Former Georgia Tech head football coach Paul Johnson does not have any respect for his successor, Geoff Collins. The former ripped into the latter after one of the worst runs in program history left the Yellow Jackets in an ugly situation.
Johnson, 66, coached in Atlanta from 2008 through 2018. He led Georgia Tech to nine bowl games and three ACC Championships while winning 83 games in 11 years. The Atlantic Coast Conference named him as Coach of the Year in 2008, 2009 and 2014.
And then Johnson retired from college football in 2018. Collins took over.
The Yellow Jackets went 10-28 over three and one third years. They did not record a winning season. They lost to Georgia by a combined 97-7. It was ugly.
As a result, Collins was fired after starting 1-3 in 2022. Brent Key was named as the interim, went 4-4 during the rest of that year, had the interim tagged removed, and went 7-6 with a bowl win last year.
Key and Johnson sandwiched Collins and were able to find success where he was not.
His predecessor was not certainly a fan. Johnson made that clear during a recent appearance on The Bill Shanks Show. He did not hold back!
Well, he wanted to reinvent history a little bit and he kept going back to when Georgia Tech was relevant, this, that, and the other, and I was trying to think back to when they were better than when we were there, I guess maybe the 50s, but if you went back and looked, I kept looking for all the championships they had won and it was like… you know he just distorted everything when he got there, I will just call a spade a spade, I don’t care, I got no respect for the guy, I can say what I want. He went in and distorted everything that was there and acted like we had not won a game and lied about who he inherited, lied about the offensive line, lied about us not going to the high schools in Georgia. He went and told a bunch of whoppers and it came back to get him because there was not much substance there.
— Paul Johnson
Johnson went so far as to say that other ACC coaches were calling him in retirement to laugh at the sate of his former program. That’s bad!
You know what was really amazing?! I probably should not say this, but I will, I have never been one to hold much back, but the opposing coaches in the league would call me and they were laughing. I had one particular coach who called me who had really pounded them at home in Atlanta and he told me, Paul it is a circus and he goes I told my kids after the game in the locker room, he said congratulations, you just beat a team that physically had kicked our ass for the last three years and he goes, I am just not saying that to you. When we got through with those games, he said it was hard for us to play the next week because of the physicality and the way you played. I had another coach who called me late on Saturday night who just beaten them and he said I even lined up in your formation at the end just to stick it in. I think the people who knew, knew.
— Paul Johnson
The outside chatter not only frustrated him but the players (both former and current) as well.
I know I got frustrated with it, he frustrated a lot of the former players who played there. There were kids who had played and won double-digit games and played in Orange Bowls and played in ACC Championship Games and just totally disrespected what they had done and the tradition and the history.
— Paul Johnson
Despite his clear disdain toward Collins, Johnson said that his relationship with the university itself is not tarnished. He roots for the school he once coached for 11 seasons. He wants Key to succeed and believe that the program is in much better hands today than it was when Collins was there.
Johnson had an image of what would happened when he retired, but the success that was at the forefront of his vision simply did not exist in the three years after the formal end of his career.