Georgia Tech offensive coordinator Dave Patenaude found a number of things about the play of the offense in the Yellow Jackets’ 22-21 loss to Northern Illinois that he liked.
After penalties frequently sabotaged drives last season, the offense had one penalty. He thought the unit’s tempo was good. Center Mikey Minihan snapped the ball cleanly. The offense picked up 25 first downs, a high for Tech in coach Geoff Collins’ tenure, and ran for 273 yards.
“We ran the crap out of the ball,” Patenaude said Tuesday.
Credit: ACC
However, despite the production, “it only turned into 21 points,” Patenaude said. “We left too many of them on the field. We had guys running open, we missed ‘em. We had a couple of issues on protection. And we had a couple opportunities at field goals and we missed.”
Patenaude also said he thought that wide receiver Kyric McGowan was actually inbounds on the fourth-and-goal pass play in the third quarter that was ruled an incompletion after a video review determined he caught the pass from Jordan Yates with his foot on the sideline. Even if he actually was out of bounds, it was by inches.
“Those are three scores, and you should have 13 more points,” he said. “And you hit a couple of the (downfield passes that were incomplete) and now you’re looking at a 40-point game, which is what we should do. That’s a little bit of a kick in the gut when you have things that we executed perfectly throughout camp. All of those plays that we ran were plays that are base fundamental plays for us and we just missed them in the game.”
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