Georgia Tech’s high aspirations aren’t necessarily a plus for Yellow Jackets

Two competing realities exist regarding Georgia Tech’s impending season, which opens Friday at the altitude of Colorado’s Folsom Field.

First, the Yellow Jackets’ ceiling probably extends higher than any in the past decade.

Second, historically, Tech has not borne the weight of expectations very well.

“They should be good,” former Tech captain and ESPN analyst Roddy Jones told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “But being more familiar than most, but not as familiar as some, with the history of Tech when there’s expectations, I’ve tempered my expectations a little bit.”

In the years since Bobby Dodd’s surpassing tenure ended in 1966, Tech’s best teams typically have been surprises.

The 1990 split national champion team was unranked to start the season, as was the 1998 team that shared the ACC title. Of Tech’s three ACC champions, only the 2009 conference title winners — a championship technically vacated, if anyone still cares about what the NCAA’s infractions committee decrees — began the season in the AP Top 25.

On the other hand, Tech has begun a season in the Top 25 eight times in the post-Dodd era, typically ending the season in an embrace with disappointment.

Five times, it ended the season unranked. In four of them, it could do no better than a .500 record. Three teams finished in the Top 25, but only one — the 2009 team of Joshua Nesbitt, Demaryius Thomas, Jonathan Dwyer and Derrick Morgan — finished above its preseason assignment.

And, for good measure, only one (the 1999 team) beat Georgia.

This is interesting (to me, at least): Tech’s winning percentage since Dodd is .520. Its record in those eight seasons when it began in the Top 25 — a barely distinguishable .545.

Perhaps it’s as much a comment on the validity of preseason polls as it is on whatever Tech has done when in one.

A point of obvious fact: While the Jackets did receive votes, Tech is not in the preseason Top 25.

Also strongly worth considering: What any team before the 2025 edition — especially any version that took the field 10 or more years ago — has no bearing on what this one does.

To address point No. 1: The Jackets indeed are not a Top 25 team. Regardless, the point holds that this is a team, buoyed by quarterback Haynes King and running back Jamal Haynes, carrying high aspirations. They’re touted widely as a dark-horse candidate to earn what would be the Jackets’ first spot in the College Football Playoff.

Besides the playmaking duo of King and Haynes, Jones likes the wide receiving group and the offensive line, anchored by guard Keylan Rutledge.

“The questions for me are mostly defensively, and it’s mostly on the defensive line — who steps up there other than Jordan (van den Berg),” he said.

This is quite arguably Tech’s most anticipated season since 2015, which followed the historic 2014 team that won 11 games, including the Orange Bowl.

Not coincidentally, that two-season stretch added to the pattern. The 2014 team started unranked and finished eighth in the final AP poll, Tech’s second-highest finish in the post-Dodd era. The 2015 team began the year ranked 16th and ended it with a 3-9 record, its worst record since 1994. Then at the start of his career in sports broadcasting, Jones has memories of trying to apply the brakes on the 2015 hype train.

“I remember I had that feeling of, ‘Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves,’” he said.

And as for Tech’s past having no bearing on this team — also logically true. But this is one of the reasons we love college football. The present connects fluidly with the past. Patterns of results create identities.

Before the arrival of Kirby Smart in Athens, how much joy did Tech fans gain from Georgia’s perpetually unfulfilled national title hopes? Annually, Bulldogs teams had the talent to finish No. 1 but found ways to fall short, each year further cementing the label of preseason national champions.

In the end, the task ahead of the Jackets is daunting. The greatness that they and their fans aspire to won’t be easy, regardless of expectations.

Tech has a possible path to a CFP spot if it were to finish the regular season at 10-2 and play in the ACC title game. But to do that means either upsetting Georgia for the first time since 2016 or Clemson for the first time since 2014 or losing to both teams but winning the remaining 10 games.

“While I think Tech can do one of those things — like, I think they can potentially beat a Georgia or a Clemson — they’ve got to prove that they can play consistently enough to not have a slipup,” Jones said. “That’s the concern, and it’s a concern with everybody. It’s a concern with every team that’s taking the next step.”

And it is indeed the rub with the Jackets.

After a 7-6 record in 2023 in his first season as full-time coach, Brent Key established winning with consistency as the next plateau for his program. And then the Jackets went 7-6 again. There are always reasons, and King’s shoulder injury that kept him out of the back-to-back losses to Notre Dame and Virginia Tech was a massive one.