ATLANTA — When Georgia Tech conducts a postmortem on this season, the coaching staff can point to how a series of senseless penalties against Wake Forest nearly cost them a spot in the ACC title game.
All the roughing and blocking penalties may have been forgotten by the fans in the euphoria of a 30-27 overtime victory, but Georgia Tech head coach Paul Johnson isn’t forgetting.
“We killed ourself with penalties,” Johnson said. “But it’s to their credit that they found a way to win it in the end and 30 is more than 27.”
Tech was flagged for 78 yards on seven penalties during regulation, nearly twice its average of 44 yards per game. But it was the untimeliness of the penalties more than the yardage that really hurt the Yellow Jackets.
“Penalties hurt us (Saturday), and thankfully it didn’t cost us the game,” said Tech running back Jonathan Dwyer. “We have to work hard this week and fix those mistakes.”
The trend was set on Wake Forest’s first scoring drive and the Jackets were stuck on the bad-penalty treadmill for the rest of the half. The Georgia Tech defense had stopped Wake Forest inside the 5 and forced a field goal, but Morgan Burnett was whistled for roughing kicker Cline Beam. Wake Forest accepted the penalty, removed the three points from the board, took over at the 1 and scored a touchdown on the next play. The swap of a field goal for a touchdown threw a road block on Tech’s momentum.
Georgia Tech wasted no time getting flagged again on the next possession. A chop block on first down back the Yellow Jackets up to the 10 and inspired the Wake Forest defense, which forced Georgia Tech to got three-and-out. Even if Georgia Tech had converted on third down, that play would have been negated with a holding penalty.
Once Wake Forest got the ball back, Georgia Tech continued its largesse when T.J. Barnes drew a roughing the passer penalty that set the Deacons up at the Georgia Tech 34. Five plays later Wake Forest’s Riley Skinner gave his team the lead with a touchdown pass to Devon Brown.
The other big offensive penalty wiped out a Georgia Tech touchdown and prevented the Yellow Jackets from regaining the momentum. Wideout Sean Hill took the pitch around the right end, make a couple of nice moves and appeared to have a 66-yard touchdown. But the referee called Demaryius Thomas for holding and the play came back. That drive ended five plays later when Josh Nesbitt lost a fumble.
The final critical defensive penalty enabled Wake Forest to tie the game at 24. On third down, Skinner threw a 27-yard completion to Chris Givens for a first down, only to have a personal foul by Osahon Tongo tack on another 15 yards and put Wake Forest on the 11. Skinner threw a touchdown pass to Brown on the next play.
It was the sixth time this season that Georgia Tech has had more than 50 yards in penalties and eclipsed the 70 yards they suffered at Virginia. The penalties seemed especially excessive in light of the scarcity of flags last week against Vanderbilt, when Georgia Tech had only one penalty for 9 yards.
“Most of the time we played penalty-free,” Tech defensive coordinator Dave Wommack said. “That’s one thing that Coach Johnson stresses. We’ll have to clean up some of those things for next week. We’ll take a look at the film and see what we need to do.”
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