BC Week, Volume 9 (Holy Offense! edition) ...

Sorry, Stinespring haters. You’re stuck with him. And even the biggest Bryan bashers can’t complain about that ... if the last three games are any indication of the new Stineyball.

Tech hung 370 on No. 9 Miami, most of it in the first half of a blowout, in the pouring rain. Then 477 on Duke, most of it through the air (a surprise) when the Devils showed they were hell-bent on stopping the run. And today, 441 yards (again, mostly in the first half of a 48-14 rout of the Eagles, which could’ve been much, much worse) with a pretty balanced attack.

The Hokies have three 400-plus games this season after having only six combined the previous three seasons. Tech is averaging 387 yards per game so far after averaging 303 last year, 330 in 2007 and 295 in 2006.

Offensive coordinator Bryan Stinespring is suddenly putting it all together in a big, big way. This bodes very well for the Hokies, especially if Bud Foster’s defense continues to play as it did Saturday ... when Tech allowed BC an average of five INCHES per play in the first half.

What more is there to say? With a little let-down on the road against Duke sandwiched in between, the Hokies have come up huge in wins over Miami and BC. In both games, they’ve looked like kings of the ACC and legit national title contenders.

QB Tyrod Taylor, by the way, is playing lights-out. He isn’t throwing much, but when he is, it’s highly effective. That’s 8 TD and 1 INT for him so far. These receivers (Coale and Boykin, I mean) are really breaking out.

And, no, that Heisman talk about RB Ryan Williams was NOT overstated. He bounced back from an average game against Duke with a monster game against the Eagles. Williams touched the ball 19 times on offense for 182 yards and a touchdown. He had runs of 11, 13, 16, 25, 29 and 31. Two of them were crazy video-game-type stuff. He also caught a 23-yard pass.

That’s all I need to say. Let’s turn it over to everybody’s favorite offensive coordinator (and company) ...

OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR BRYAN STINESPRING

ON WHETHER HE WAS GOING FOR THE JUGULAR AFTER THE BC PUNT, WITH A SHORT FIELD, UP 17-0 AND THEY THROW THE 41-YARD TD: “We talked about it all week and again in our keys to success yesterday with the players. We talked about setting a tempo, being on the attack, being aggressive throwing the ball and running the ball. We were going to attack. We saw kind of how they were lining up a couple different times and we talked about it in between a series. We got the ball in good field position. We were thinking, ‘Let’s take that shot.’ We dialed it up and the offensive line did a good job picking up the blitz. Tyrod did a great job of reading it out. We were going to go for the home run if we could.”

ON THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LAST YEAR’S OFFENSE AND THIS ONE: “In a word, confidence. Confidence just among each other. Confidence for the quarterback with the receivers, the receivers with the quarterback. Confidence in your offensive line. There’s nothing quite like that. We talk about talent; We talk about Xs and Os. But there’s a little bit of a confidence factor that any team is looking to have. I think it shows up on the field, that they’re playing with confidence in what they’re being asked to do. They’re not shying away from it. They’re attacking with it.”

ON WHETHER HE HAS DONE ANYTHING, PERSONALLY, DIFFERENT: “When you talk about confidence, it’s coaches and players. You have to have the confidence if you’re going to play-action pass and drop back and hold the ball for a while, you’ve got to have confidence in what you’re asking your players to do. When we say confidence in each other, I don’t limit it to the players’ confidence. It’s ‘we.’ It’s ‘us.’ It’s all of us. When you have a little bit of confidence in the abilities of what you’re asking your players to do, then you can do a little bit more. We’re doing a little bit more ... dialing up things in different situations. And it’s paying off for us. That’s a great thing to see.”

DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR BUD FOSTER

ON WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE DEFENSE: “The one thing we’ve got to do is we’ve got to go on the road and be a good football team, too. We can’t have any outside factors be a distraction. That’s part of why it’s so tough on the road sometimes. That’s where we’ve got to be better. And one thing this next offense will do is force you to play great assignment football. That’s one thing, though, we’ve built in from Day 1 with our scheme. We’re always, ‘Who’s got dive? Who’s got quarterback? Who’s got pitch?’ We’re with that in the base defense from Day 1, whether you’re running a wishbone or just I-backs or decide plays. That’s something where we’re always – I hope – a sound group from an assignment-football standpoint.”

ON SIMULATING GEORGIA TECH’S OFFENSE IN PRACTICE: “It’s hard to simulate the speed that they can run it with. You can get the reads and all that stuff, but getting the speed, that’s the hard part. You’ve got to catch up to it.”

ON SEEING THE JACKETS’ OPTION OFFENSE FOR A SECOND STRAIGHT SEASON: “Playing them over and over again it gives you maybe an advantage. Well, I wouldn’t say an advantage, because you still have to execute, but at least you’re more prepared mentally for what you’re going to see. It’s hard to simulate that, but at least you’ve been through it before and you know what the tempo’s going to be like.”

ON THE FIRST HALF TODAY BEING THE BEST HIS DEFENSE HAS PLAYED SINCE ... “I don’t know. I don’t. It was outstanding. The kids did a great job. I think they were 1 for 13 on third downs and they couldn’t run the ball. We did a great job in the passing game, had a big pick for a touchdown. It was just a complete football team effort. We ran the ball well, threw the ball well, kicked the ball well and played great defense. It was just one of those days that we were focused and ready to play. And it’s always great to be at home. It’s just something we’ve got to continue to build on. It shows – and that’s where I’m going to challenge our kids – we can do it every time. We can’t do it every other game, if we want to reach the goals we want.”

ON SENSING A LET-DOWN LAST WEEK AND PRACTICE AND WHETHER HE SAW MORE FOCUS THIS WEEK: “Yeah, I think so. But at the same time, I want to make them know that the things that have gone on here will not go on here. It’s their responsibility to live up to it. The kids responded to the challenge. I challenged: We need a leader. We’ve got good seniors, and some of those guys are not the most-vocal guys. But Nekos Brown stepped up big and Jason Worilds stepped up big. They’re going to listen to the guys that are your playmakers, but our kids as a group really bought into, ‘Hey, we can all play better.’ The young kids, they think they’re playing hard, but they’re not. Not as hard as what we’re accustomed to.”

RB RYAN WILLIAMS

ON SOMEONE FROM THE BEHIND THE CURTAIN YELLING OUT, ‘DANGELO WILLIAMS’ WHEN FRANK BEAMER WAS ASKED WHO HE REMINDS HIM OF: (It was CB Rashad Carmichael.) “I would’ve said Walter Payton.”

ON WHETHER HE WAS LOOKING TO BREAK OUT THIS WEEK AFTER A SO-SO GAME AGAINST DUKE: “I guess you can say that. I come out with the same mentality every game. But all the credit goes to the offensive line, the receivers and everyone who was blocking down the field. I mean, the first long run I had, Kenny Jefferson was right there with me. I was following him for at least 10, 15 yards down the field. So that’s props to everybody who blocked and to Coach Stiney for calling a great offensive game. We had outside runs and inside runs, great passing plays called. And we just executed every play, from the offensive line to the skill players. So I guess that’s what really got us going.”

ON WHETHER THERE WAS EXTRA FIRE PLAYING BC, HIS OTHER FINALIST IN RECRUITING: “It felt good playing against them, because I know a lot of those guys. I didn’t know No. 34 (LB Mike McLaughlin), but I really wanted to play against him really bad because seeing him on film, he’s everywhere. No. 9, the cornerback (DeLeon Gause), he was actually my host. But no chip (on his shoulder) at all. I was just ready to play.”

ON HIS CUT-BACK RUN ACROSS THE FIELD FOR 29 YARDS: “Coach Hite always says when we have the ball in our hands, he’s never going to coach us. So my thing is, as soon as I’m getting the ball, I scan the field – from left to right – and it doesn’t really matter where the play is designed to go. I’m just scanning the whole field looking for a hole. On that particular play, I saw No. 34, he met me at the line of scrimmage. As soon as he hit me, I looked to the left and I saw nothing but green. So I just tried to break the tackle best I can, get to the green and run to daylight.”

CB RASHAD CARMICHAEL

ON HIS INTERCEPTION FOR A TOUCHDOWN: “Coach (Torrian) Gray teaches us to read the quarterback. I read the quarterback. I just thought it was going to be a quick throw, and it was a quick throw. He was looking over there for a while. At the beginning, I was about 10 yards out and I wasn’t expecting him to throw the ball. There was pretty good pressure off the edge and there was just enough time for me to make a play.”

ON WHETHER HE’S PLAYING WITH MORE CONFIDENCE: “The game is coming to me a little bit more. This is only my fifth or sixth start, and I feel like I am getting into the groove. I just come out and try to match Nekos (Brown) and Jason (Worilds) and (Kam) Chancellor. As long as we are on the same page, everything is going smooth.”

ON THE TEAM PLAYING MORE LIKE THE NO. 5 TEAM IN THE COUNTRY: “It doesn’t matter if we’re No. 5 or No. 500. Coach Foster, he teaches us to come out and fight every play. We have a lot of pride and a lot of tradition here. It didn’t matter what we were ranked. Honestly, we don’t look at that. We don’t hear anything about it. We’re going to try to do the same thing each and every week.”

ON HOW MUCH NICER THE MONDAY MORNING MEETING WITH D-COORDINATOR BUD FOSTER WILL BE: “I think Monday morning will be nicer, but Monday afternoon, it’s going to be the same Coach Foster. We’re still going to go through the same drills, because that was last week. We’ve got to get ready and, like he says, put on our big-boy pads for Georgia Tech.”

ON WHAT THAT EXPRESSION MEANS: “Especially with that offense Georgia Tech runs, we know we’ve got to come up and make tackles. We can’t have missed tackles next week. So it’s your big-boy pads. You’ve got to come up hitting.”

ON WHETHER THE EVER-CRITICAL FOSTER HAD ANYTHING BAD TO SAY AT HALFTIME, WHEN BC HAD JUST THREE YARDS OF OFFENSE: “Three too many. Three too many.”

QB TYROD TAYLOR

ON WHETHER IT FELT LIKE HE HAD A CHANCE FOR KNOCKOUT BLOW WHEN STINESPRING CALLED THE PLAY-ACTION DEEP BALL FOLLOWING A BC PUNT, WITH TECH UP 17-0: “Yes. That was one of the moments. I figured he was going to call something for us to score quick. He did that. As soon as I saw the coverage, my eyes lit up. I knew it was going to be a big play, and Jarrett made a great catch.”

ON WHETHER HE SEES STINESPRING’S CONFIDENCE GROWING: “I think he believes we have a lot of playmakers on offense, and we do. We just have to execute those plays. He’s putting us in great situations. It’s our job to take advantage of those situations.”

ON HOW MUCH THE OFFENSE IS ENJOYING THIS RUN: “It builds confidence for us to go out there and prove people wrong. I love being in those situations. I’m sure a lot of guys on the team enjoy that, when you can prove somebody wrong.”

ON SOME OF RYAN WILLIAMS’ CRAZY RUNS: “He’s out there playing like he’s in high school. He’s out there having fun. He’s fast enough and strong enough to do the things he does, and I don’t have a problem with it. I’m sure none of the coaches do either.”

ON HIS NEW HAIRSTYLE: “I just went to the barber and said, ‘Let me get a mohawk.’ ”

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