How Georgia Tech countered their way to the first upset of the college football season

Georgia Tech ran that damn ball on Saturday, and it led to the first big win of 2024.

“RUN THE BALL.”

That was of the first phrase out of Georgia Tech head coach Brent Key’s mouth after the Yellow Jackets secured a monumental upset victory over No. 10 Florida State in Dublin, Ireland. The 24-21 victory was their first win over an AP top-10 team since 2015, which also happened to be against Florida State. It’s not often that you see FSU get pushed around, but the Georgia Tech offense did exactly that.

Key, a former offensive line coach, and offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner engineered an offense that ran for 190 yards on the ground, and an EPA per carry that placed in the 80th percentile. Pretty tidy if you ask me.

While the Yellow Jackets threw a variety of run game looks at the Seminoles, they had the most success running counter. Of their 190 rushing yards, 105 came off of the use of counter runs. They used this as their bread and butter, and battered the vaunted Seminoles’ defensive line into submission.

Florida State is a predominantly four man front, with an attacking style of play. If you want to get after them on the ground, having to hit them with gap scheme runs and use their aggression against them is the best option. Where the Yellow Jackets did this well is by using motion and breaking out the pistol offense to disguise the strength of the play. The Seminoles lined up in an “Over” front, meaning they were sliding everyone towards the side the tight end was on. When Georgia Tech would line up, it would end up looking like this:

You see this person in motion? Yeah he also plays a role here. Florida State is also a heavy man coverage team; they finished 2023 seventh in the nation in man coverage snaps per Sports Information Solutions. Why is this so important? Because the nickel defender is locked in man coverage, the Noles largely have to defend the run out of a six man box, having the recruit their help from the safety and not from a nickel defender. Georgia Tech knew this, and would use that eye candy of motion to keep the nickel out of the run fit and cause confusion at the second level of the Seminoles’ defense. From there, it was all about math and angles with their counter runs.

Because the 3-Technique DT is to the center’s left, he steps to his left and washes him down, allowing for the left guard and tight end to pull to the offense’s right. The right tackle performs a double team on the other defensive tackle, then moves up to the backside linebacker in order to cut him off from making a play.

Where Florida State went wrong is how they approached the pulling guard and tight end. There are many ways to take on pullers: you can “box” it, meaning you hit the puller with your inside arm and try to force the back inside. You can “spill” it, hitting the puller with the outside arm and force the back outside. Or you can “dent” it, which is simply running through a MFers face. However, if one guy dents and another guy spills, then we have a problem. Everyone has to be in sync at the same time, and the Noles were simply not executing at a high level. The defensive end (54) closes the space for the run correctly, and then he kind of tries to both box and dent the puller, and ends up doing neither. The linebacker (number 9) comes down and dents the tight end, but because the end gets washed out like faded jeans, there’s nobody in the gap, and the back runs for six yards. I’ll take that every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

Even when the Noles tried to bring a safety down early in a blitz to defend the counter, the way they went about it at the second level was poor, leading to big plays. Defending the run is a team sport, everyone has to be in order and Florida State’s second level was the trombone that was too flat. This was the first play of the second half, going for 36 yards on the same GH (Guard/H-back) counter that beat their butts in the first half. If it ain’t broke, don’t try and fix it.

You can see the defensive end (No. 11) do a great job of discarding his down block, and is there to potentially make a play. However, because the safety doesn’t give up his outside arm, the Noles are going to have to box this at linebacker. However, the linebacker dents instead and the highway opens.

Even Georgia Tech QB Haynes King was getting involved in the run game, and when he was involved motion became so much more important. The Yellow Jackets start off in empty, with four receivers lined up to the right and one all the way out to the left. The tight end goes in motion, but the linebacker to that side can’t leave with him, because the Seminoles wanted to keep the numbers advantage to that side. A fair notion, especially with all the RPOs offenses are bringing to the table. So, now the Seminoles have five players in the box, with six people blocking for Georgia Tech.

I was never good at math, but I know six is greater than five. This means that one of the safeties has to be brought down off the roof to make a play, and he comes down late to try and get involved. The tight end gets a great block on the lone linebacker to pin him to the inside despite a good dent by the end, and the QB ends up one on one with the safety. King might not have been the greatest passer, but he made some gutsy runs when his number was called.

I wanted to throw this same side counter run by the Yellow Jackets in here too, because it’s a nice way of using escort motion to give the tight end a running start into a block. Again, my AP test score in Physics wasn’t the best, but I do remember force equals mass times acceleration, and an object in motion will stay in motion unless an equal or stronger object stops it. Look at how the linebacker has to stay on the backside of this run and can’t get over, and the other linebacker doesn’t take on the block well enough to cause a problem.

Now the question is how you defend these counter runs if you can’t consistently play them correctly? Well, the answer comes from a very similar spot: the Georgia Tech defense! The Seminoles love running counter, but the Yellow Jackets swarmed the FSU offense to the tune of 98 yards on 31 carries, and did a lot of it through stealing gaps using stunts and effective second level blitzes. Let’s take a look here at one I thought was really good by GT. The Yellow Jackets set their front to the tight end that’s off the line of scrimmage, but watch what happens at the snap.

The defensive tackle to the right steps to the right of the guard, meaning the center ends up stepping and blocking air. This opens the door wide open for a linebacker firing on the snap and blitzing where the center left. This causes a problem for the offense because that’s a LOT of space for the left guard to try and cover against a linebacker who has a running start. So despite being at a 7-6 numbers disadvantage in the box, the Yellow Jacket defense gets a tackle for loss because they steal a gap using effective second level blitzing.

Georgia Tech might not have more talent than the Seminoles, but they went into Dublin and executed their offensive and defensive gameplan so much better than their ranked counterparts.

Run the dang ball.