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Jeff Shain, Sports Media Exchange
Jonathan Dwyer couldn’t shake the memory of his first Orange Bowl touch.
Making a nifty cutback to dash through Iowa’s first line of defense, Dwyer found a wide swath of vacant acreage in front of him.
“Their safety ran by me,” Georgia Tech’s top rusher recalled. “There’s no way someone was going to catch me.”
A chorus of officials’ whistles, though, brought an abrupt halt to Dwyer’s idyllic scenario. Penalty flag. Teammate Joseph Gilbert had jumped the snap count.
“That could have been the tempo setter,” Dwyer lamented. “I wish we could rewind that play. There’s no telling what the outcome might have been.”
The reality was brutal. The triple option that carried the Yellow Jackets to the ACC title hardly got out of first gear, throttled by an active, disciplined Iowa defense in 24-14 setback on a cold Tuesday night..
Not only was it the least productive outing in coach Paul Johnson’s two seasons at Tech, it sent both school and bowl researchers combing back more than two decades to find comparable futility.
“We just couldn’t seem to get anything going,” Johnson said. “I don’t know what our biggest play was tonight, but we didn’t have a big play. Normally we’ve had several big plays, either off the runs or play-action or something.”
For the record, Tech’s longest play was Anthony Allen’s 16-yard scamper midway through the second quarter. It produced exactly half of the Yellow Jackets’ entire first-half yardage.
“Our defense played tremendous,” Iowa quarterback Ricky Stanzi said. “They’re the heart and soul of this team. They always have been, all season long. We were able to feed off their momentum and energy.
“When the defense is playing so well and giving us opportunities, you’re able to make more plays.”
The Hawkeyes held Georgia Tech to 155 yards of total offense — a little more than one-third of the Yellow Jackets’ season average.
Only once before in Johnson’s tenure had Tech been held to less than 200 yards, and that was by one yard in a nail-biter against Gardner-Webb when they had to rely on a third-string quarterback.
Tuesday night also marked the first time since 1992 that an Orange Bowl participant had failed to generate at least 200 yards of total offense. That game saw Nebraska get blanked 22-0 by Miami’s third national-title team.
Georgia Tech’s 12 passing yards were the fewest in an Orange Bowl since 1961, when Missouri had five yards in a loss to Navy.
“We’ve been preparing for these guys since the beginning of December,” All-America linebacker Pat Angerer said. “Our coaches have done such a good job getting us ready and we’ve seen just about everything they could throw at us.”
The Hawkeyes kept their defensive line active, frequently shifting tackles Christian Ballard and Karl Klug just before the snap. Ends Adrian Clayborn — whose nine tackles and two sacks earned him MVP honors — and Broderick Binns showed enough commitment to the fullback dive to prompt Josh Nesbitt to take the ball out of Dwyer’s belly, yet still join the swarm that quickly surrounded Nesbitt.
Angerer proved an effective Nesbitt shadow, playing an extra step off behind his line to minimize Tech’s cut-blocking techniques and patrol the middle freely.
“They had a good plan,” Johnson said, “and we had a hard time blocking them.”
Credit Iowa defensive coordinator Norm Parker, a 40-year college assistant who had to dig back into his personal archives to counteract a scheme that ruled college football in the 1960s and ‘70s but now is found only at Tech and the service academies.
After the game, Hawkeyes coach Kirk Ferentz recalled a planning meeting not long after the bowl matchups were determined.
“He was talking about how they used to play (the option) all the time in spring practice, preseason camp and all season long in the ‘60s and ‘70s,” Ferentz said. “And a couple of years ago, everybody thought Norm was too old. Now maybe it’s good that we had that wisdom.”
That aborted first snap notwithstanding, the Hawkeyes set an impressive tone. Georgia Tech came to South Florida with the nation’s No. 2 rushing offense, averaging 307.2 yards per game.
Only 14 times all season had a defense held the Yellow Jackets to a three-and-out.
Iowa did it five times in the opening half alone. On Tech’s two other possessions before intermission, one was a four-and-out and the other lasted one snap when Clayborn sacked Nesbitt as the half expired.
“Our drives were stopping before they started,” guard Cord Howard said. “We’re a straight-ahead offense, so (penalties) kind of stops our timing.”
The Yellow Jackets finished the half with 32 total yards and one first down.
“We’re not used to holding the ball for three plays,” Tech tackle Brad Sellers said.
Untimely penalties also wrecked Tech. An illegal chop block on the third offensive series turned an expected third-and-3 into second-and-12. Another false start on the second half’s opening possession forced the Jackets to attempt a field goal, which Scott Blair missed from 42 yards.
“It’s a tempo-set offense; it’s supposed to have momentum,” said Dwyer, who ran for 1,346 yards in the regular season but was held to 49 by Iowa. “We just couldn’t get momentum, really, until the beginning of the third quarter and into the fourth.”
Too little, too late.
Tech did pull within 17-14 on Anthony Allen’s 1-yard touchdown run with 12:30 left, but linebacker A.J. Edds’ interception of Nesbitt on the next series killed any momentum. Brandon Wegher’s 32-yard TD run sealed it for the Hawkeyes with 1:56 left.
“We don’t play very many games like that,” Johnson said. “You get behind like that and you don’t survive.”
Iowa wound up outrushing the Yellow Jackets, 172 yards to 143. It was the third time this season that Georgia Tech had been outrushed, and they lost all three.
“I can see how playing them with only a week to prepare would be tough to do,” Iowa’s Edds said, noting the problem faced by Tech’s ACC opponents. “It took us a month and there were things we weren’t exactly sure on.
“We knew if we could get them down a little bit and get them in a hole, it would give us a good chance.”
