Georgia still working on plan to slow former assistant, Tech OC Buster Faulkner
ATHENS — Win or lose Friday, Georgia Tech offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner will turn his attention quickly to the Athens area.
Not because he’s coming back to Georgia’s coaching staff, but because his son Harrison will have a state quarterfinals playoff game for North Oconee High School. Harrison Faulkner is the team’s quarterback and will be playing for Georgia Southern next season. Friday’s game against Marist could well be the final game of his high school career.
As for Buster Faulkner, he’ll spend Friday giving Kirby Smart and the Georgia defense fits.
“He did an incredible job for us, always innovative, always looking at new ideas, good teacher, aggressive, and does a great job,” Smart said. “And the way he does things, and I’ve seen that carry over there. He does a really good job with their offensive unit.”
The Georgia staff is well familiar with Faulkner’s work. Before he was hired as Tech’s offensive coordinator, Faulkner spent three seasons in Athens as an offensive analyst. He worked closely with then-offensive coordinator Todd Monken and current offensive coordinator Mike Bobo.
Faulkner left Athens weeks before Monken was hired as the offensive coordinator for the Baltimore Ravens. Smart moved quickly to promote Bobo as the team’s quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator.
Although Bobo has done well in 2025 with quarterback Gunner Stockton, Faulkner has been instrumental in Tech’s rise this season. Tech ranks fifth in the nation in total offense. Quarterback Haynes King has become one of the top players in the nation, with Faulkner pushing all the right buttons to set King up for success.
Even in recent losses to Pittsburgh and N.C. State, Tech averaged 32 points per game and 469 yards.
Against Georgia last season, King and Faulkner carved a defense that featured three first-round draft picks. The Yellow Jackets finished with 563 yards and 42 points, the former being the second-most allowed by a Smart defense.
“Buster does an incredible job, he did here, too,” Smart said. “He’s a really good football coach. He knows where things, where all the nuggets are on defenses. He knows how to attack them. He knows answers for things that when you do them. I mean, at the end of the day, they got a block, we got a tackle, and somebody’s got to do it better. And that’s a very tough thing when you play them because they stretch you horizontally. They stretch you vertically. They stretch you with tempo.”
The Jackets rolled up 260 yards rushing in the game in the 2024 edition of Clean Old-Fashioned Hate, which ate up time and kept the Georgia offense on the bench. Had Dan Jackson not forced a critical fourth-quarter fumble, Georgia likely doesn’t emerge with a win.
Georgia’s run defense is improved this season, entering Friday’s game with the No. 5 rushing defense in the country. Tech will be the best rushing offense the Bulldogs have faced this season, but the inverse is true for Tech’s offense.
“This year we’re definitely super excited for it,” linebacker Chris Cole said. “We’ve put in the work throughout the offseason and then now. So it’s gonna be a great opportunity.”
For his work in Atlanta, Faulkner received a significant raise last offseason that put his salary on par with that of Bobo. Tech doesn’t rarely spend at the same level as Georgia, but Faulkner has proved to be worth it for the Jackets and coach Brent Key.
Georgia knows Faulkner well, having faced him the past two seasons and had him on staff the three before that.
Yet all that shared history won’t make Friday any easier for Smart and this Georgia team.
“Buster does an awesome job, and that’s continued this year,” Smart said. “So there’s no level of comfort dealing with it. It’s more of a, ‘How do you inspire your players to play harder?’”
About the Author
Connor Riley has been covering the University of Georgia since 2014 before moving to DawgNation full-time before the 2018 season. He helps in all areas of the site such as team coverage, recruiting, video production, social media and podcasting. He graduated from the University of Georgia in 2016.
