Just like a BLT wouldn’t be complete without a tomato and a triple-fit jail cell wouldn’t be complete without that third Alabama football player, Paul Johnson’s flexbone offense just isn’t the same when the pitch isn’t working.
Normally a staple of the team’s rushing attack, the quarterback’s third and final option was noticeably underused by the 2017 edition of the Yellow Jackets despite an abundance of talent at the A-Back position between Qua Searcy, Nate Cottrell, Clinton Lynch, and J.J. Green. As it turns out, the 5-6 season was the culmination of what has been an interesting decline in A-Back use by Georgia Tech’s offense over the past few years; Tech used the pitch just 118 times in 2017, to the tune of 7.