I'm Vindicated Already

I have a lot of friends that are aware of my admiration for Paul Johnson as a head coach and the system he employs. It's not hard to figure out why-I grew up watching a chessmaster of a coach that simply outschemed and outmaneuvered opposing defenses. Tom Osborne was a genius calling plays and he always did more with lesser players who were tougher than almost everyone they played. So Paul Johnson is a throwback to an era where basketball on grass didn't exist and football was a man's sport. Paul Johnson is a throwback to an era where teams feared playing Nebraska because they got the living crap kicked out of them, physically and mentally.

So a lot of my friends like to text and email me to try to rub it in when Georgia Tech loses. They'll say the same pathetic things I've blogged about before i.e, "see that offense will never work."

I'm sure I'll get the same things should Iowa win Tuesday night. In a way though this game is meaningless, other than taking some national glory and setting up a run for next year. Sure it would be nice to win because it would be a landmark for a program that has very little experience at this level of college football. But there are no more questions about whether this system will work against major college opponents. That's been proven over the past two years. It was further proven on Thursday when Navy took big bad Missouri and their 12th ranked rushing defense behind the woodshed. Navy's defense also played lights out, shutting down that pass happy Missouri offense. Navy is 8 years into their experiment. Georgia Tech is barely 2 into theirs. At some point, when his OL and defense get the right personnel, Paul Johnson will have Georgia Tech executing at a level like Navy did the other day. Only they'll do it with players who are much bigger, stronger and faster. I personally think this thing hits another level starting next year, as Navy had a breakthrough 10 win season in Paul Johnson's third season there. The average fan simply has no idea how far from reaching max performance this team really is but I think they operate at about 65% of the execution level of Navy right now. Wait until the O linemen up front understand the offense enough to let CPJ make his in-game blocking scheme adjustments-from play to play.

It's unreal actually to think back about 2 years ago when Paul Johnson was hired away from Navy. I correctly predicted he would have them in the BCS within 2 seasons and here we sit just a couple days away from playing on that big stage. They will have a national audience all to themselves, with CPJ and his team on full display for everyone to see how far they've come. It's final exam time.