Georgia Tech’s Haynes King playing with ‘grit’ after dad’s cancer diagnosis

Quarterback Haynes King’s final season of college football started with a bang, but also came with a somber footnote.

“He’s a tough SOB. That’s just who he is,” King said about his father on “The Jim Rome Show.” “His main focus is making sure I’m still focused. And I still have a job to do as well. That’s really everything that’s transpired in our conversations in the past two, three weeks of knowing.”

John King has been the head coach of the Longview High School football team since 2004, but will have to miss the Lobos’ game against Marshall High School on Friday. He also is the school’s athletic director.

“While we understand there is significant public interest given his role, we respectfully ask that everyone honor coach King’s privacy regarding his personal health,” read a statement released by the Longview Independent School District. “He is as strong and resilient as they come, and we are committed to supporting him while allowing him the space to manage this deeply personal situation on his own terms.”

Longview has won 234 games during King’s two decades coaching the team. He has led the school to 17 district championships, three state title games and the 2018 state title. That squad featured King’s son, Haynes, playing quarterback.

Haynes King would go on to enroll at Texas A&M, graduate from A&M in 2022 and transfer to Georgia Tech in 2023. His third season as the Yellow Jackets’ starter began Friday in Boulder, Colorado, where he completed 13 passes for 143 yards and recovered from an early interception.

On the ground, the 6-foot-3, 215-pound senior ran for 156 yards, at an 8.2-yards-per-carry clip, and scored three times. His 45-yard scamper with 67 seconds left turned out to be the game-winner.

All that while harboring the knowledge of his father’s condition.

“He’s a rare breed. He really is,” Tech coach Brent Key said Tuesday. “There’s an extreme amount of empathy when it comes to that. But he’s one of the few players at that age that can truly understand the separation of expectation and empathy. A lot of people wanna make that one pie, I guess you would say, and split off the percentages of it, and if you got things going on in your personal life it’s gonna take away from the expectation on the field. We expect it to be 100% in both.

“There’s 100% empathy when things are going in these kids’ lives or the coaches’ lives. There’s also 100% expectation on the field, and not intertwining those two. He does an unbelievable job of keeping those two things separate, but also giving everything he has into both.”

Those numbers could be even greater had he not missed two games with injury in 2024 before playing the final five games of the schedule with an injured throwing shoulder.

“Oh my gosh, I think he’s off the scale, guys,” Key said of King’s toughness during an interview on 680 The Fan. “I don’t know if there is a scale. If there is one, it’s named after him. The toughness, the grit, the leadership that he has. I don’t think people realize what it’s like playing that position and dealing out those plays and then having to communicate and get people aligned and go through the cadence and all those things. He’s at the top, guys. I’ll say it. I don’t know if there’s been many like him.