Blake Gideon defense predicated on instincts, simplicity

For new Georgia Tech defensive coordinator Blake Gideon, it’s all about simplification.

“I think coaches are guilty all over the country — myself, I’m the most guilty — of turning guys into robots, so to speak, and we take away some of those natural instincts we recruited the kid off of. They did something before they got to us that was good enough to get ‘em here,” Gideon said Thursday after Tech’s third practice of the preseason.

“We’re fighting to find that happy medium, right, between being the most disciplined team in the universe but also allowing some of that overlap,” he added. “You gotta have some overlap and some guys that are filling in for one another that are playing with their instincts — because they’ve all got it. They need somebody to tell ‘em it’s OK to use it.”

Gideon, in his first season with Tech, was hired in January and charged with continuing the upward trend the Yellow Jackets created with their play in 2024 under Tyler Santucci (now a linebackers coach with the Baltimore Ravens in the NFL). Tech ranked fourth in the ACC in total defense, and sixth in both passing and rushing defense.

The year before, those ranks were 14th, eighth and 14th, respectively.

Thus, Gideon’s mission is to not only to get the Jackets to perform at a level similar to 2024, but to take their performance to a higher benchmark.

“If there’s one word every day, beyond the toughness and beyond the effort and all that good stuff, and focus, we say growth as a unit every day,” Gideon said. “We just wanna get one day better. In order to get one day better you gotta be OK with making mistakes. That’s what practice is for. Let’s just not make the same mistakes twice. Let’s move on to new mistakes every day.”

Gideon certainly has some solid pieces to help make his defense come alive in less than a month, when Tech opens at Colorado.

There’s defensive tackle Jordan van den Berg, linebacker Kyle Efford, cornerback Ahmari Harvey and safety Clayton Powell-Lee to name a few. Then there are transfers Akelo Stone (Mississippi), Ronald Triplette (Texas San Antonio), Brayden Manley (Mercer) and Matthew Alexander (Central Florida) along the defensive front, Melvin Jordan (Oregon State) and Cayman Spaulding (Tennessee Tech) among the linebackers, and Savion Riley (Colorado), Jy Gilmore (Georgia State), Kelvin Hill (Alabama Birmingham), Jon Mitchell (Penn State) and Daiquan White (Eastern Michigan) on the back end.

That group has added depth to a roster already chock-full of returning players and solid recruits.

“It was noticeable the speed on defense, hands on the ball, tight coverage, transition in coverage, guys transitioning to the football. As a team we have to do a much better job of running to the ball,” Yellow Jackets head coach Brent Key said of his early impressions of the defense. “That was a big thing when we made the transition in January, was we wanted to simplify some things for a few spots and have guys that can fly around to the football and get multiple hands on the ball, disrupt the opponent’s offense, get hands on the football, get turnovers, create disruption in the front end. But we are a faster defense for sure.”

At Texas, Gideon coached safeties and was the associate head coach for the Longhorns’ defense for the 2024 season. Now in his first season as a defensive coordinator, his role is to be a “walk around” coach on the practice field, not in charge of any one particular position group but rather instructing and teaching where needed.