Georgia Tech’s Brent Key faces coaching mentor Bill O’Brien
After Brent Key’s playing days were over, the former Georgia Tech offensive lineman returned to his alma mater to begin his coaching career. He was a graduate assistant working with the offensive coaches and Bill O’Brien, Tech’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at the time.
“It’s his first year as an offensive coordinator here, and he was blessed with the absolute worst GA in the history of the world,” Key joked Tuesday. “And that was me. I feel sorry for him. I apologize to him all the time for it.”
A quarter of a century later, Key will face one of his coaching mentors at 3:30 p.m. Saturday when Key takes his 17th-ranked Yellow Jackets to Boston College, where O’Brien is the second-year coach of the Eagles.
O’Brien was a graduate assistant at Tech from 1995-97 and was promoted to running backs coach from 1998-2000. Blocking for O’Brien’s running backs was Key, a right guard from Birmingham, Alabama, who was a four-year starter from 1997-2000.
Key said when he and his mother took an official recruiting visit to Tech in 1995, it was O’Brien who showed Key around campus.
“He was one of those ones, that even as a GA, there was something different about him,” Key recalled. “He was treated as a coach, acted as coach, acted like the job that he wanted, not the one that he had.”
Said O’Brien on Tuesday during his weekly news conference: “Brent was a captain. Brent was a tough guy. Brent was a leader. He was somebody that everybody looked up to because of how tough he was. Very, very tough player and definitely one of the leaders of the team all the years I was there.”
Key and O’Brien both left Tech’s coaching staff in 2002 — Key to briefly dip his toes into the real estate profession and O’Brien to join the coaching staff at Maryland.
The latter also spent two years at Duke, joined the staff of the New England Patriots in the NFL for five seasons, then became the head coach of Penn State from 2012-13 before taking over the Houston Texans in the NFL from 2014-20.
In 2024, O’Brien was hired to coach Boston College. His Eagles went 7-6 and lost the Pinstripe Bowl last season, but are 1-9 this season, winless in six ACC games and losers of nine consecutive overall.
“Turn the tape on, you see his identity all over the tape when it comes to the physicality they play with, how they play the game,” Key said. “Their record is not indicative to anything you see on tape when you watch them play.
“(O’Brien is) a competitor at the highest level. Can’t say enough great things about him, how much respect I have for ‘OB’ and the influence he’s had on me as a football coach and as a person.”
Saturday’s matchup between Key and O’Brien will be the first opportunity for Key to best his mentor. Key will take his Tech team into Alumni Stadium in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, looking to rebound from a 48-36 loss to North Carolina State on Nov. 1 and to stay alive in the race to make the ACC championship game.
If the Jackets (8-1, 5-1 ACC) put forth a good performance against the Eagles and come out on top, that would somewhat be an homage from Key to O’Brien.
“One of things I talk about here all the time is how you define toughness by watching film. How you cover kicks, how you stop the run, how you run the football,” Key said. “That’s something I picked up from him just by going out and visiting Houston and things he would talk about. There’s several things that have been part of the culture or identity of our football team that came from him. Learned a lot of football from him, too. A lot of football.”
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