ATLANTA -- Rich Rodriguez's wildfire, the spread offense's oft-employed shotgun zone-read option, helped bring the use of the dual-threat quarterback back to the very forefront of college football, sparking Heisman campaigns and bubbling up to the professional ranks. Since his adaptable scheme reached new heights with freshman quarterback Pat White at West Virginia, leading a one-loss team that knocked off Georgia in the 2005 Sugar Bowl, four of the past eight Heisman winners have been run-heavy quarterbacks operating spread offenses. This should come as no surprise for those that have watched Marcus Mariota or Nick Marshall or Brett Hundley gash opposing defenses over the last few years.
Then there's another option.
Tucked away across the highway from midtown Atlanta, a former read-option quarterback is excelling in the throwback fashion of utilizing one's legs more than one's arm to operate an offense. He's listed at 5-foot-11 on the school's website, presumably measured in the tallest cleats available on the market, and he's completed just 36 passes this season. Justin Thomas wasn't supposed to be playing behind center at the FBS level, but after two years in the shadows at Georgia Tech he's become the driving force on an undefeated triple-option team, and his profile keeps growing.
Yellow Jackets coach Paul Johnson was never going to allow the run-first quarterback to slow-march into extinction -- not on his watch, not after three-plus decades of forcing his methodical, draining scheme upon defensive coordinators -- but few players have run his tried-and-true offense with such efficiency as Thomas has through the team's first five games. The player that many of the top SEC schools wanted as a cornerback, perhaps even a kick return specialist, is now the BMOC and a surprise early contender for the ACC's Offensive Player of the Year award.
"Never thought about it. Didn't even know I was in a conversation," Thomas said of his POY candidacy. "All that -- the stats and stuff -- doesn't matter. Like last game, if you look at the stat sheet, I was really a non-factor, but I still distributed the ball like I was supposed to. So stats don't matter at the end of the day."
This is not a natural conclusion for a conference boasting the nation's second-leading rusher (Pitt's James Conner). There's also the true freshman phenom (Clemson's Deshaun Watson) showcasing all the makings of a superstar running one of college football's annual offensive juggernauts. Jacoby Brissett, Vic Beasley, Rashad Greene, Tyler Murphy, Duke Johnson, Gerod Holliman, on and on. Oh, and then there's Jameis Winston, the reigning Heisman winner who is leading another national title contender.
And yet through five weeks of the season Thomas's candidacy -- weak as it looked as a first-year starter of a dated (albeit effective) offense -- has not taken a substantial hit. He's in that mix.
If 663 yards and seven touchdowns are mundane passing results, then 470 yards and three more scores on the ground should help. Only Boston College's Tyler Murphy and Georgia Southern's Kevin Ellison average more rushing yards per game than Georgia Tech's redshirt sophomore.
It's Thomas's efficiency, though, that has him in some elite company. According to Total QBR, an overall metric that accounts for situational efficiency in passing, running and game management, he ranks eighth nationally and sixth among full-season starters. His 85.3 QBR (on a scale of 0 to 100) puts him top-10 company with a few household names and all excellent players: Mariota, Hundley, Marshall, Blake Sims, Kenny Hill, Jared Goff and Dak Prescott. He's the fourth-most valuable rusher, adding an estimated 18.2 points with his legs, behind Murphy, Prescott and BYU's Taysom Hill.
"I don't know about exceeded expectations," Johnson said of his first-year starting quarterback. "I thought he was going to be a really good player. I think that he's made some crucial plays in critical situations, and that's always a great trait to have for a quarterback. You never know until they play some, and like I've said all year, I think he's just going to get better the more he plays."
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After securing the 6-A Alabama state championship for Prattville High School, Justin Thomas told Nick Saban, Kirby Smart and the Alabama staff thanks but no thanks. College football's preeminent powerhouse was a month away from winning its second of three BCS titles and recruiting Thomas, a four-star athlete whose hometown of Prattville, Ala., is located less than two hours away from the Tuscaloosa campus, even gaining a verbal commitment from him.
There were obvious stipulations to the arrangement, though, stipulations that, in the end, Thomas just could not accept. When Alabama informed him after winning the state title game that it intended on moving him into a defensive back/kick return specialist role, the diminutive quarterback balked. The recruit and the dynasty went their separate ways.
The Crimson Tide already had AJ McCarron, Phillip Sims, Phillip Ely and this season's starter, Blake Sims, on scholarship with Texas prospect and prototypical pocket passer Alec Morris committed in Thomas's class. Thomas was, realistically speaking, never going to play quarterback in Alabama's pro-style system.
So he reverted to Plan B.
Thomas had kept Georgia Tech, with its run-based offense more inclined to use his 4.3 speed at the quarterback position, waiting in the wings. The Yellow Jackets were more than willing to allow of the nation's fastest prospects (a high school sprint champion) to keep the ball in his hands. Now it appears Johnson's staff got a bargain: a four-star athlete that many SEC and ACC schools wanted, but one that very few -- if any -- would let run the show.
There was a waiting game involved, though. Transitioning from a shotgun read-option offense into the triple-option style right behind center took some time. Even Thomas's high school backup, Jalen Whitlow, saw time in major college football before Thomas did, holding down Kentucky's starting job for parts of the 2012 and 2013 seasons. The biggest lesson of all? Slow everything down.
"In high school, we were uptempo. There wasn't as much thinking before the play: you'd run a play, get the next one and go," Thomas said. "Starting off (in Johnson's offense), I had to get used to the game tempo, I would say. For us, it's not as fast. We slow it down. So it takes a lot more -- I guess you could say patience. Just getting used to the game speed and how we play the game, I feel like that's where I've gotten a lot better.
"In between plays, you do a lot of thinking. So you've got to just keep your mind thinking about that next play or the (positioning) of the defensive line, stuff like that."
Only two other FBS quarterbacks average more rushing yards per game than Georgia Tech's Justin Thomas.
When last season's starter Vad Lee elected to transfer -- curiously stating the triple-option offense was "never his thing," even though he committed to play for Paul Johnson, not exactly one to revert away from his base scheme -- there were questions concerning the smaller Thomas and if he could handle the workload. There was also the matter of starting a new quarterback for the third straight season. He showed flashes in limited playing time, much like Lee did behind former starter Tevin Washington in 2012, but stepping in to take the majority of the hits and make the right reads and pitches snap after snap offered a new challenge.
Five wins down, it's paying off. On a macro level, Georgia Tech is 5-0 due to its offense. While Johnson's team ranks 47th in overall efficiency, per Football Outsiders, the offense is humming along in the No. 15 slot -- even coming against a couple high quality defenses. Thomas has been the key. And while Alabama went on to capture two more national titles since Thomas's decommitment, he's not complaining about being front and center for an undefeated team that believes it is improving with every game.
"It was just a matter of going out there and doing it, being consistent with it. That was the main thing was consistency. Not having two or three good plays and then have a bad one," Thomas said. "You've got to keep moving forward, can't take steps back."
Georgia Tech still has plenty of question marks, and it's going to be an uphill climb for Thomas to upstage the likes of Winston or Watson, prolific quarterbacks on arguably the ACC's two best teams, among others in this not-so-flashy offense. Five weeks is a little early to be jumping the gun awards-wise with triple-option quarterbacks. Still, looking at the efficiency numbers, Thomas is running Johnson's offense about as well as it's been run in recent years, and if Georgia Tech can get by Duke and capture the Coastal Division title, expect to hear Justin Thomas's name in the Player of the Year discussion.
"The farther we go, the better we have to get as a whole. There's no debate: the more we win, the better the competition going to be," Thomas said. "We have to just keep doing what we're doing, then get better."
