Linebacker Jeremiah Attaochu has shined for Georgia Tech when healthy, but his personal foul penalty on Virginia Tech's Logan Thomas on a third-and-long in the third quarter gave the Hokies new life, and the eventually came back from the Yellow Jackets' 26-21 lead to win the game. Head coach Paul Johnson noted the penalty as the tipping point in the second half:
It was huge and it compounded with the fact that they drove it down and scored. Like I said, we might have gotten the ball back somewhere around midfield up five and had the momentum to possibly have a two score lead, and in that game we needed to be up two scores. It changed. I couldn't see what happened. The play was dead for what seemed like forever, they never blew the whistle and Logan Thomas kept trying to move, we couldn't get him down anyway. He was a big, strong guy.
For his part, Attaochu owned up to the flag, citing too much adrenaline:
I'm not going to lie, I'm not going to sit here and tell you no, I knew I was going too hard. I'm a high-energy player. When I made contact with him, he wasn't going down. We do that in practice when someone is standing up by hacking for the ball when I was behind him. My body kind of moved to his front so I kept hacking for the ball and then the flag was thrown. I'm not dumb I knew it was the reason for the flag.
The loss, Georgia Tech's third in four games, knocks the Yellow Jackets out of contention for the ACC Championship. Quarterback Tevin Washington commented on the letdown inside the locker room:
It's a let down. We worked all offseason and this season our way to the ACC (championship) so it's just a let down. There's nothing we can do about it now but go out and try to win the next two and put our selves in position to have a decent record.
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