Boston College vs. Georgia Tech: Yellow Jackets vulnerable in middle of field

Georgia Tech fans were just glad to see the team get a victory against Boston College on Saturday. But the performance, while a 20-point win, wasn't exactly an aspiring effort partially due to the quality of the opponent.

The Yellow Jackets had been losers of three straight before beating the Eagles. But Boston College still has just one win on the season and has lost five straight. The Eagles have an 0-4 record in ACC action so far.

So Tech was supposed to win this game, in a sense, because someone was supposed to lose and the comparable mediocrity wasn't in BC's favor. The issue Tech fans at SB Nation's blog, From the Rumble Seat, had with their team was the tendency to give up big plays in the middle of the field.

Tech defenders are working on something called "re-routing" receivers, where they force receivers to break their routes. But it was executed poorly, resulting in the few big plays the Eagles had.

Here's some insight from FRS on the defense adjusting to a new signal caller:

I asked Isaiah Johnson what the biggest difference practicing under Coach Groh and Coach Kelly was, and he said something to the effect of it's slower and faster paced. That is, Coach Groh spat out a lot of information all at once that they had to swallow at a quick rate, so it was faster under him in that regard. It's faster under Kelly in the physical sense, because he's not having them constantly adjust based on where one receiver is going or not going, he's just letting them play. This, to me, makes it the most clear why Groh wasn't working, he was asking them to memorize and think too much based off small tweaks the offense was making. Quayshawn agreed: now they get to react to simple keys like alignments in at the line of scrimmage or what routes a guy was running, it's just easy. I heard the players talk about how they got to "just play" under this new defensive command, and they seemed very happy with it.