Georgia Tech opens preseason with afternoon practice
Exactly one month from the start of the season, Georgia Tech began its preseason practice on Rose Bowl Field and the Brock Indoor Practice Facility on Tuesday, braving a heat index of more than 100 degrees for two hours.
The Yellow Jackets worked out in helmets, shirts and shorts as they took baby steps toward facing Colorado on Aug. 29 in Boulder, Colorado. Tech coach Brent Key, starting his third season in charge of his alma mater, took it all in before telling his squad afterward his expectations for them in the days and weeks ahead.
“We have a chance to have a good football team, but there’s no shortcuts.” Key said. “Like I told the team afterward, there’s a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things and there’s no in-between here. Everybody’s held accountable to that, everybody’s held to that same expectation, that same standard, whatever you want to call it. That’s my job to make sure they’re held to that. We’re not slacking off at all. We gotta get the most out of everybody out there every opportunity we get.”
Key has coached a pair of 7-6 teams and won a bowl game in his first two full seasons with the Jackets. This 2025 team appears, on paper, to have a legitimate shot at besting that sort of record given its returning talent, increased depth and young talent.
But the former Tech offensive lineman, as he has all offseason, cautioned against anyone buying into the external expectations for his team.
“They’re high. They’re very high,” Key said of internal expectations vs. the external ones. “No matter what the external expectations are, they should never be higher than what your external expectations are of yourself.”
Key also outlined his goals for his team as they relate to the next month of preseason practice:
- Developing toughness: “The mental toughness and the physical toughness that goes into being the type of team that we wanna be.”
- Establishing a core foundation of discipline: “Really, the 22 hours that you’re not on the field during training camp is when discipline really matters the most. How are you taking care of your body? How are you hydrating? How are you getting your rest? How you’re studying your playbook, all those things.”
- Fundamentals: “I wanna make sure all throughout practice that the individuals carry over into the group periods and the group periods carry over into the team periods. A month from now we’ll carrying those over into games. We wanna have strong fundamentals and let that be one of the things that separates us from other football teams.”
- Coming together as a team: “That’s players, that’s coaches, staff members, equipment managers, trainers, video — it doesn’t matter. We gotta come together as a team and everybody understand their role in the program and everybody has to understand how important their individual role is in the program.”
- Trust: “Players understand why coaches demand it be done a certain way. Coaches understand why I’m on them demanding it be done a certain way. There’s gotta be a trust factor there. Trust is built over a course of time, it’s built with relationships more so than time on the field and you gotta have those. They’ve gotta trust us that we’ve got their best interest and we’re gonna put them in the best position to be able to have success during the season.”
- Conditioning: “We wanna be the best conditioned team on the field every game we play. That’s not just your cardiovascular, not just your physical shape you’re in, but also the best mentally conditioned team of any team that we play all year.”
The Jackets are scheduled to return to the practice fields at 2 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week. The program will hold its First Saturday on The Flats at 11 a.m. Saturday at Bobby Dodd Stadium.
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