. Some significant things happened to us in a negative way, we couldn’t overcome them and the score got out of hand really quickly. And then we went in and regrouped at halftime and came back out. And to these kids’ credit, we talk about the buy-in factor and you guys ask about it all the time, I don’t think anything signifies it as much as the way they’ve come out every game in the second half and competed regardless of the circumstances and continue, week in and week out, to improve.”"
Everything that Coach Collins had to say about that is absolutely true, as it is very apparent that the team has gotten much better as the season progresses, but it seems to be overlooked due to their current record.
Coach Collins was also asked about the development of young quarterback James Graham:
"“I think James Graham is just developing every single day. You can see his growth and his maturity every single day. I usually talk to him after stretch and I did that today, but the biggest point I was trying to make was the leadership point. The building of the culture, the developing of a player.”"
Collins also stated:
"“James, in that aspect, other than just throwing the ball, reading the field, going through with his progressions, making good decisions with the football, all of those things matter, but being a great leader and a great teammate is highly valued around here and I’ve seen the steps that he’s made to do that.”"
All quotes are from RamblinWreck.com, the official website of Georgia Tech athletics.
Looking Ahead to Saturday
The Jackets will go into the game on Saturday as major underdogs, but with the inconsistency that is the ACC Coastal, anything can happen in this game. If the Jackets defense can manage to get back to early season form against the struggling Hurricane offense, and the offense continues to progress like it has in recent weeks, they have a serious chance to win this game.