Georgia Tech inept on offense in loss at Virginia Tech

“When you come off the field, when it’s said and done, the Georgia Tech football team didn’t play well enough collectively to win the football game,” Tech coach Brent Key said. “Within that, I thought we gotta make some plays on offense. We had several opportunities, third-down throws that could have gotten the first down. Gotta be able to pull those things in, gotta be able to make those plays.”

The Jackets actually put up 356 yards of offense, but only 96 of those came on the ground. They were 5-of-19 on third downs and 1-for-5 on fourth downs. One of those fourth-down failures came in the red zone.

Haynes, Tech’s leader in rushing yards this season, managed only 47 yards on 18 carries. Pyron was 10-of-22 passing for 76 yards and an interception.

Virginia Tech quarterback Kyron Drones stole the show Saturday by throwing for a touchdown, rushing for a touchdown and catching a touchdown. He threw for 128 yards on 16 completions.

But the Hokies were only 2-of-15 on third downs and averaged only 3.8 yards per play.

“Defensively I thought we played as good of football as we’ve played this year,” Key said. “They were getting off the field, they were forcing the run to bounce … they were clogging up the middle on the run game. I thought we affected the quarterback. We were able to get in the backfield and cause some errant throws there. Did a nice job on third down.”

Georgia Tech scored first, thanks to a 34-yard field goal by Aidan Birr eight minutes into the first quarter, briefly quieting the more than 65,000 fans in attendance.

Virginia Tech (5-3, 3-1 ACC) took its first lead two minutes into the next quarter when Kyron Drones tossed a 20-yard touchdown pass to tight end Benji Gosnell, who was wide open running down the right seam. Gosnell had caught a 31-yard pass on the previous play to set up the score.

Birr booted his second field goal of the day, this one from 50 yards out, cutting the score to 7-6 with 5:39 left in the first half.

Once again the Hokies answered, this time with a little trickery to cap a long drive. Coming out of the two-minute timeout, Virginia Tech ran a reverse for wide receiver Jaylin Lane coming left to right. He stopped and threw a 6-yard pass to Drones, who was waiting wide open in the right half of the end zone.

That gave Virginia Tech a 14-6 lead, a lead it took into the locker room.

“We feel like we had them right where we wanted them,” Tech wide receiver Eric Singleton Jr. said. “They weren’t putting up a lot of points, and our defense was getting a lot of stops. We just gotta move the ball down the field and execute in the red zone.”

Neither team could do much of anything on offense in the third quarter until a 25-yard punt return positioned Virginia Tech with a first down at the Georgia Tech 28. But a third-down sack by Romello Height forced the Hokies into a 55-yard field-goal attempt, which Zeek Biggers blocked after coming through the middle of the line.

But one play later, Pyron threw a pass directly to Virginia Tech cornerback Keli Lawson, who brought the ball back to the Georgia Tech 42. Four plays later, Drones kept an option read and scored from the 1 through the right side, making the score 21-6 with 4:50 left in the period.

That would be the score going into the final 15 minutes, a score that the Jackets never came close to changing.

“We gotta go into this bye week and get healthy,” Key added. “There were some situations in there where you start running out of guys. But we gotta get healthy, we gotta get the offense on track with those things and continue to make improvements defensively.”

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