Hlas column: Ground-based Tech uses bomb with aplomb

DAVIE, Fla. -- He weighs 229 pounds. He spends 90 percent of his time blocking, and touches the ball less than four times a game.

So is Georgia Tech wide receiver Demaryius “Bay-Bay” Thomas a grunt. Oh, no, no, no. He is a game-breaker, someone with freaky-good receiving statistics for a wideout in a triple-option offense that has passed less often this season than all but two FBS teams in the nation.

Of all the fear-inducing some weapons in Paul Johnson's fear-inducing offense, Thomas may be the most lethal. At 6-foot-3 and those 229 pounds, he can't hide on a football field. Yet, he can.

Tech can run the ball on play after play, and often does. But if a defense gets lulled into the ground-game hypnosis, there goes a bomb from quarterback Josh Nesbitt to Thomas.

“I love that,” Nesbitt said Thursday after the Yellow Jackets' practice at Nova Southeastern University, as they prepare to face Iowa in the Jan. 5 Orange Bowl. “I put it up in the air and he'll come down with it.”

Thomas' numbers are crazy given this offense. He is 15th in the nation and first in the Atlantic Coast Conference in receiving yards per game with 88.8, but has no more than half as many catches as any of the top 14 receiving producers.

But he averages a whopping 25.1 yards for his 46 receptions. Nine were good for 50 yards or more.

The football-as-war parallels are overused, but this is an attack that grinds you down with its tanks, then wipes you out with its bombs.

To think that Thomas was ready to check out of Tech when Johnson came from Navy to replace the fired Chan Gailey two years ago.

“I was hearing a lot of stuff about how Coach Johnson ran the ball 90 percent of the time,” Thomas said. “I actually sat down with my parents and thought about transferring. The coach said ‘Just give it a chance.' I stayed and had more catches than my first year.”

Thomas had 46 of the Jackets' 76 receptions this season. In three of his games at Tech, he had all of his team's catches in a game. No one else on the team has more than nine receptions this year.

Defenses know the junior is the bomb, so to speak, but that doesn't mean they defuse him. He had plays of 70 yards or more in each of Tech's last three games, including their ACC title-game win over Clemson.

But the big man does block, too. He has no choice in that offense.

“I actually like it,” Thomas said. “It helps sometimes with my receiving, because they think I'm going to block.”

It's crazy. Thomas is a Georgian, so going to Georgia Tech made sense. Especially since he was going to a program that had developed Calvin Johnson, one of college football's best receivers of the decade, maybe ever.

Johnson's last year at Tech was 2006, when Thomas was a red-shirt. Thomas began asserting himself in games as a second-year freshman, in came the triple-option, and Thomas only got better.

He is a one-man sales pitch for Paul Johnson when it comes to pursuing prep wideouts.

“It's like we tell wide receiver recruits,” Johnson said earlier this season. “People say ‘Hey, you don't want to go to that offense.' If you're a great player, that's a great offense to be in. Can you imagine what Calvin Johnson could have done with one guy on him on play-action? That's really what Bay-Bay has done.”

Whichever Hawkeye defensive back is covering Thomas will surely have it drilled in his head that this is no blocker, no matter how much time he spends doing it.

This is a receiver who must be contained if Iowa is to win this game.