Miami Football: 3 takeaways from Hurricanes win over Georgia Tech

2. Paul Johnson is the perfect fit in Atlanta

Paul Johnson may never win a national title as the head football coach of the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, but honestly, they’ve won one title in the wackiest year in college football history back in 1990 when Miami bombed the BYU and Notre Dame games and the Jackets split the title with the Colorado Buffaloes.

After the occasional good season under coaches like George O’Leary and Chan Gailey, eventually Paul Johnson came to Atlanta and brought his Flexbone triple-option with him. People said “it won’t work here” much like Urban Meyer’s zone read option offense wouldn’t work in the SEC.

Two national titles for Meyer at Florida later, everyone is running some form of inside zone read in the NCAA offense. Then teams started running even more triple-option out of the shotgun to match the zone blocking schemes with the old veer offense to make these “RPO” or “run pass option” offenses we all see so often today.

Paul Johnson’s Flexbone is the perfect fit for Georgia Tech. On my blog, I wrote about why more bad teams should run the Flexbone. You can recruit specific players other teams aren’t recruiting, you can get your local high schools to run it and create a pipeline only you will tap, and if you have smart disciplined players like an engineering university will have (or a military academy) you will benefit from running a scheme that takes advantages of math angles and getting numbers at the point of attack.

The Georgia Tech offense relies on changing assignments throughout the game and snap counts as well. Where the typical team needs their players to know ‘line up here, do this’ Paul Johnson’s flexbone thrives on changing roles and assignments throughout the game.