Undefeated and unfazed, Georgia Tech goes into November atop the ACC
In April, Georgia Tech safety Clayton Powell-Lee allowed ESPN to document his offseason decision-making process as to whether he would return to the Yellow Jackets or test the waters of college free agency through the transfer portal.
Ultimately, the Westlake High School alum opted to remain in Atlanta because of his loyalty and love for Tech, and to play with what he thought could be a special team. But on Saturday, after the seventh-ranked Jackets handily beat Syracuse 41-16, even he admitted he couldn’t have envisioned this.
“Yeah, like it’s hard to have imagined that, OK, we’ll be 8-0 right now,” Powell-Lee said. “It’s crazy that I can, like — looking back (to April), it’s like, OK, you never really know what’s going to happen. I just trusted my gut. I love this program, love my teammates, love this coaching staff and, you know, just trying to put my own pride aside, I just want to do everything I can to win and that’s honestly what we’ve been doing.
“It’s not just me out there; it’s him (wide receiver Jordan Allen sitting to Powell-Lee’s right), it’s all the seniors, all the freshmen, literally everybody in between. The coaching staff. It’s like a real full program thing. I’m just glad that I trusted my own gut. I’m just glad I stayed here because obviously, it’s paying off.”
Powell-Lee took a leap of faith to even play for Tech to begin with, joining a program in 2022 that had won a total of nine games combined in the three seasons prior. And in Tech’s final two games of the 2021 season, the Jackets were beaten by a combined 100-0 in losses to Notre Dame and Georgia, respectively.
Four games into the 2022 season, Tech fired Geoff Collins and named Brent Key the interim coach. From then until this past August, the Jackets had gone 18-16 — good, but not great, nor indicative that the team would be major players in the 2025 national title race.
Over the last eight weeks, however, everything has changed. Powell-Lee said the program has done a complete 180 from those dark days at the end of the last decade and at the start of this one. Defensive lineman Jason Moore, who joined the program in 2020, had a sense 2025 could be different but also admitted being unbeaten through eight games comes with a tinge of surprise.
“It’s kind of surreal at a point, but I believe going into camp and throughout camp, I felt like this was going to be one of those years when we was gonna to pop off,” he said. “One of our main points that we talk about as a team is just taking the next jump and just kind of seeing everything conglomerate, come together as one.
“That’s just kind of the pot boiling over for what should have been a sleeping giant, is us right now just kind of reaping our fruits. That’s been going on from all the work from the last couple of years, just kind of everything finally jelling.”
Tech goes into November one of only six remaining undefeated teams in the FBS and one of only four with an 8-0 record (Brigham Young, Indiana and Texas A&M the others). And only five other teams in Tech history — 1966, 1952, 1942, 1928 and 1917 — have started a season 8-0.
The Jackets aren’t skirting by, either, and are appearing to be getting stronger as the season has gone on, holding steadfast to their mantras of, “one game at a time” and “nameless, faceless opponent.” The last three weeks Tech has won its three ACC games by an average of 16.3 points after winning the first two by a total of four.
Under first-year defensive coordinator Blake Gideon, Tech’s defense, although giving up quite a bit of yardage each week, now ranks 34th nationally by allowing just 20 points per game. Tech’s Heisman Trophy candidate Haynes King has undoubtedly been the catalyst for much of the team’s offensive success and now ranks second nationally with 12 rushing touchdowns, seventh in completion percentage (72.3%) and 12th in total offense (304.4 yards per game).
King continued Saturday to deflect discussion of the possibility of personal accolades at season’s end.
“It’s always next game, next play kind of mentality,” King said. “It’s never try to look at it at too far in advance because, like I said, if you handle the present of what’s going on and control what you can control, like I said, everything else will handle itself.”
Tech is 5-0 in the ACC for the first time in program history and is in prime position to make its first ACC title game since 2014. Virginia (4-0) is the only other team unbeaten in league play while five others have just one loss.
And now with only four regular season games remaining, the Jackets have also made a strong case to not only qualify for the 12-team College Football Playoff but potentially host a first-round game. Just being in that discussion is remarkable.
“Playing on a team that won a national championship, there are a lot of things that you have to do to be capable of doing it, and I’ve seen a lot of that out of this team,” Tech tight end Josh Beetham, who transferred to Tech from Michigan ahead of the 2024 season, said. “Obviously, we just need to focus on one game at a time. That’s going to put us in the position where we need to be.”
Atlanta has taken notice of Tech’s success, too, with a reported crowd of 51,913 at Bobby Dodd Stadium on Saturday. That was the program’s first sellout of a home ACC game in 10 years, and its first since the 2021 season finale against rival Georgia.
Tech has just one home game remaining, a Nov. 22 clash with Pittsburgh. It travels to North Carolina State (4-4, 1-3) at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, then has a second bye week before playing at Boston College (1-7, 0-5 ACC) on Nov. 15.
Georgia awaits at the end of November, a November which has all the makings of being a historic one for a Tech team poised and focused to go down as one of the program’s all-time greats.
“Just not wanting to feel like we felt for the past three or four years. Like it’s a lot different, because obviously we’re on a roll, but it’s like we don’t even want to think back to what it was,” Powell-Lee said. “We want to stay in the present and just keep taking it day by day. We want to go 1-0 each and every game and just worrying on that week, not worrying about the past, not worrying about the future.
“Just taking it, ‘Hey, this is the opponent. We’re going to prepare the right way. We’re going to execute. We’re going to play as a family, as a team.’ Just playing together. That’s all I can really say, honestly. Like, that is like the biggest thing that I’ve seen out of us. We’re always playing for each other, not nothing else. Just playing for each other.”
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