Georgia Tech’s Brent Key and Syracuse’s Fran Brown will meet again
A little more than a year ago, Syracuse coach Fran Brown was fired up. Like, really fired up.
“I took it personal when he talked about it wasn’t about X’s and O’s, it was about coming up here and being physical and tough for four hours,” Brown told Syracuse.com after the Georgia Tech-Syracuse matchup in 2024. “We’re from the Northeast, what you mean by that? Like, we don’t play football? Like, we’re not physical and tough? I took that very personal.
“I took that personal because of what the ‘S’ means. It’s Syracuse. It’s been physical forever. I wanted to make sure that would never be said about us. We’re not soft. That bothered me. That rubbed me the wrong way.”
Brown, now in his second season coaching the Orange, was referring to comments Tech coach Brent Key had made, seemingly innocuous comments that the Yellow Jackets had to be the tougher team over four quarters to get a conference road win.
A New Jersey native who spent two seasons on the staff at Georgia as the Bulldogs’ defensive backs coach, Brown took what little Key had to say about the Orange and slapped it on the locker-room bulletin board, making his players believe they had been disrespected like never before.
The tactic worked. Syracuse built a 31-14 lead on Tech, who entered the matchup ranked No. 23 in The Associated Press Top 25, and held on for a 31-28 win to give the Jackets their first loss of the season. The ‘Cuse wound up with 515 yards of offense when all was said and done.
“When you know who I am and you come at me about toughness, don’t do that. This game was very personal,” Brown said, according to 247Sports. “And then, you know, I coached with Kirby Smart and Will Muschamp (at Georgia), so why would we not be a tough, physical football team? That’s just what they do, and that’s what I’ll be about, and that’s where I was at. I did take that very personal. I want to make sure everyone understands that when you play us, just be quiet. That way we’re just going to worry about us throughout the week. Don’t give ammo to me.”
Fast forward to present day, and Brown and Key will now duke it out for Round 2 when Syracuse and Tech meet at noon Saturday at Bobby Dodd Stadium. But both coaches have way more to worry about this time around than some past personal beef.
Tech (7-0, 4-0 ACC) is seriously in the mix not only to make a run toward a berth in the ACC title game, but also to earn a bid to the College Football Playoff. The Jackets have risen to No. 7 in the AP Top 25, have won six consecutive league games and nine in a row at home.
Brown’s squad, after going 10-3 last season and beating Washington State in the Holiday Bowl, is 3-4 and 1-3 in league play. The Orange have lost three consecutive and have been outscored by an average of 33-11.3 in those three defeats.
But Key argued on 680 The Fan on Monday that none of what his team, or the other team, has done to this point matters.
“I met with the team (Sunday) night and I told ‘em this, I said: ‘Look guys. Here’s what you have to understand: We can get beat, No. 1. That’s very apparent. No. 2 is you’re either gonna get better or get worse at this point of the year. So what do we have to do? We have to get better.’
“We have to improve. How do we do it? We gotta be coachable, we’ve gotta double down on what we’ve done. That doesn’t mean running into each other 100 miles an hour 100 times a day; it means we have to understand that, that is hard. It’s hard to improve week 8, 9, 10 of the season. But the mental part of it, we can. That’s the difference in teams that win and lose this time of year, and that’s why there’s only one person left at the end of the year.”
Tech goes into the final weekend of October as one of only six remaining undefeated teams in the FBS (Ohio State, Indiana, Brigham Young, Texas A&M and Navy) and one of only three teams in the ACC without a conference loss (Virginia and SMU). To remain among that group, all the Jackets can do is worry about taking care of their own business.
Key said handling that becomes just as important as handling the next opponent.
“Teams in general, they die from the inside out, not the outside in. They take their foot off the gas, they lose focus, they become content with where they’re at,” Key said. “That’s how teams die, they think that past success is gonna have any impact on what happens in the future.”
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