Link
https://theathletic.com/450550/2018/07/3...ead-coach/

Georgia Tech’s​ players report​ Thursday with practice​ beginning​ Friday.​ Before​ the Yellow​ Jackets begin​ practice, head coach​ Paul​ Johnson sat​ down​​ with The Athletic in his office to discuss several wide-ranging topics.

Q: How would you say the program has changed in the 10 years you’ve been at Georgia Tech?

A: “I’m not sure that the program has changed as much as the conference has changed. I think, in a lot of ways, the program is very similar to what we were doing 10 years ago. There have been some people change and personnel. I think the commitment in the league has changed a great deal. I think the league has gotten much better than what it was. Our program is still probably where we were 10 years ago.”

Q: Are you doing anything drastically different from what you were doing 10 years ago?

A: “Every year you tweak and subtract and add stuff, but the basic philosophies of what we’re trying to do have pretty much remained the same throughout my time.”

Q: What was the start of you running this kind of offense?

A: “I was the offensive coordinator at Georgia Southern in 1985, and we won the national championship two years in a row there. I went to the University of Hawaii and had some really good success. I’ve always been under the adage of if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. I’ve been around this for a long time. I feel like once I see how you’re playing, and I know what gives us the best chance, it doesn’t mean that physical superiority cancels all theories sometimes, but I feel like any system is good if you know what you’re trying to accomplish.”

Q: What was the biggest reason why you went from a 4-3 defense to a 3-4 defense with new defensive coordinator Nate Woody?

A: “We needed to make more negative plays and get more aggressive. It just so happened that the guy I hired was a 3-4 guy. I wasn’t hung up on one scheme over the other. I am just a firm believer that when you hire somebody, you have to just let them do their thing. I try to treat them the same way I guess I was treated prior to being a head coach for 22 years. I was an offensive coordinator for a long time. When I took a job, I always wanted to make sure that they were hiring me to do my thing. I didn’t want to be micromanaged and put in a box. That’s what I’ve tried to do with the guys I’ve hired. (The 3-4) is his background. That’s his philosophy. That’s what he knows and believes it. The reason to go to (the 3-4 defense) when you look at (Woody’s) track record, they’ve been very good at creating negative plays. They had a lot of lost yardage and turnovers and all of those kinds of things.”

Q: Are there any challenges with a new defensive scheme when it comes to how you recruit?

A: “I don’t think so. I think people make too much of a big deal of all that stuff. I think the 3-4 is actually easier to recruit because the hardest guys to recruit are the D-linemen. You have one less guy now, so you can take some guys who might be tweeners in the 4-3, and they can play outside linebacker now. There will be a transition period, certainly, but overall, I think the 3-4 is easier to recruit than the 4-3.”

Q: What about for the current players on the team? Are there challenges to switching schemes?

A: “I think good players adapt. It’s the same thing who talk about how we recruit players for our offense and how what we do is so different. We don’t try to recruit players who just do this. We try to recruit good players, and good players adapt.”

Q: How beneficial is it for TaQuon Marshall to have a year under his belt as the starting quarterback?

A: “I think in anything you do, the more you do it, the better you get at it. Now, he may not have to think as much. He could just react and use his natural ability. No matter what you’re doing, a year of experience helps.”

Q: Is there a number in mind that you’re hoping to see his completion percentage hover at throughout the season?

A: “I think we’ve been really good when our quarterbacks have been around 50 (percent). If we can get 50 or over, that would be great. He’s probably never going to be able to complete 60 or 70 percent of his throws. Part of that is the system. We don’t hit a lot of check downs. If we need 3 yards, we’re probably not throwing a quick slant. We’re running the ball. So it’s a little different that way. If he can hit some of the wide open play actions that we missed a year ago and do that, then he’ll be fine. I think he’s able to get there.”

Q: In regards to recruiting, you haven’t finished higher than eighth in the ACC, as far as recruiting rankings are concerned. How do you get better?

A: “Well, I think we’ve got some good players here. I’ll be honest, I don’t give two ***** about recruiting rankings. If the people doing those rankings really knew what they were talking about, they would be making a lot more money working for the schools in the recruiting department. A lot of it is also numbers. If you’re signing 28 guys every year, your recruiting ranking is certainly going to be higher than a team that is only signing 16 or 17. We haven’t had the attrition that some schools have had. Our biggest class has probably been 25 one year. The average class for us has probably been around 17 or 18. So you’re never going to get there. Typically, if you take the top recruits, the same top schools get the same top 50 recruits every year. It doesn’t vary, unless you’re cheating. There were a few schools who slid in there in recruiting, and they are paying for it now.”

Q: Well, if you’re not going to be on the top of the recruiting rankings, how do you combat that?

A: “I think you have to have a system and compete. We have been able to compete. The great thing about college football is it’s not like the NBA Playoffs where you have to win a best-of-7 series. If you took all the talent that a school like Alabama has assembled, it would be hard for any school to beat them in a best-of-7. As we’ve seen, they can lose in a one game deal. I think Clemson has been the top team in our league for recruiting. They’re always up there in the top 10 and top five. It hasn’t been as good lately as it was early, but I think we’re 5-6 against Clemson. If you look over the past 10 years here, I don’t think anyone has won more ACC games other than Florida State, Clemson and Virginia Tech. We’ve done OK with those recruiting rankings.”

Q: You’ve been to three ACC championship games. Do you feel like Georgia Tech is a bit overlooked when it comes to the success you guys have had? Do you feel almost slighted that it’s not mentioned more?

A: “I don’t know about slighted. I think that each school has their own identity, so to speak. We don’t have a large alumni base, and sometimes you’re overshadowed by the gorilla in the state, which does have a large fan base and does get all of the (publicity). And rightfully so. There’s plenty of years though where they haven’t done anything, but just the nature of the school, they are going to get the publicity. I think you just have to be comfortable in your own shoes. You have to know who you are. We’ve been in a couple of Orange Bowl games and done those kinds of things. I think one year we finished sixth or seventh in the final poll, but it’s not impossible to compete.”

Q: What are some of the challenges you face when going up against that “gorilla” in the state?

A: “Well, I think resources, to begin with. Certainly, they are funded way differently than we are. There’s a lot. You can dwell on that if you want. I can give you a long list, but nobody cares. But what you have to do is accentuate the positives between you and them. There are going to be a lot of kids that they recruit that we just can’t recruit because they don’t want what we have to offer. What we have to offer is much different than what they have to offer.”

Q: What are you specifically getting at?

A: “Academics. The education. The networking of the alums. All of those kinds of things. I am sure they have some of that, but it’s not the same as ours.”

Q: Georgia is one of the most talent rich states in the country. How do you get more of those top players to stay in the state?

A: “You have to find guys who want what Georgia Tech has to offer. If what they want is to play in a 100,000-seat stadium and major in sports medicine or recreation, then they aren’t coming here. It doesn’t matter how you recruit them because they aren’t coming here. So you have to find people who fit that niche. It’s academically challenging here. It does us no good, even if I could get them to stay here. It doesn’t do me any good to go recruit a big defensive lineman who has an 800 on the SAT and who struggles in school. He’s going to be miserable. Everyone around him is going to be miserable because he doesn’t fit in. Our administration has been good with us determining whether or not guys can make it here. If I go take a kid who has a 2.2 GPA and a 800 on the SAT and put him in classes with kids who have a 4.0, he’s miserable. I don’t care how much help you give them. That’s why you have to find the right kids. I tell our coaches that I can sit down with a kid, and in 15 minutes, I can tell whether or not he can make it here or not.”

Q: When you look at the defense, you have to replace all of the starters in the secondary. Have you had to do that since being here?

A: “I don’t remember having to replace all of them. We’ve probably replaced three of them at a time. This would’ve been three if A.J. (Gray) didn’t get diagnosed (with a heart condition). We weren’t great on defense a year ago, so how much worse is it going to be? We struggled at the end of halves. We struggled at the end of games. We’ll see.”

Q: Especially in those first few games of the season, your team blew leads where you were leading for the majority of the games.

A: “We lost four games last year where we were up two scores.”

Q: How does that happen?

A: “It’s not all one side of the ball. Offensively, maybe we just quit scoring. We couldn’t finish the game. The Tennessee game, truthfully, there are a million reasons why we lost that game. We’ve got the game put away with six minutes to go and fumble on their 5-yard line. We give up a bunch of big plays in the passing game. We miss a 30-yard field goal to end the game. There are a zillion things. The game should have never been there. I could tell you about all of them. The Miami game, we lost on a fluke. It was a fluke. It was a fourth-and-14 play where the ball is deflected and hits our DB in the head, and the receiver catches the ball on his back. What I’m saying is we gave up too many scores late. The Virginia game, we gave up a score on the last drive. Normally, we would win those close games. A year ago, we didn’t finish. Even the Virginia game, we are up two scores. We have the ball. We have a guy wide open and under throw the ball, get it picked off, and they score two plays later. Now, it’s a one-score game. It just seemed like whatever bad could happen, happened. We had an inherently hard time stopping people during the last possession of a half. It’s hard to win when you do that. You lose momentum, and it’s a killer.”