Georgia Tech season preview 2014: Defense
Here at ATL All Day, we’ve been previewing the college football seasons for Georgia and Georgia Tech. Today, we release our final post on the Yellow Jackets defense. Be sure to check out our look at the 2014 offense here.
The defense for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets has been pretty fluid over the past few seasons, going from a 4-3, to a 3-4 and back to a 4-3 last season with defensive coordinator Ted Roof.
This season, the team is going to stick with a four-man defensive line, but shift to a nickel secondary, in efforts to improve the team’s pass defense. During 2013, the Jackets allowed 244.5 passing yards per game.
However, with this shift lots of pressure is going to come down on an extremely young core of defensive lineman. Does Georgia Tech have the personnel to make this transition work? We’ll see. In the meantime let’s take a look at the position groups.
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Secondary
The secondary is probably the best place to start with the Yellow Jackets, because it’s definitely their strongest position group. Corner-turned-safety Jamea Thomas–who led the group with 80.5 tackles last season–is gone this year, but the Jackets will return five juniors and a senior to create an experienced backfield.
After missing 2013 due to an ankle injury, Isaiah Johnson will be back on the field. During his junior season in 2012, Johnson led the team with 87 total tackles.
The junior core of D.J. White, Demond Smith, Domonique Noble, Chris Milton and Jamal Golden should combine to fill out the secondary extremely well and make the 4-2-5 transition even easier. Throw sophomore Lynn Griffin‘s name into the mix as well–he played in 12 games last season. Finally, freshman Step Durham–a four-star recruit–has all of the talent you could ask for.
This should be a fun group to watch, especially if all goes according to plan.
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Linebacker
The linebacker unit is a bit less exciting, simply due to the fact that less of them will be on the field.
The Jackets will look to senior Quayshawn Nealy to be “the guy” here. He’s coming off of a season where he tied for second on the team with 66 tackles, had two interceptions, two fumble recoveries while playing in each of the team’s 13 games. He didn’t do much in the pass rush, but should be reliable in the run game and dropping back into coverage.
The loss of Brandon Watts might hurt the team this year, he was one of the more athletic players on the defense and his speed will be missed (as well as his 54 tackles), but sophomore Paul Davis gained a lot of experience in his freshman season last year and could break into a starting role this season. In 2013, Davis led the non-starters with 41 tackles.
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Defensive Line
The D-line is where things get a bit messy for Paul Johnson and the Tech defense.
Of the seven leaders in tackles last season, six of them won’t be returning in 2014 including 50th overall pick in the NFL Draft Jeremiah Attaochu. Attaochu was easily the most dynamic defensive player on the team last season, transitioning to a 4-3 end with no problem and leading the team with 12.5 sacks.
There is, quite frankly, no one on the roster who will be able to replace that kind of production, and with the number of players moving on, it’s going to be quite the learning experience for this group.
Junior Adam Gotsis is the most experienced player of the unit, and started all 13 games at tackle last season, recording 38 tackles and 5.5 sacks.
Shawn Green, Francis Kallon and Patrick Gamble will be expected to take on larger roles this season, according to Stan Awtrey with The Macon Telegraph.
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In closing, the defense could be even more interesting than an offense that’s going to be starting a new quarterback and losing it’s biggest weapon (Robert Godhigh).
Yet again, Paul Johnson is tinkering with the formation of the defense and while Tech should have the secondary personnel to create a solid nickel backfield, there’s going to be tons of pressure on an extremely inexperienced defensive line. Without playing any real games yet, it looks like the pass-rush could be a real problem for the team.
Of course, that’s why the games are played and we’ll get a much better idea of how good this group is going to be after their season opener this Saturday against Wofford.