With the ending of the Geoff Collins era finally becoming official this past week, there is a lot of noise surrounding the program in many different arenas.
Regardless of the vacancies that Georgia Tech needs to fill in the coming months the Jackets still have much of the 2022 season left with eight games remaining on the schedule. Interim Head Coach Brent Key has a lot on his plate with this team trying to get their minds right after losing the guy that recruited a large amount of them to the Flats.
This, along with attempting to correct the silly mistakes that hurt Tech all throughout Collins’ tenure, I would imagine must be first on his list of corrections. Coach Key’s first press conference as interim head coach showed that it was when he said the team had over two hours of special teams meetings, with linebacker coach Jason Semore also being promoted to special teams coordinator in addition to his current position.
Coach Key is known for being a very demanding coach, and one that expects accountability and toughness. With the Collins’ regime being known for lacking these qualities, one can only hope Coach Key focusing on this with these guys can help as this season continues to unfold.
Slot receiver Nate McCollum’s hustle play last week against UCF showed us one thing, and it is that despite being out-coached often the Yellow Jackets are still playing hard with a desire to win.
Here are the three things that I want to see from Tech throughout the rest of the season, as Coach Key is fighting for any chance to be considered as the guy moving forward to lead this program.
1. A physical mindset, showing the “edge” that Collins was alluding to
Collins' biggest talking point heading into this season was the “edge” that his players were playing with given that they are tired of losing. In my mind, an “edge” would mean a nasty, physical team that doesn’t quit and fights hard even when overmatched showing the chip on their shoulder. We have obviously not seen that much so far this season aside from a few quarters spread throughout three P5 games with last week being the closest to it.
Tech fans and alum alike deserve to watch a downright mean, physical unit that has an o-line putting people’s faces in the dirt after a pancake (within reason of course), ball carriers putting their shoulders down while fighting for extra yards no matter what, and a defense that is playing with their hair on fire every snap. A team that prides itself on punching its opponent in the mouth on a consistent basis whenever the opportunity arises.
Coach Key is hoping to bring that out of this Tech team ahead of an expected physical matchup against Pitt this weekend.
“Pitt is a physical football team, and they pride themselves on that. All five starters on the o-line are back from last year, they are lining up and playing Pitt football,” he said of Pitt. “They wanna run the ball, and throw when needed, and when they do, they are very effective due to their ability to run the football. Overall, all three facets of the game we have to understand what type of game we are going into. It's going to be on the road, eight o'clock at night, [and] I would imagine there is going to be a little chill in the air like there was today. We’ve gotta go up there and strap them up tight, lace them up tight and play a physical game.”
2. Coaches setting players up to make something happen and playing to win instead of playing not to lose too badly, especially with clock management decisions.
Several times in this season alone we saw Collins run out the clock usually at the end of a half, trying to keep something bad from happening, and in turn, he may have left valuable points on the field each time he did that. In the Clemson game, it was a little more understandable given the way their defense was playing; however, it was much more obvious in the UCF game at the end of the first half. Playing scared shows the amount of faith one has in his players, despite claims that the faith was there, and this goes for not only the end of half situations mentioned above.
Coach Key believes this is essential to change if there is any chance of a potential turnaround for the Yellow Jackets. He also stated in an answer to a different question that he will have someone helping him make clock-management decisions.
“I talked to the team today and told them there is a big difference in this game between not wanting to lose and wanting to win. That’s a big difference, and as a player when you're sitting back not wanting to lose a game, you’re not free to make plays,” he said. “We’re sitting back waiting for something to happen, you see it on the sideline in games. It's not just the players, it’s coaches as well. People are waiting for things to happen, and they’re waiting for bad things to happen, for good things to happen. We need to go out and make things happen, and we have to empower the players during the week and during practice that you’re free to go out and make things happen.”
3. True accountability, with guys pulled for similar mistakes being made week in and week out
Guys are going to make mistakes, and at the end of the day we are all human so nobody is perfect. Also, in dealing with mostly 18–22-year-old young men you typically see more.
With that said, a theme of the Collins’ era was guys being coddled, and often not being pulled out of the game after making the same head-scratching mistakes that you would see from week to week. These kinds of mistakes are understandable at first, but the biggest part of being coachable is being able to learn from it and apply corrections from there.
This all goes back to accountability, and players must have a sense of fear that they may have to sit for not doing their job and playing fast. Ultimately, like wide receiver Malachi Carter said last week before the UCF game in which he caught Tech’s only touchdown of the day, “One would be surprised at how much even one person not doing their job can affect an entire play.”
Coach Key hopes that the Jackets will respond to the changes he has made in their day-to-day operations to right the ship in this regard.
“We have to get to work. Players respond to the organization that is in front of them. Players respond to discipline that is given to them, and we have to make sure that our players are put in a position every Saturday to win football games. That is the easy thing to say. Ok well, you’re only as good on Saturday as you are on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday whether it be the detail you have in practice, the discipline you have in practice,” he said. “For us as coaches to be able to demand those things from the players. To be able to clean up a few things that have plagued us from the first four games that didn’t happen once, didn’t happen twice, but have happened over and over. To fix those things as a staff, to be able to now give that to the kids [for them] to do the best job they can on Saturday.”
Wrapping up and focusing on what is next, these three things along with just moving on and forward in general will be huge. There have typically been two responses to mid-season firings in the past. One of those is giving up on the season and just holding on by a thread until it’s over, and the other is responding well to a change in leadership with a focus on fixing the problems that were previously hurting the team.
Which one will the Yellow Jackets show at Acrisure Stadium at 8 p.m. on Saturday night and throughout the rest of the season? It is exciting to know an answer to that question will be coming soon starting with Tech’s trip up to Pittsburgh this weekend.
