Like Tennessee, Georgia Tech has a lot of question marks entering the 2017 season.
Coming off of a dramatic win against arch rival Georgia and a Taxslayer Bowl victory against Kentucky, the Yellow Jackets will face their third SEC team in as many games. And they’ll look for their third straight win.
As we look ahead to the Vols season opening game, we’ll do so by analyzing the Tech offense. While Paul Johnson’s offense is known for its prowess in the run game, the passing game plays a major role as well.
Georgia Tech’s offense was ranked 21st in the country last season according to the Fremeau Efficiency Index, which measures opponent-adjusted drive efficiency. When you play Tech, you could get 60 snaps in a game. Or you could also get 90. The Yellow Jackets were 71st in the country in offensive first down rate, which means that their flexbone offense was going three-and-out a lot. Tech only gained a first down on 71% of its drives a season ago.
Johnson also has the 29th best offensive line in the NCAA according to advanced analytics from Football Outsiders.
The Yellow Jackets’ power success rate, which is the percentage of runs on third or fourth down, two yards or less to go, that achieved a first down or touchdown, was 12th in the country. They converted on 3rd or 4th and short 78% of the time.
So how does Tennessee go about stopping the triple option? When we looked back at the film against three common opponents in 2016, here’s what we saw.
