The Chessmaster speaks

When Al Groh arrived at Georgia Tech a couple years ago, we heard rumblings that it didn't exactly help team chemistry.

It's usually beneficial to have a good cop/bad cop thing going on your staff, so players have someone they feel like they can relate to. It's more of a bad cop/bad cop thing going at Tech, with the two chief figureheads sporting smile-per-year averages of somewhere between 3-4 (including Christmas and birthdays).

You know Middle Tennessee coach Rick Stockstill had to take some special glee in not only waxing a BCS school last week, but waxing Groh. Stockstill was an assistant at Clemson when Groh was doing well enough at Virginia that he felt smug enough to say "I play chess, and everyone else plays checkers." Or something like that.

It hasn't been too hard to read between the lines the last two weeks and determine that Paul Johnson isn't happy with The Chessmaster. After watching Miami roll up 609 yards, Groh was placed in the press box for the Middle Tennessee game in hopes he'd have a better feel for the game.

Groh said this week the view from up top was too "sterile" after his defense went septic by giving up 510 yards (264 rushing) to Middle. So he'll be back on the sidelines this week, presumably. Johnson hasn't exactly rushed to Groh's defense this week, so you have to think some changes after the season are very much a possibility.

Groh met with reporters earlier this week in Atlanta, and thanks to our friends at the Georgia Tech Rivals site we were able to listen in.

A few of the notables:

-- Groh said the Jackets had a great Thursday practice last week two days before the Middle meltdown. Wow. This is the part that has to drive all coaches (not just Groh) crazy. You just never know.

-- Said he might be doing some different things schematically this week, but told reporters it was none of their business.

-- Had some very interesting things to say about going up against an offense like Clemson's that uses up-tempo as a way of life. Said it's becoming such a trend that Georgia Tech devoted considerable time "months ago" to coming up with ways to combat it.

"It's having an impact across the country. If it didn't cause a substantial challenge for the defense, the offense wouldn't be doing it. It's just clock management with a modern-day definition.

"Clock management used to mean: Get the ball, go in the huddle, work the clock, take it down to the end of the clock, use up a lot of time per play per possession. Now clock management is the offense having full control over when the ball is going to be snapped. Are they going to line up in a hurry and snap in a hurry? Are they going to line up in a hurry and wait a prolonged period of time to snap the ball? Whatever the approach is, it's obviously to their advantage. So they've got complete control of that situation. That just adds one more challenge to what defenses around the country are dealing with. And then when the formation is spread across the field, so too are your players. So it creates a lot more one-on-ones than was the case with more two-back formations. You get three- and four-wide receiver formations, not only does it isolate your defenders on the perimeter. But it isolates your run defenders because there's no one you can bring in to help them. There are a lot of new challenges over the last few years we haven't had to deal with."

There's an increasing number of old-school defensive guys, among them Nick Saban, grumbling about the fast-paced stuff and its impact on football. And my guess is the grousing will only increase.

It's never been harder to be a defensive coordinator ... or a Chessmaster.

LW