Everything From Brent Key After First Spring Practice

What did Brent Key have to say after Georgia Tech's first spring practice?

Spring practice No. 1 as the head coach is in the books for Brent Key at Georgia Tech. The Yellow Jackets are going to be practicing for the next month leading up to the spring game and the team is hoping to make improvements in just a short amount of time. 

Brent Key is in his first spring as head coach at Georgia Tech / Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports

Key spoke to the media after today's practice and here is everything that he had to say:

Opening Statement

"It was good to be back out here. Just to be back out here with these guys and the work that they have done since the first of January and their first day back at school, not taking a break, going into the weight room with (Head Strength Coach) AJ (Artis) and be able to come out on the field and see the culmination of the first really eight weeks of our process in getting prepared for the upcoming season. Its good to be out here. Without getting into a lot of hee-haw things that we told the team, we told them there are four things we are looking for from the football team that we are going to develop. Really, the toughness of the football team, the mental and physical toughness, because without the mental toughness you can't have the physical toughness. 

You know the discipline of the football team in all aspects of their lives, you  know not just on the field, but off the field, in the weight room, in the classroom, all those things they are doing to set up, those are all the things that carry over on the field. Then the execution, to be able to take the information that we have given them. The installation, whether it be the plays that we have given them or the defenses or calls, they have been able to take that and execute it and its no good if 8, 9, or 10 people execute. We need all 11 on each side of the ball, offense, defense, or special teams. 

We are incorporating a lot of special teams in the practice, a major emphasis of what we are working on this spring to develop the core fundamentals and techniques. Then the final and fourth things is the commitment and to show the commitment that each one of those guys have, No. 1 to themselves, to make them the kind of player that they need to be. No. 2 the commitment to their teammates, the discipline the commitment comes with what you do all day, every day, seven days a week. The commitment is... whether it is to go to class, committed to do what is right in school, committed to do what is right off the field, all of that comes with the commitment to your team and your commitment to win football games in the fall. 

Asking these guys to come out one day at a time just like playing the game one play at a time. Worry about today and today only, get fear and anxiety out of these guys, worrying about things that might have happened in the past or happening in the future, we want to eliminate those things and the guys understand you can only really learn from what's happened in the past and you can prepare for what is going to happen in the future so don't worry about either one of them. Thats our values, our core values of this spring and what we want to accomplish. 

1. On installing in the spring with new coaches and players...

"With the different rules that apply now in college football and the ability to work and meet with the guys in the offseason, it changes the way you go about the installation because you might say, I want to add a lot in day one, and day two because we have had this opportunity for the last couple of weeks to be around the guys, but we did not want to do that. It is back to square one and in the installation meetings, we wanted everyone to go in there like it was for the first time, that it was their first time in there so that is what this spring is about, its about developing our core building blocks of our football team. 

It's about techniques, it's not really about the plays that we run on offense or the calls on defense or the coverages or the different types of schemes on coverages. It's about basically developing ourselves and the building blocks that go along with that. That has not changed in 100 years. 

You have to be able to get your hands inside, tackle somebody the right way, take the right pursuit angles, you have to be able to cover kicks with the right angles, able to protect the right way, able to get your hat on the right side, the right drops with the quarterbacks, the right assignments with the backs. 

That is what this is about, that is what this spring is about, you become good players individually and then collectively on each side of the ball, offense, defense, special teams and then we have a chance to be a good football team."

2. Expectations for the offensive line this spring...

"It is the same expectations to come out every day. Work their best, do their best and know in this game, continuity only lasts so long. To sit their and wish you could have it for the whole season, you're pretty lucky if that ends up happening. It is good to have returning guys that have experience, but our expectations are no different from anyone else. Put the work in everyday. Understand what they did well, what they did not do well and correct those things and move on the next day and see if we can build upon it."

3. On how he decided what to do and where to go on his first spring practice...

"The beauty of being able to coach under very good head coaches in my career and some very successful head coaches before my career, it is funny when you go back and look at what Coach (Nick) Saban and Coach (George) O'Leary and how they did things, being with them for the better part of my career with those guys, I thought of something different, but really it was the same things. 

The way it went, the way one drill went to the next drill, how it progressed, how you built upon a practice and a part hole type scenario, it has not changes regardless. To have that way to really reference and go back and see and then take in all of that information that I had in twenty plus years and really be able to build it into what was I thought the right way for the guys on our team and then last week, we had a chance to come out and trial run some things. 

At the end of the day, its about whats best to develop the guys on our team, the players that we have. No year is the same as the year before and we will obviously get together as a staff for a couple of hours and watch the film and we will talk about the things that we need to change and not wholesale change, but process-oriented within the practice."

4. On the quarterback competition...

"That is a process that is going to take a while. The beauty of it is is that we have three quarterbacks out there, but it is hard to rep three teams anyway so it is really a blessing in disguise the way I look at it. They will be judged in their entire scope of work, but not just the next fifteen days of practice. 

It'll be what they have done for the last two months, it is what they will do throughout the summer, through preseason camp. Part of the things we did this offseason was put together our core factors and core things each position has and there are really 10 attributes each has at each position, not including height, weight, and speed and the No. 1 thing on every single position is toughness and it goes for the quarterback as well. 

One thing about toughness is toughness is not about going and getting into a fight, you know the fake toughness kind of thing that we see all the time, that is not toughness. Toughness is running to the football, how you carry out a fake on a boot, what are you doing on the sideline after you ran six plays, how are you dealing with your teammates. Do you have the ability to sustain, jot just a practice, but an entire spring. There are a lot of things entailed when you start talking about toughness and what toughness is and the measuring stick for it. 

I have said it before and i am sure you guys heard me but I will say it again: toughness is a skill. It is not something that we are born with. Its a skill, it is something that can be coaches, it can be developed and it is something that is expected of myself and the coaches and the players. It is something that will be coaches every day and will be developed throughout spring football."

5. The expectations for the quarterbacks throughout the entire spring...

"There are such a set of things that come before delivering the football and managing the offense. Outside of the toughness, the leadership, the ability to rally the guys around you on the offense and that is a big thing that we have talked about this spring. It is not just offense or defense, but we are one team. To be able to build a football team, it is not about one side of the ball against the other side of the ball and when you are looking at the quarterback position and you are talking about the position in the National Football League that commands 20% of the salary cap, so it is an important position.

They have to command the respect and be able to lead the entire team, but before they do that, they have to start small. They have to show the leadership on their side of the ball before they even think about leading the entire team."

6. On the running back group...

"I don't want to miss anyone going through it... you've got Tae, obviously Jamie (Felix) got some valuable reps last year that he can learn from good and bad, but it was good game experience. Bring Trey (Cooley) in is a big addition. There are seven to eight guys in there right now that can provide, but then you are going to be looking at who can separate themselves from a standpoint of hold onto the football. 

We can go through what the traits of a great running back are but at the end of the day you have to be able to trust that guy to stay on the field and do what you need him to do."

7. On if he has seen the toughness of the team grow since the end of the season through the start of the spring...

"I think so. You use whatever measuring sticks you have you know as far as what to gauge things on. We are not trying to put a ceiling on anything either. It is not something that we want to say hey we're there. Toughness is something that can be coaches and be improved on and yeah, we are better than when we started in the weight room in January, we have shown major improvements in the way we have been able to sustain offseason workouts and being able to go through the offseason workouts and being able to provide leadership on the other side of the ball to someone who might be falling behind or bending over or different things when you look at how you are measuring that but we have a long way to go. 

That is why we are bless to be able to have 15 days of spring and then being able to have a summer leading up to preseason camp and then preseason camp but when you look at who's your team and who your team is whether it be toughness or discipline or execution or how you bring things together I mean nobody knows, we have not put pads on, we are out there running around in underwear today just trying to get installation in and I told the team this morning, I don't want to hear about playing to our standard. We don't have a standard. We don't have a standard yet, it is your responsibility to go creat that standard so I don't want to hear cheesy coach talk right now unless you're willing to understand what it means. This is a new football team and we have to go out and create that standard over the next 15 practices and hopefully by the time Sept. 1st comes around, we have our standard, this is how we do things and this is how we play the game."

8. On what Buster Faulkner brings to the staff...

"A wealth of football knowledge. There are a lot of people that possess knowledge of the game but when we were going through the interview process of interviewing people and it was a lot of people that we had a chance to sit down and talk to and talk with and it was looking for the right fit, the right mesh. Someone that fit in nothing X and O, but someone that understood the program and what Georgia Tech means, having grown up in Gwinnett County and been around it and to be able to bring those things and the knowledge of what this place has and the history of this place and what this place can be. 

The command that he has of individual positions and the entire offense and the ability to go back and forth between offense and defense and be able to impact those players and then be able to coach the coaches and that is what your work for and he is a guy that has a belief and has a system that he believes in but also understands that regardless of what that system is that it fits to our current players."

9. On the chemistry of the new transfers...

"That is something that we will be able to tell as practice goes along. We went to leadership last week and asked them where the chemistry was on the team and everyone of them said coach we don't know. We have not put pads on yet. That is when you start to tell what type of team you have. 

Are they good kids? Yeah. They fit into the locker room and they work hard. But we won't know those things until we really start to hammer it out and say ok, who does have that mental toughness and that is where you start to earn the respect of your teammates and chemistry."

10. On replacing talent on the defense and the new transfer linebackers...

"We will have to see what they do in the offseason and it is hard to tell. Hopefully in a couple of weeks we will be able to give a little bit of explanation of what we have but right now you just kind of see what their intangibles are through workouts and you see what their measurables are, height, weight, speed and those things. How they get out there and how they play along side each other, that is what makes college football great, that is what you hope for, guys that leave your team and graduate and make themselves better when they leave and have the opportunity to go play in the national football league. That is when you know you are at a good place and a great school where they can have that opportunity to if they are not going off to the NFL then they have an opportunity to go create a better life for themselves and that is what we want as coaches, especially here at Georgia Tech."

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