The 2024 playoff is yet to kick off. But the CFB fans already have a reason to celebrate. Week 0 is usually not one to produce any drama, but here the season’s madness takes entry. All kudos to Brent Key and his Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets squad, who landed in the winner’s circle crushing No. 10 Florida State. This was enough to earn the “NFL stuff” tag from a renowned analyst. After one of the darkest periods in program history, it’s under Key’s tutelage that Georgia Tech could hit the rebound button. 

Since 2015, the Yellow Jackets victory record ran barren and had become laughing stocks under ex-HC Geoff Collins. Finally, the drought is over since on August 24, Key’s tribe secured victory defeating the Florida State Seminoles 24-21 in Dublin Ireland. This has been intriguing enough for the Locked on College Football podcast to take up. The guest and analyst Brian Smith, could not help but tag their big win as “great.” However, things were not that easy in the beginning but they eventually caught up.

Smith could not help but bask in the play-altering trick, “The safety at the very last second remember now DJ’s [Uiagalelei] a grad too. He’s seen everything start charging down and they rotate in the one high safety man defense that’s NFL stuff. You don’t see that at a Georgia teag very often they don’t have very good defense.”

After all the Seminoles had put their bet on their biggest weapon, senior QB DJ Uiagalelei. The athlete finished 19 of 27 for 193 yards and tied the game at 21-21 in the fourth quarter. It’s from there, Key’s army locked out every hope for Mike Norvell’s squad. Georgia Tech bled the last 6:33 of the clock. And guess who emerged as the game-changer? It was Aidan Birr who came up with a walk-off 44-yard field goal. Here HC Key nails the credit for supercharging the team’s fight-or-flight mode.    

A look at Georgia Tech’s season under Brent Key’s guidance

Key is heading into his second full season in a row holding the post as coach. And he had helped the Yellow Jackets to hit a U-turn particularly after they were exposed to a dead abyss in the Collins’ era. The coach has instilled a thirst to win and an edgy attitude in his roster. And it did bring some instant results like victories over Miami and North Carolina that were not expected at all. And with him, Key had ushered in some huge growth. 

Going by the numbers, when Collins held the Yellow Jackets’ reins through three-plus years, they were at 10-28. With it came their 7-19 mark in conference play. Now that Collins’ era is over Key has come up with some interesting statistics. The new HC had taken up his role in 2022 and only four games into the season, they reached the stars going straightaway to 11-10 overall and 9-6 in the ACC. 

Going by Brent Key’s power as an HC that had an infectious impact on Georgia Tech as well, the Yellow Jackets overhauled its staff to fix their leaky defense. They have brought in Tyler Santucci from Duke as the new DC who had been in charge of the Blue Devils which helped them to secure 16th rank nationally. Let’s see how Key pulls more rabbits out of his hat!