Fútbol savant

The Georgia Tech Rivals site is reporting that Coach Johnson has offered a 2011 scholarship this weekend to Chattahoochee place kicker Ammon Lakip. Tech was not initially going for a kicker this class, but after whiffing on nearly all of its top targets has apparently experienced a change of heart. If Lakip commits, that would make for the second kicker Johnson has signed to a scholarship in two seasons.

When Johnson arrived at Tech, his plan was to rely on walk-ons at place kicker, but he and his staff's incompetence at developing the position led him to comb for talent on the recruiting trail. After the four juniors announced for the NFL draft last January, Tech had room to sign Marist kicker Justin Moore, who was redshirted for the 2010 season. The fact that, following a full season of seeing Moore in practice, Coach Johnson is willing to commit a scholarship to another kicker tells you all you need to know about his confidence in the position.

Will place kicker become yet another ongoing issue with this program? Coach Johnson whined frequently when he got to Tech about the depth issues that resulted from probation, but he apparently hasn’t learned his lesson. Johnson appears now to be panicking, throwing good money after the bad at the kicker position. Considering his team's abundance of weaknesses across the board, Johnson cannot afford to be so absent-minded when it comes to distributing scholarship offers.

Is there an Al Groh with "NFL credentials" and a Super Bowl ring who can be hired to fix the kicking game? The current plan of coaching special teams "by committee," just like so many of Johnson's stubborn and bizarre practices, is clearly not in the best interests of Georgia Tech football. With Johnson himself acting as the offensive coordinator, there is simply no excuse not to spend the money thus saved to hire a coach devoted to the special teams unit.

Many uneducated and delusional observers have lauded, and continue to perpetuate, the myth of Paul Johnson's supposed "genius" and infallibility. And most certainly Coach Johnson is a genius–- at coaching service academy football. One would imagine in fact that he didn’t have to worry too much about field goals against all the Kent States and North Texases he beat up on at the Naval Academy.