Georgia Tech Football: 5 Candidates to replace Paul Johnson
After 11 seasons with Georgia Tech Football, triple-option aficionado Paul Johnson has elected to retire, adding the Yellow Jackets to this season’s coaching carousel.
Paul Johnson spent a career proving people wrong. At every stop of his coaching career, his flexbone offensive system was said to be unable to compete in the modern-era of college football, with pro-style offenses and later up-tempo spread systems taking over and leaving ball-control offenses in the dust.
Johnson won back-to-back National Championships on the FCS level at Georgia Southern, compiling a 62-10 record in five seasons there. That wasn’t big-time college football, they said. It certainly would not be sustainable at the FBS level.
Johnson left Georgia Southern to take a crack at the FBS, getting the head job at Navy. After a 2-10 opening salvo that had critics of the option coming out in droves, Johnson led Navy to a 43-19 mark over the next five seasons.
But that was at a service academy, they said. There’s no way the option could work in big-time football at the power-five level. Johnson would get his chance when Georgia Tech came calling, and he once again proved the detractors wrong, leading the Yellow Jackets to an 82-59 mark over his 11 seasons on the sideline.
Johnson won the ACC in his second season in Atlanta, and won the Coastal Division on three occasions while leading Georgia Tech to two Orange Bowls.
After coming up agonizingly short in the 2014 ACC Championship Game against Florida State, Johnson’s teams at Georgia Tech started to decline, particularly on defense, but he still managed a nine win season in 2016, and lifted a Yellow Jackets team this year to 7-5 after an ugly start.
It’s weird to call Johnson innovative, running a flexbone offense that has been around for decades, but he took it and molded into something sustainable during the modern-era when no one thought it was possible.
A lot of programs use option principles now in spread systems, and the root of all of them is the simple novocaine flexbone that is almost impossible to stop when ran properly. It’s an offense that gives opposing defensive coordinators nightmares, and typically takes much longer than a single week to prepare for.
No one ran the option like Johnson’s teams, so surgical and efficient. Taking over a program steeped in mostly mediocrity since the Bobby Dodd era, Johnson finishes as the fourth winningest coach in the history of Georgia Tech football.
The last few years brought grumbles from fans who were ready for change. In the recruiting hotbed of Atlanta, Johnson was never going to attract top talent to run his option, but he could take two and three star talent and embarrass programs littered with four and five star defenders.
The right coach in a market like Atlanta could wake up a sleeping giant at Georgia Tech, if the university decides for a complete overhaul away from the option. If that is indeed the case, then patience will be key from fans and the administration, as bringing the Yellow Jackets into the 21st century will take a few years to get right.
Let’s examine the top candidates to replace Johnson at Georgia Tech: