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Georgia face familar but evolving foe on Georgia Tech's sidelines

Jeremy Johnsonby: Jeremy Johnson12 hours agoJeremyO_Johnson

Georgia and Georgia Tech come with a certain level of familiarity that trickles from the high school ranks. There is a good chunk of players who have seen each other on the high school field, on the 7-on-7 circuit and camp circuits.

The players know each other. This edition of ‘Clean Old Fashioned Hate’ is the third that will feature Buster Faulkner and the familiarity that entails.

Faulkner is Georgia Tech’s offensive coordinator and has been for three years. He was once an offensive assistant for Georgia during the Bulldogs’ back-to-back national championships.

Georgia head coach Kirby Smart has seen Faulkner evolve as a coach and play caller. There are a lot of trap doors and wrinkles in Georgia Tech’s offense.

At its core, the things that Faulkner believes in are similar to the things that Georgia believes in.

“He did an incredible job for us, always innovative, always looking at new ideas, a good teacher, aggressive, and does a great job,” Smart told reporters on Monday. “And the way he does things, and I’ve seen that carry over there. He does a really good job with their offensive unit, utilizes the skill set of the players he has, and looks at things in perspective of touches, who has to get the ball, how do you win, and how do you adjust, but not losing the core values of being able to run the ball and having toughness.”

Georgia is facing an offense that understands their philosophies

Faulkner has a bit of an advantage over a lot of offensive coordinators. His time with Georgia allowed him a peek behind the curtain. Smart acknowledged that as a challenge ahead of Georgia on Friday.

 “Nothing’s comfortable about defending an offense that can hurt you in so many ways,” Smart said. “First of all, Buster does an incredible job, he did here too. He’s a really good football coach. He knows where things are, where all the nuggets are on defense. Buster knows how to attack them. He knows the answers for things that when you do them. I mean, at the end of the day, they got a block, we got a tackle, and somebody’s got to do it better. And that’s a very tough thing when you play them because they stretch you horizontally. They stretch you vertically, stretch you with tempo. They stretch you with numbers counts because of their quarterback. So Buster does an awesome job, and that’s continued this year. So there’s no level of comfort dealing with it. It’s more of a, how do you inspire your players to play harder.”

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