Game slowing down for Tech’s Johnson

BLACKSBURG — In high school, Jake Johnson basically had one responsibility on the football field — find the ball and tackle the person with it.

Things got much more complicated when he made his way to Virginia Tech.

Sure, Bud Foster’s defensive schemes all come down to a simple idea — what he and the players call “flying to the ball” — but it’s a controlled chaos that depends greatly on every player knowing his assignments and carrying them out.

Johnson, a sophomore linebacker for the fourth-ranked Hokies, had to learn to harness his recklessness on the field, and though he experienced some growing pains early this season, his first as a starter, things are now slowing down for him.

“It was hard at first, especially at the beginning of the year, because I was still getting a feel for the defense, but now I know even if something is going on (on the other side of the field), I know I have to (carry out) my assignment because there’s 10 other guys on the field that are going to do their job,” said Johnson, who is third on the team with 42 tackles.

The 6-foot-1, 231-pound Johnson said his focus drifted at times during games and practice earlier this season. It is no miracle then that his play has improved as he’s stayed zeroed in.

“I don’t know if I was as focused as much as I was in other games. I don’t know if I practiced like I should have during the week, but now I know what I have to do to play like I did the past few weeks,” Johnson said.

“(I need to) focus on every play during practice, pretend that the scout team is the other team and go hard against them, because it’s going to make it a lot easier in an actual game.”

Oddly enough, the emergence of redshirt freshman linebacker Lyndell Gibson may have also helped Johnson. Young players need competition to make them better, and that’s what Gibson has provided for Johnson.

Moreover, fatigue may have been an early problem for Johnson, who went from playing a few special teams snaps a game as a freshman to playing more than 55 snaps in each of his first three games as a starter, including 86 against Alabama and 72 against Nebraska.

Foster is confident that he can now plug Gibson in at any time to give Johnson a breather.

“(Johnson) was kind of leveling off and maybe playing too much, from my standpoint, as a young kid,” Foster said.

“If I could rotate those guys and be productive, like we do with our defensive line, that would be a big plus for our football team.”

If Saturday’s performance against Boston College was any indication, the Hokies’ young linebackers will be just fine.

“I thought they played their best game (against BC),” Foster said. “They played fundamentally sound, played square, let the game come to them instead of sometimes being a little spastic out there, a little out of control.”

Johnson has steadily improved in that regard. He’ll need to continue that and focus on fundamentals against Georgia Tech’s option offense, which uses an assortment of pitches, runs and misdirection plays.

But as long as he sticks to his assignments, there should be plenty of opportunities to run to the ball and make plays.

“I like to hit and blow something up,” Johnson said, “so yeah, I think this could be my type of game.”