Listless 2nd quarter in 21-point win gives Georgia Tech something to work on

A 21-point victory was nothing to scoff at for No. 18 Georgia Tech. But the underlying tones of disappointment coming from the Jackets, because of a feeling that there were too many maddening moments, exposed that this Tech team is on a different sort of mission.

Whereas in season’s past the Jackets maybe would have been satisfied with a rout, or may have even dropped the ball completely and lost a so-called letdown game after a big win the week prior, this squad took care of business without showing hints of complacency and appeared somewhat disappointed in its overall showing.

“It says everything about the growth of this program,” Tech running back Jamal Haynes said. “Just mentally just wanting more for ourselves. Just really knowing what our true goal is at the end of the day, it’s really going 1-0 every week, but (also) knowing that, obviously, you won the game but it just wasn’t very sound football at the end of the day from a team standpoint.”

Haynes had a team-high 107 yards rushing on 12 carries, his first regular-season game with at least 100 yards rushing since going for 170 yards at North Carolina on Oct. 12. His performance was part of Tech’s 307 yards on the ground, the team’s second game in four this season eclipsing the 300-yard rushing mark.

But none of those yards came in the second quarter, a perplexing 15 minutes from the Tech offense in which it ran nine plays and was forced to punt three times.

“It’s not the standard of who we wanna be and who we are gonna be for the rest of the year,” Tech quarterback Haynes King said of Saturday’s second quarter. “But this is great learning point. But we also need to learn wins are really good as well, so we can’t just be sitting here miserable and, ‘Oh, we shoulda had this and that,’ and let that linger on. We can learn from it, but we still gotta move on and accept wins.”

King went 13-for-18 for 161 yards and two scores. He was held to 15 yards on the ground, his fewest rushing yards in a regular-season game since a 2023 game at Clemson when he was shut down for -3.

With King and Haynes carrying the offense Saturday, Tech’s defense had another strong showing but also wasn’t without its own breakdowns.

The Jackets allowed eight plays that went for 11 yards or more, four rushing and four passing. One of those plays was a 28-yard touchdown pass that followed a King fumble early in the third quarter.

It will still give Key plenty of talking points Sunday.

“We’ve gotta improve our play to be able to continue the momentum we have and continue to win games we have to win,” Key said. “I said to the team, ‘Everything we do is training for something. Regardless of who’s in the game, regardless of what part of the game it is, regardless of the opponent, regardless of the scoreboard — everything we do is training for something.’ That’s the way we have to look at it.

“Saturdays are to enjoy the win. Sundays are to be very transparent about ‘em and whether it’s a win, a loss, it doesn’t matter. When I walk in and talk about the things we have to correct and the things we have to be better at, don’t get your panties in a wad and say, ‘Oh well, you’d think we lost the football game.’ I don’t look at it like that. I look at it like it’s either right or it’s wrong. We have to continue to improve.

“You’re gonna have games like this. You don’t wanna have games like this, but you’re gonna have some inconsistencies in there. The thing we can’t do is allow it to carry over to the next drive and then the next drive and the next drive.”