Scout.com > College Football News Monday Morning QB - Georgia Tech & Kansas Story URL: http://cfn.scout.com/2/557921.html Matt Zemek CollegeFootballNews.com Nov 29, 2009 Paul Johnson threw the ball late in a game he trailed. Mark Mangino threw the ball late in a game he led. They both got crucified in the press. The Monday Morning Quarterback might not defend both men with equal amounts of vigor, but anyone who criticized both coaches isn't applying the same set of metrics. By Matthew Zemek   Mr. Zemek's e-mail: mzemek@hotmail.com Follow Mr. Zemek's CFN coverage on Twitter: twitter.com/MattZemek_CFN Throwing Poison Darts: The Paul Johnson-Mark Mangino Double Standard Late Saturday night and throughout much of Sunday, few if any voices - in the press or among fans - were raised in defense of Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson or Kansas boss Mark Mangino. You probably know the two in-game narratives surrounding both men (we won't go into Mangino's off-field controversies in Lawrence, Kan.), but let's lay out the numbers just so you're clear: JOHNSON: Georgia Tech, down 30-24 to Georgia and in possession of the ball with 1:53 left in regulation at the UGA 46, threw four straight passes - three of them on long downfield routes - before a 4th and 10 drop from Damaryius Thomas sealed the Yellow Jackets' fate. Tech receivers had a step on Bulldog corners on two of the three downfield passes, but quarterback Josh Nesbitt couldn't make an accurate throw. On the 4th and 10 play, Nesbitt threw a perfect 11-yard ball to Thomas on an out pattern, but the normally dependable pass catcher watched the ball clang off his hands. Johnson came under fire in the Atlanta press for not trusting his running game. MANGINO: Kansas, leading Missouri 39-36 with 2:59 left in Saturday's game at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, took over on its own 3 at a time when Missouri had just one timeout left. The Jayhawks proceeded to throw on first and second downs before quarterback Todd Reesing - on a dropback pass - failed to elude pressure and was dropped on his own goal line for a safety. The defensive score enabled Missouri to get the ball back in good field position and win with a late field goal, 41-39. Two coaches threw the ball in the final minutes, one in the face of a deficit and the other with a lead. Both got hammered in the press. As this commentary will show, there were good reasons to criticize both men - especially Johnson - but it's unfortunate and, moreover, wrong that the two coaches have been equally attacked without any sense of nuance. This week's column will try to inject a proper degree of proportion into the Johnson and Mangino discussions. One could say - in words that the MMQ has used before - that these two situations should be judged on a case by case basis. Indeed, each game and its own ebb-and-flow shape decisions in ways no textbook or theory can adequately match. With that said, it's instructive to try to bundle these scenarios together, because they represent mirror images of each other. A debate about Paul Johnson and Mark Mangino is similar to a comparison of the conservative Jim Tressel and the daring Bill Belichick, conducted two weeks ago in this space. As we dive into the finer points of these issues, let's first acknowledge the clear deficiencies displayed by these two accomplished coaches. Johnson bears more blame than Mangino does, for the reason that his running game represents the core of his team's identity. When Tech took down Georgia Between the Hedges in 2008, the Jackets were able to break off big runs even in daunting down-and-distance situations. The totality with which Johnson pursued the passing game does represent a subpar approach to a defining late-game challenge. The more glaring weakness in Johnson's strategy lay in the fact that Georgia's offense was humming for much of the evening against his defense. If Johnson wanted to maximize his team's chances of winning, he wouldn't have wanted to score too early. (Notice how Charlie Weis of Notre Dame allowed Stanford to score with 59 seconds left in the Irish's 45-38 loss.) There were a number of reasons why one could indeed find fault with Johnson's chess moves. As for Mangino, the only true inadequacy of the KU coach's performance during his team's final drive was the fact that he didn't at least test Missouri's patience. Given that the Tigers had only one timeout, Mangino would have been well served to run on first down, see what he could get on the ground, and force Missouri coach Gary Pinkel to make a choice: "Do I preserve my final timeout or do I preserve 40 seconds of clock time?" Mangino could have forced Pinkel's hand, and it's reasonable to fault the Jayhawk boss for not accomplishing that modest goal. Now that the two coaches' mistakes have been identified, however, what about the merits and strengths of their moves? Johnson, as any alert and aware college football fan knows, has always been an aggressive coach who takes shots downfield with a vertically-oriented passing game. One fundamental metric for evaluating the quality of a coach's play-calling performance is the philosophical consistency of a given approach. If a conservative coach coaches conservatively, you can knock the merits of the larger worldview, but you can't fault a football lifer for sticking to his guns and remaining true to his identity. Yes, Johnson's teams have been run-first machines, but Johnson is also a ruthlessly attack-minded man who isn't afraid to be bold or unconventional. One could say Johnson abandoned his team's personality late in the Georgia game, but on other levels, the head Yellow Jacket remained quite true to himself and his values. The other reason why Johnson's approach had some degree of merit is that, while 1:53 offers plenty of time to cover 46 yards with the running game, Johnson's triple-option offense is not suited to a hurry-up approach. Georgia Tech likes to wear down opponents and lean on them, so while there was time for the Jackets to run the ball near midfield, it is also unlikely that they would have been able to score exclusively with the running game. Moreover, since Tech uses the deep pass much more effectively than the short ball, Johnson felt that it was easiest to pass near midfield; if his offense had gained a first and goal, Tech could have returned to the ground to pound the ball into the end zone. You could jab Johnson for some elements of his thought process, but his strategy had several sound elements that simply aren't even being articulated, let alone appreciated. And what of Mangino's maneuverings against Missouri? Knock him for failing to run on first down and pressure Gary Pinkel, but the overall three-play sequence against the Tigers was extremely sound. Entering that final drive, Kansas had gained 498 passing yards and 52 rushing yards. KU receiver Dezmon Briscoe had caught 14 balls for 242 yards. Gee, what method of offense gave Kansas its best chance of registering at least one first down (to put Mizzou at a severe disadvantage) or two first downs (which would have sealed a win for the Jayhawks)? There's absolutely no debate here. None. What critics of Mangino fail(ed) to understand about this situation was that there were roughly three minutes left in the game, not two. If there had been only two minutes remaining on the Arrowhead clock, a three-run sequence would have been close to a no-brainer. The first run would have been followed by Mizzou's final timeout, leaving roughly 1:55 on the clock. The next two runs would have taken 45 seconds apiece - five seconds for the actual play and 40 for the play clock - and would have thereby left only 25 seconds (30, tops) on the clock for the Tigers. However, this is NOT the situation that Mangino faced. If he ran the ball three times and punted, the Tigers would have gotten the ball back near midfield, and probably in KU territory (the Jayhawks started on their own 3, remember), with a solid 85-90 seconds remaining. Considering the fact that Mizzou-Kansas Border War battles have been supreme shootouts in recent years - with almost no amount of time being too minimal for Chase Daniel, Reesing, or Blaine Gabbert - the act of giving the ball back to Missouri with 85 seconds left was pure folly. Kansas needed to attempt to pry the timeout from Pinkel on first down, but had the Jayhawks gotten stuffed on that hypothetical running play, passes would have been the only acceptable options on second and (if necessary) third down. What this discussion boils down to - for both Johnson and Mangino - is that they made mistakes not on large levels, but in terms of failing to mix at least a little rushing into their pass-happy approaches. Johnson could have given Georgia a pass look and run from it, or used his triple option to set up a specialty pass play. Mangino needed to make his coaching counterpart sweat, only to fall short in that department. Yet, the two men had a lot of reasoning to justify their larger actions, especially Mangino, who was not going to put Mizzou at a severe disadvantage by running the ball three times and then kicking. This column concludes with a pair of bottom-line assessments: 1) If you hated what Paul Johnson did with a rush-first offense against Georgia, you should like what Mark Mangino did with a pass-first offense against Missouri. 2) If you loved what Johnson did - since he tried to make the clock a non-factor on that late drive for Georgia Tech - you would have extra good reason to dog Mangino for not making the clock more of a factor with a late lead. One could also find reasons to applaud both men for being extremely aggressive late in a game. Just about the only approach which is hard to comprehend is a negative attitude toward Johnson and Mangino. Maybe, you might reason, the specifics of each game flow militated against the actions Johnson and Mangino took; that line of argument has credibility in Johnson's case, but definitely not in the Kansas-Missouri game Mangino managed. Critics of the KU coach need to be much more precise in arguing why both of these coaches (not just Paul Johnson) deserve criticism for play calling and strategy after a wacky late-November Saturday. Copyright © Scout.com and CollegeFootballNews.com