ATLANTA — All of sudden, Georgia Tech seems relevant again in college football.
The Yellow Jackets opened the season with a stunning upset of No. 10 Florida State last weekend in Dublin, Ireland, and now they’re poised to crack The Associated Press Top 25 for the first time since 2015 if they can beat fellow Atlanta program Georgia State in their home opener Saturday night.
Coach Brent Key now finds himself walking a fine line between relishing a triumph that has energized a long-suffering fan base and keeping his team firmly focused on what’s ahead.
“That was a really good win for the Georgia Tech family,” Key, a former Yellow Jackets offensive lineman, said this week. “It was on a stage that allowed Georgia Tech to get a lot of exposure. A lot of people were able to find out things they might not have known about Georgia Tech.
“But that game’s over.”
True enough, but the Yellow Jackets can’t help but savor how far they have come since Key took over four games into the 2022 season.
Georgia Tech hit rock bottom under previous coach Geoff Collins, who talked in hokey slogans such as building a 404 culture — a reference to Atlanta’s area code — but gave little indication he could produce results on the field.
Finally, after winning just 10 of 38 games, Collins was fired along with athletic director Todd Stansbury. Key took over as head coach, going 4-4 the rest of the 2022 campaign to restore a bit of respectability to the program and lead to the removal of the interim label from his title.
Georgia Tech is coming off a 7-6 record in Key’s first full season, going 5-3 in the Atlantic Coast Conference and earning its first bowl appearance since 2018 in the process, and appears set to take another significant step this year after knocking off the Seminoles, the reigning ACC champions.
Key clearly has big goals for his alma mater, raising eyebrows right away when he insisted the Yellow Jackets were capable of competing with their mighty nonconference neighbors right down the road, the top-ranked Georgia Bulldogs of the almighty Southeastern Conference. Those teams face off to close the regular season in late November.
He’s also aware of the pitfalls that come from relishing a massive victory a little too long.
“Any time you create opportunity for yourself like that, you create new challenges,” Key said. “There’s really three phases right now in our growth as a team: learning how not to lose, learning how to win, and now learning how to win consistently.”
Georgia Tech had pockets of success during Paul Johnson’s 11-year coaching tenure, including an ACC title (which was later vacated by NCAA sanctions), three appearances in the league championship game and two trips to the Orange Bowl.
However, Johnson’s option-oriented offense began to look increasingly outdated in today’s college game, and the Yellow Jackets were just 24-25 over his final four seasons before his retirement in December 2018.
In came Collins, a Peach State native who had been a graduate assistant two decades earlier and was Temple’s head coach for two seasons before being hired to head up the Yellow Jackets.
Instead of turning things around, the brash coach took the program into the abyss. His attempts to install a pro-style offense flopped miserably. Silly penalties, repeated mistakes, sideline mixups and a lack of discipline became hallmarks of the Collins era.
Finally, after having four punts blocked in their first four games of the 2022 season, a 1-3 start that included an embarrassing 42-0 home loss to Ole Miss, Collins was sent packing.
Now the outlook is much more promising. After struggling for years to fill 52,000-seat Bobby Dodd Stadium, the school announced Thursday that it has sold out its allotment of nearly 6,000 student season tickets, a sign of rising excitement on the inner-city campus.
Key has eschewed gimmicks to instill a bruising, physical style of play that was apparent in the 24-21 victory over Florida State. After the Seminoles pulled even to make it 21-all in the fourth quarter, Georgia Tech held the ball for the final 6 1/2 minutes to set up Aidan Birr’s 44-yard field goal as the game clock expired last Saturday in Dublin.
Offensive tackle Jordan Williams described it as “sandpaper, just going out there playing physical, fast, tough, really imposing your will. That’s the identity we try to have as an offensive line. We’ve just got to make sure we keep that consistent.”
It helps to have a versatile quarterback like Haynes King, who can beat a defense with his arm or his legs. He completed 11 of 16 passes for 146 yards against Florida State, to go along with 15 carries for 54 yards.
The challenge, of course, is to keep looking forward. Key likes to say a car’s windshield is much bigger than the rearview mirror for a reason.
His players insist they’re taking that message to heart, with running back Jamal Haynes going so far as to delete his social media accounts.
“Like Coach Key says, a win and a loss can both be distractions. So I’m trying to keep the distractions out (of) the way,” Haynes said. “Just blocking out the nonsense.”