Brent Key didn’t hold back after the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets wrapped up their final scrimmage of preseason camp over the weekend. He eviscerated his own team and their poor play. This could add to the pressure of their game against Colorado. But there is a silver lining for Brent as he gets to meet one of his childhood role models. This time, as an equal.

“Such an honor to play a guy like Deion Sanders. I was a huge fan of his growing up. I wanted to be him and Bo Jackson.” He even goes on to say that he will try to meet up with Deion in pregame and get his rookie card signed and take a selfie. This moment revealed the human side of a coach who is still a fan of the game. College football often lives in a paradox, where head coaches are both generals and dreamers, obsessed with schemes but still awed by legends.

But this week in Atlanta, the nostalgia ended, and the hard reality of his team’s readiness took over. Saturday’s scrimmage was a gut punch. The Jackets fought through extreme heat. 94 degrees in the air and 115 on the turf. But instead of using that as an excuse, Key used it as an evaluation tool. The verdict wasn’t flattering. “I don’t think we’re anywhere close to being ready to play a football game,” he admitted. “Way too many penalties, way too many turnovers, way too many blown assignments, way too many guys that either didn’t play or tapped out for aches and pains and things you have to play through. We’re not even close from a standpoint from mental toughness, the grit and the fortitude that you have to have to play this game.” Georgia Tech needs to pull itself together. Otherwise this game can turn into a one sided stomping from the Buffaloes.

That’s the part that should make fans lean forward. When coaches speak this bluntly a week out, it’s a challenge. Mental toughness, execution, and grit are football’s intangibles. The traits that separate the merely talented from the truly competitive. The Jackets’ 2024 season was a mixed bag: flashes of explosive playmaking, yet maddening inconsistency on third downs and late-game execution. Key is trying to harden that edge. If the scrimmage was a mirror, it showed a team with plenty of ability but a fragile layer of polish. The raw material is there: speed on the perimeter, depth in the backfield, and a quarterback who can stretch the field. But the mental toughness is absent.

The only silver lining he pointed to was time. “The only good thing about today is the fact we have time to correct it,” he said, his tone measured but firm. That acknowledgment is more than a throwaway. It underscores the urgency of camp’s final week. Coaches can live with technical errors. They have meltdowns at causing avoidable ones. Penalties and mental lapses in the dog days of August suggest a team still figuring out its competitive identity. Yet Key wasn’t writing off the season. His words carried a balance of frustration and belief. “I still believe we have a chance to be a really good football team. We weren’t today. We weren’t today.”

So, should Georgia Tech be considered overrated heading into the 2025 season? CBS analysts have already begun stirring that pot, labeling the Jackets a bubble team in the ACC pecking order. The national perception is that Tech is promising but unproven. A program that could swing seven wins or four depending on execution. That’s where Key’s honesty becomes both refreshing and revealing. By calling out his team’s flaws publicly, he stripped away illusions. He’s not selling hype. He’s trying to forge steel.

Are the Yellow Jackets flying too high?

The Yellow Jackets aren’t short on optimism this fall. Brent Key’s crew returns a solid blend of veteran leaders while also bringing in a wave of freshmen from one of the strongest recruiting classes in program history. To balance it out, Georgia Tech worked the transfer portal hard, adding veteran experience in both the winter and spring windows to plug immediate needs. On paper, the roster looks deeper, stronger, and ready to take a step forward in 2025. But as is often the case in college football, perception and reality don’t always match up.

In fact, the outside view isn’t all glowing. In a recent CBS Sports panel dissecting the ACC’s biggest preseason storylines, analyst David Cobb didn’t hesitate to put Georgia Tech in the “most overrated” bucket. His reasoning wasn’t emotional. It was pragmatic. “Georgia Tech is a popular ACC dark-horse candidate since it doesn’t play SMU, Miami, Louisville or Florida State and gets Clemson at home. But outside of Gardner-Webb and Temple, there aren’t any layups on the schedule,” Cobb argued.

That reality check should make Tech fans pause. Yes, the schedule avoids some league heavyweights, but there’s no soft middle here either. Cobb doubled down: “The Yellow Jackets are replacing both offensive tackles and a significant chunk of their defensive front and are destined to end up in some close games against the endless parade of mid-tier ACC foes on their schedule. They should be good but more like 8-4 as opposed to 10-2 or better.” GT might be better. But “better” doesn’t always mean “breakthrough.” The talent is real, the optimism is justified, but the Jackets need to step up to turn this season into a successful one.