First Half of 2008

As a Sophomore in 2008, Nesbitt emerged as the starting quarterback for Georgia Tech coming out of Spring Practice.  The Georgia Tech Spring Football Game featured numerous offensive turnovers and missed assignments leaving many Georgia Tech fans to wonder about how quickly Nesbitt & his teammates would grasp the new offense.

Josh would eventually flourish under the new spread option system.   But it wasn’t without plenty of “on the job” learning.  Remember that he was recruited as traditional Pro-Set quarterback under previous Head Coach Chan Gailey.

Heading into the hot August practice schedule, Paul Johnson was still implementing large portions of his spread option attack.  Much of which fell on the shoulders of one Josh Nesbitt.

Opening the 2008 campaign with a blowout win at home over 1-AA Jacksonville State on the Thursday night game before Labor Day weekend, the Jackets ran wild in Johnson’s coaching debut.  Tech gained 349 yards on the ground (484 yards of total offense) in the season opener.  Nesbitt had 73 yards of rushing, 87 yards of passing, and 2 rushing touchdowns in his debut as a starting quarterback.

Here is Josh’s first ever rushing touchdown from that game:

Jacksonville State Coach Jack Crowe noted the difficulty in defending the Triple Option after the loss in Atlanta. “There’s just too many issues with this offense for people to deal with it. We had two and a half weeks to deal with it. The rest of these folks will get two days. Good luck ACC.”

Mr. Nesbitt Goes To Atlanta

Before we review Josh Nesbitt’s performance during the recently completed 2009 Georgia Tech regular season,  let’s take a look back at how Josh Nesbitt arrived on campus and how he performed during his Freshman season for the Yellow Jackets.

Coming out of high school, Josh Nesbitt was a two-time All-State selection out of Greene County (GA).  A four star quarterback, he was rated as the No. 4 overall prospect in the state of Georgia by Scout.com and the No. 9 dual-threat QB in the country by Rivals.com.  Josh obviously had plenty of running ability, but threw for over 4,000 yards in high school.

He had offers from many top schools in the South including Auburn, Florida State, and Georgia, but decided to stay close to home and committed to Georgia Tech in September of 2006.  Nesbitt would help comprise one of the mostly highly decorated recruiting classes in Georgia Tech football history, alongside running backs Jon Dwyer and Roddy Jones.

Take a look at Nesbitt in high school:

Welcome to JoshForHeisman.com!

JoshForHeisman.com is a new blog dedicated to promote the 2010 Heisman Trophy candidacy of Josh Nesbitt, the fantastic Yellow Jackets Triple Option quarterback from Greene County, Georgia.

Josh Nesbitt led the Yellow Jackets to their first outright ACC championship since 1990 and their first Orange Bowl bid since 1967. Under his direction, the Tech offense averaged over 35 points a game and gained an impressive 307 yards per game on the ground.

Josh helped lead the 11-2 Jackets to 2nd half comeback wins versus Clemson, Wake Forest, Florida State, and Clemson again in the 2009 ACC Championship game. He was the heart and soul of the squad, gaining yards in the fourth quarter of games when the Jackets were behind and the defenses were all keying on him.

As Georgia Tech gets ready to conclude the 2009 season at the Orange Bowl versus Iowa, lets take a moment look back at Josh’s numbers, year to date: