Brooks heads into final season with Jackets as a leader in the secondary
Just a couple years ago, LaMiles Brooks was the youngster among the defensive backs group as he got his chance to play a lot of snaps early on in his career. But now, the redshirt-senior is the seasoned veteran back there and the one that the rest of the unit looks to for leadership.
As the Jackets’ safety heads into his final year on The Flats, he said he has enjoyed how preseason camp has gone so far as he enjoys the grind and hard work put in .
"Camp so far has been amazing. Obviously, very tough. One of the tougher points of our season even though the season's just beginning,” said Brooks after a practice last week. “This has probably been one of my most fun camps, the identity we're kind of creating as a team, as units as well. I'm really enjoying that for it to be my last go-around."
Speaking of identities, Brooks said the defensive backs have taken on a clear identity for 2024.
"We have an identity. We're the shark crew so you'll see us throwing the shark fin up,” said Brooks. “That's our identity. We smell blood in the water, and we're hunting anything that's out there."
Brooks is coming off a productive, yet trying, year in 2023 as he battled through various injuries but still managed to play and contributed in all 13 games. He finished the season with 67 total tackles, seven passes defended and one interception. It wasn’t quite individual production he had during his big redshirt-sophomore season in 2022, but now back at full health, he looks to put a stamp on his career with a huge final season for Georgia Tech.
Defensive backs coach Cory Peoples, who is in his first year with Georgia Tech, said Brooks has paired with Clayton Powell-Lee to become great leaders among the position group.
"(Clayton Powell-Lee) is more of a leader, even from the spring to now. He talks more. The guys listen to him. He's played a lot of football. You take him, started a bunch of games last year. You take LaMiles. Those guys have a lot of experience so you can see the growth,” said Peoples. “LaMiles, from what I heard, was a big-time leader last year, and you can see the growth from CP as well, coming on leading the guys. And the guys are following behind them because they've played a lot of football."
Brooks said he has seen a lot of growth from Powell-Lee as well while Taye Seymore has become more consistent and confident this preseason after seeing his first significant action on the field in 2023.
"As far as what I've seen the most, out of Clayton, I'd probably say leadership. His leadership has stepped up. He's considered one of the older guys now so he's kind of looked at sort of like how me and Jay King were last year. So that's the biggest thing I've seen from Clayton,” said Brooks. “As far as Taye, just the confidence that he has about himself. He knows he's in a good spot now. He fully understands the defense. He knows that he can come to me and Clayton and ask us anything that he needs. So those are the biggest things I've seen."
A crucial part of secondary play, especially with the way the passing game has progressed in recent years in college football, is communication. Brooks said that is a clear area where the defensive backs group has improved, and new defensive coordinator Tyler Santucci has helped a lot with that.
"We've come very far (with communication),” said Brooks. “What I'd say we've done to keep up with that is pre-snap, we like to talk before a play starts, kind of see what the formation is giving us and see all the variables. See who can move, who can do what, what the final picture ends up looking like. So our communication has become elite. We talk pre-snap, we talk during the play and then we talk post-play."
"(Coach Santucci) kind of just makes things easier, whether that be the language we use now, the way we go about communicating before drives starts,” added Brooks. “We kind of know what to expect if a certain situation arises. Like I said, he's good at predicting situations and when a situation arises, we've already talked about what we could possibly go to and/or what we're going to do when that situation does arrive. So having that in the back of our head allows us to operate quicker."
Brooks and the Jackets are now less than two weeks away from opening the season as they prepare to take on Florida State in the Aer Lingus College Football Classic in Dublin, Ireland on Aug. 24 at noon. Brooks, a Florida native whose uncle played on the defensive line for the Seminoles in the 1990s, said he’s going into the game with a business-like approach rather than making it feel much different than others.
"This will be my third time playing Florida State, once in 2020 and then 2022 as well,” said Brooks. “I'm a fifth-year now, and the way I look at it is as just another game. Try not to make any game bigger than what it needs to be."
He added that he hasn’t heard much from his uncle yet about the contest but that might change as the game gets closer.
"Not this past month. It will probably be closer to the game, maybe game week or the day before the game,” Brooks said with a smile.