Georgia Tech football prepping for another marquee matchup in season opener

For the third season in a row — a timeline that encompasses Brent Key’s tenure as the coach of his alma mater — Georgia Tech is continuing a habit of opening the season with a marquee matchup.

In 2023, the Yellow Jackets faced ACC foe Louisville at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. In 2024, they traveled to play No. 10-ranked Florida State in Dublin, Ireland. On Friday, they’ll run out of the tunnel onto Folsom Field to play Colorado in front of a sold-out crowd for a game televised by ESPN.

“I love it,” Key said of the season’s first challenge. “I love opening up with an opponent like this. The opportunity to go on the road, it really dials you in and locks you in. We know the sense of urgency as coaches that it takes. Now that sense of urgency is with the kids and the players and really puts it at a premium.”

This is the program’s first true road game to start a season since 2020 and its first true season-opening road game against a non-ACC opponent since playing at Notre Dame in 2007.

Tech is 1-1 in season openers under Key, and last season’s victory over FSU broke a three-game losing streak in season-openers for the program. Winning a second consecutive opener is going to prove difficult because Colorado is a tough draw, a team that won nine games in 2024 and was in the race to make the Big 12 championship game until the last weekend of the regular season.

Yes, the Buffaloes lost quarterback Shedeur Sanders and wide receiver/cornerback Travis Hunter (the 2024 Heisman Trophy winner from Collins Hill High School) to the NFL, but coach Deion Sanders, who is starting his third season as coach of the Buffaloes, appears to have the program on solid footing.

Sanders’ third team is littered with high-ranking transfers up and down in the roster and in and out of the potential depth chart. Which means, for at least a possession or two, the Tech coaching staff will have to adapt to what it sees in front of it.

“You’re always preparing for the unknowns,” Key said. “It goes back to what we do and what we do best and becoming really good at that. There’s times in the game where they could come out with a different offense or different defense or different structure or whatever. We gotta have our base calls, whether it’s two calls, three calls, that we know we can adjust to anything.”

Key added the biggest thing that stood out to him about Colorado’s roster was the number of seniors (close to 40). Also, the Buffaloes list seven offensive linemen at more than 340 pounds.

Those offensive linemen will be blocking for quarterbacks Kaidon Salter or Julian Lewis.

Salter enrolled at Tennessee in 2021 before transferring to Liberty, where he played four seasons, threw for nearly 6,000 yards and rushed for 2,063 yards while totaling 77 touchdowns. Lewis was a five-star recruit in the 2025 class out of Carrollton High School and threw for 11,010 yards during his prep career.

“You go into game like this, you expect both of ‘em to be out there and playing,” Key said. “But at the end of the day, you gotta be able to line up and stop the run and defend the explosives and be able to get pressure and get a hand on the football.”

Under the direction of defensive coordinator Robert Livingston, last season Colorado ranked 40th nationally in passing yards allowed per game (200.5), 43rd in scoring defense (231 points per game), 50th in total defense (351.9 ypg) and 71st in rushing defense (151.4 ypg). Colorado had the Big 12’s best red-zone defense in 2024 and forced 27 takeaways.

Those statistics mean little considering the amount of new faces on the Colorado roster, but defensive backs DJ McKinney (62 tackles, 3 interceptions) and Carter Stoutmire (43 tackles) and defensive ends Arden Walker (33 tackles, 4.5 sacks) and Keaten Wade (3.5 sacks) returned for the 2025 season.

“I see they’re fast, they’re physical, they’re like gnats, they’re energy bugs, always going, they don’t really have any quit,” Tech quarterback Haynes King said of the Buffaloes defense. “So we’re gonna have to play through the whistle going into this game, which is what we’re supposed to do anyway.”

Outside the lines, Tech also will be battling a crowd of more than 50,000 fans expected to be at a fever pitch inside a stadium that sits at 5,360 feet above sea level. Colorado is asking their fans to create a striped visual with sections of fans alternating between white and black apparel.