Alumni Magazine - Fall 2008 - (Page 42) He’s still fixated on Jacksonville State, figuring out what went wrong. The uncertainty has all but vanished from fans’ faces as they file out into the muggy night. In the north end zone, Tech’s players gather and sing the fight song along with students standing in the bleachers. Everyone’s smiling. As Johnson sits down at the postgame press conference, he appears anything but happy. He isn’t satisfied with his first win at Georgia Tech, and he isn’t pondering what the future may hold. He’s still fixated on Jacksonville State, figuring out what went wrong. He’s already itching to put on the game film, dissect the little losses within the victory. There isn’t a part of the team that escapes his criticism. “We had some drops and missed blocking assignments,” he says of the A-Backs. “We lost intensity in the second half,” he says of the defense. “Down on the goal line, I’m really disappointed,” he says of the offensive line. “The kicking game was horrendous. It was awful,” he says of special teams. It’s not good enough. Never good enough. Never satisfied. But, for a moment at least, Johnson acknowledges that his team did come out on top. “Forty one is more than 14,” he says. “I’m not really smart, but I do know that.” D ARRYL RICHARD IS ONE OF THE MORE SAGE members of the football team, a standout defensive tackle and All-ACC Academic Team member. After the game, he walks with the slight limp of a man who just spent an evening in the trenches, slamming into fellow 300-plus-pound behemoths. More than most players, Richard looks at the game in a contemplative light. “This is a journey of a thousand miles,” he says, looking ahead to a season that will grow more and more difficult. “We have to start with one step.” For Johnson, the journey is one of returning Georgia Tech to the top of the college football world, proving it can be done, proving his system can work, proving Georgia can be defeated. So many uncertainties remain, so many things yet to accomplish. But, at the very least, Johnson showed Yellow Jackets fans that his system does work. More importantly, he showed that no one wants to see Georgia Tech football succeed more than he does. GT 42 Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Fall 2008
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