ATLANTA — Georgia Tech football coach Brent Key is learning to embrace the challenge after beginning this season with back-to-back losses at home.
The Yellow Jackets opened with a 14-13 loss to Colorado after allowing a go-ahead touchdown drive by the Buffaloes in the final minute at Bobby Dodd Stadium on Sept. 3. Last weekend, it was a 45-24 defeat at the hands of the Tennessee Volunteers, who moved up three spots to No. 15 in the newest AP Top 25 poll.
Still, Key insists he’s less focused on the 0-2 record and more motivated for a 1-0 week as the Yellow Jackets turn their attention to yet another home game. This one is against the Mercer Bears, who compete in NCAA Division I’s lower-tier Football Championship Subdivision and are making the 90-mile trip up Interstate 75 from Macon.
“The identity that you have at the beginning of the season doesn’t mean it’s the identity you’re going to have for the full season,” Key said Tuesday.
That’s something he knows all too well. An 8-0 start last season was Georgia Tech’s best since 1966, but after losing four of the final five games, the narrative soon changed from the Yellow Jackets being a gritty team with attainable playoff hopes to a middle-ground Atlantic Coast Conference squad with a Pop-Tarts Bowl ceiling.
Key and the Yellow Jackets have lost five straight games and six of their past seven dating to last season, but now is not the time to change coaching philosophies, he said — not after leading Georgia Tech to three straight winning seasons.
“Embrace the challenge,” Key said. “Every week’s a challenge. I really look at it like that. Every week’s a challenge. Every season’s a challenge because it’s a new season, it’s a new group of players.”
One of those new players is quarterback Alberto Mendoza. He’s the younger brother of Fernando Mendoza, who won the 2025 Heisman Trophy as Indiana’s quarterback while leading the Hoosiers to a 16-0 season and the College Football Playoff national championship before being selected by the Las Vegas Raiders as the No. 1 pick of this year’s NFL draft.
A new quarterback is an adjustment for Key after having Haynes King behind center the past four years. King was a dynamic runner who threw for 2,951 yards and 14 touchdowns last season while leading the team with 953 rushing yards and an ACC-high 15 touchdown runs.
Following a quarterback the program built its identity around is a tall task, but Key maintains confidence in Mendoza as he finds his footing.
Key knows the on-field product isn’t going to look the same year in and year out, especially with a roster that has 62% turnover. He also knows Georgia Tech football quite well after starting as an offensive lineman for the Yellow Jackets from 1997 to 2000 — and that the opening loss to Colorado wasn’t consistent with it.
“We have a full season in front of us,” he said. “Are people happy since we lost two games? No. … We had a competitive football game, and a game we gave away that we did not play Georgia Tech football in at the end of the day. It can’t be any more black and white than that.”
Mercer is Georgia Tech’s last nonconference opponent before the Yellow Jackets start ACC play at Stanford on Sept. 26, which will require a challenging cross-country trip to California, and Saturday’s game is also their last contest outside of league play until the annual matchup with two-time reigning Southeastern Conference champion Georgia to wrap up the regular season on Thanksgiving weekend.
“You learn from the previous game, whether you win or lose, the mistakes you make, the things you don’t do well, the bad calls, whatever it is,” Key said. “Same with the good things that did take place.
“I live in a week-by-week scenario with that. That’s the mindset that the entire program has to have.”