Brent Key wouldn’t want all the credit. But he certainly deserves at least some, if not more.
For the man who acknowledged earlier this season during an appearance on television that he began wearing a watch not so long ago to remind himself that, “time is money,” Key goes into Georgia Tech’s game Saturday against No. 1 Georgia having made the most of his time while steering the Yellow Jackets through a season that can ultimately be deemed a success.
Only Paul Johnson, Chan Gailey and Bill Fulcher previously led Tech to a bowl game in their first season as Tech’s head coach. Key, a former Tech offensive lineman and now its first-year head coach, is on that list after a topsy-turvy season that saw the Jackets alternate wins and losses for the first eight games of the season before victories in two of the team’s past three got it to bowl eligibility.
Tech ends its regular season at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Bobby Dodd Stadium. Pulling a massive upset as a 24-point underdog would be the whipped cream on top of the Thanksgiving pumpkin pie for a year that has restored some hope and brought back some pride to the white and gold faithful.
Here’s a closer look at how the Jackets arrived at where they are and how Key played a major part in putting them in position to play for a winning season Saturday:
Haynes, but not King
While naming Haynes King the team’s starting quarterback in August arguably became the biggest factor in Tech’s offensive success this season, the play of Jamal Haynes became almost equally as important as the season progressed.
A 5-foot-9, 180-pound sophomore, Haynes rarely played in his first two seasons on campus. He arrived at Tech in 2021 as a wide receiver and didn’t see the field until 2022, when he served in an unheralded special teams role.
But in August, with Tech’s receiving group now loaded with three experienced transfers, returning playmaker Malik Rutherford and soon-to-be freshman sensation Eric Singleton, Haynes was staring down the barrel of another season without touching the football.
Key and his offensive staff knew that wouldn’t do. So they moved Haynes to running back just weeks before Tech’s opener against Louisville, an eyebrow-raising move even if Haynes had played the position at times as a standout at Grayson High School.
Fast forward 11 games, and Haynes now leads Tech with 850 rushing yards and seven rushing touchdowns. He’s averaging six yards per carry and needs 150 yards over the next two outings to be the Jackets’ first 1,000-yard rusher since 2017.
Haynes, who also has three 100-yard rushing games this season, didn’t forget how to be a receiver either, making 19 receptions for 149 yards. His 15-yard touchdown reception Saturday helped the Jackets beat Syracuse to become bowl eligible.
Change in defensive leadership
In a move that made national headlines Oct. 1, Key removed the defensive coordinator role from Andrew Thacker and handed that title to linebackers coach Kevin Sherrer. That decision came a day after Tech lost 38-27 at home to Bowling Green while allowing 438 yards of offense and 263 rushing yards.
A change in defensive leadership paid off immediately as the Jackets went on the road and held a ranked Miami team to 20 points (three in the first half) in a three-point win.
Now, Tech’s defense on the whole didn’t drastically improve. In fact, the team’s next two games (against Boston College and North Carolina, respectively) after the Miami win were its worst of the season in terms of yards allowed. But the Jackets have been 4-2 since Sherrer took over the defense and have recorded 13 takeaways over that span.
“Kinda just the transition of coach Sherrer being the (defensive coordinator), you know there’s always a transition period as far as when things like that happen. It’s natural,” Tech safety LaMiles Brooks said. “There’s been changes as far as who’s on the field when, so it’s kind of just getting comfortable with who’s out there. The biggest thing is everybody’s doing their job right now. Nobody’s doing anything else outside of what’s expected of them. It’s kind of paying dividends right now.”
‘Now playing left tackle …’
The offensive line being the delicate ecosystem that it is, Key and offensive line coach Geep Wade took a calculated risk almost immediately at the start of the season.
Freshman Ethan Mackenny was thrown into the fire at left tackle Sept. 1 against Louisville when he took over for sophomore Corey Robinson. Mackenny (6-4, 292), from Lassiter High, was in on 59 plays as he made his collegiate debut at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Mackenny goes into Saturday’s matchup with Georgia having played 526 snaps, the fifth-most among Jackets and the most by any Tech freshman. He has been penalized only twice through 11 games.
Robinson, by the way, hasn’t been unheard from, either. The Roswell High graduate and Kansas transfer is one of the top run blockers on Tech’s offensive line and was on the field for 61 plays during the Jackets’ bowl-clinching win over Syracuse last week.
Birr, it’s NOT cold in here
Place kicking was expected to be a strength for Tech entering the season. Turns out it was, just not by the kicker many expected to be the go-to guy at season’s outset.
After junior Gavin Stewart missed his first three field-goal attempts of the season, freshman Aidan Birr was given his shot to prove he could be the guy. And “the guy” he has been.
Birr has made 11 of the 12 field-goal kicks he has tried since taking over for Stewart and is 32-33 on point-after attempts. Five of Birr’s field goals have come from 40 yards or more.
Birr goes into Saturday’s game having made nine field goals in a row.
A later check-in time
Since 2019, Tech had lost a lot of games. And even more disparaging for the Tech supporters was how many of those losses came at home.
Key seemed to be well aware that his Jackets had gone 8-18 in home games coming into 2023 and 5-10 in conference games at Bobby Dodd Stadium during that span. Tech started this season with a win over South Carolina State, but then lost at home to Bowling Green.
Looking for a solution, Key rolled the dice despite knowing messing with a team’s routine (in a routine-driven world) could have dire consequences. The Jackets began to check into the team hotel the Friday before a home game, starting ahead of the Oct. 21 matchup with Boston College, a little bit later than they normally had been in seasons and game past.
The theory for Key was that his players had a little more down time for road games because they were able to depart campus, relax on a long flight and have some down time before final preparations on a Friday night. But at home on The Flats, the Jackets may have to deal with a full day of class before going straight into team obligations leaving rest at a premium.
Key sensed his team was maybe a bit mentally fatigued, so he adjusted the official schedules accordingly in hopes the Jackets could be a bit fresher for game days at Bobby Dodd Stadium.
The first game after Key enacted such changes, Tech lost to Boston College at home. But since then? Tech has home wins over North Carolina and Syracuse.
Four quarters versus 60 minutes
A standard coaching cliché is for a team’s leader to ask his players to play a full 60 minutes. Key used that mantra often in 2023 and proved the theme’s worth after the Jackets won at Miami in a miracle come back that needed every last tick on the clock.
But along the way this fall, Key recognized that for his squad to play to their best of their ability for the length of a game, he wanted them to go all out for 15 minutes at a time – and then reassess.
“We talked at halftime, our M.O. has been playing four quarters,” Key said after a win at Virginia, a victory that gave Tech its first and only win streak of the season so far. “We’re playing four independent quarters in every football game. One quarter’s over, we play another one. We play for 15 minutes and see who comes out on top. That’s the way we’re going about it.”
Before an Oct. 28 win over North Carolina, Tech had been outscored 45-13 in the third quarter and 106-52 in the second half of four losses. In the four games since then it has outscored the opposition 71-61 in the second half and 57-34 in the fourth quarter.
Bowl-game chatter
Technically, Key could have brought up the possibility of going to a bowl game as early as the second week of November. After all, the Jackets already had five wins under their belt at that point with three games to go.
But the “B” word was never mentioned in the days leading to a 42-21 loss at Clemson. Instead, Key waited until the Sunday team meeting after that defeat in South Carolina to get it out in the open: Tech beats Syracuse, Tech goes bowling for the first time since 2018.
Whether putting the postseason carrot at the end of the string for the Jackets helped them get over the edge against the Orange that Saturday may never be quantified. But Key clearly understood it was time to discuss the elephant in the room. Now Tech is a bowl team going into the regular-season finale with nothing to lose.
“When you come into the season there’s two goals: There’s the goal to go to the bowl game and there’s a goal to beat Georgia. We don’t come out and openly talk about what goals are. That’s why last week I began to talk about a bowl game because that was the time to talk about it. Well this week it’s time to talk about another goal, that’s beating Georgia.
“Is your goal to win every game? Yeah, it’s to win every football game. But our true team goals are to go to a bowl game and to beat Georgia. I said it in my opening press conference a year ago. I said we’ll work every day to beat the team on the other side of the state, and that’s what we’re doing, and that’s what we’ve done, is to work every day with that.”
Credit: Bob Andres
Credit: Bob Andres
Credit: Danny Karnik
Credit: Danny Karnik
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