Everything From Brent Key's Thursday Media Availability Ahead of Duke

Brent Key spoke to the media on Thursday, two days before his team faces Duke

Sep 14, 2024; Atlanta, Georgia, USA; Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets head coach Brent Key on the sideline against the Virginia Military Institute Keydets in the second quarter at Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field. Mandatory Credit: Brett Davis-Imagn Images / Brett Davis-Imagn Images

Georgia Tech is two days away from their matchup against undefeated Duke on Saturday night, the first game for the Yellow Jackets since their loss to Louisville two weeks ago. Head coach Brent Key got together with the media for the second time on Thursday and here is everything that he had to say.

Opening Statement...

"We got a challenging game coming up on Saturday, you know coming off the bye week last week Rest up ourselves and get back healthy again you know get fast, you know get smarter speed back or you know pep in the step I guess you'd say I thought we had good energy in practice. You know the energy's never been the problem. It's the you know the locking in and focusing in on the details of what you're doing. Yeah, that's always something you're going to focus on. But it's the ability to make decisions in games. The game's going full speed. That you don't have time to think of. One of two things is going to happen. To play fast doesn't mean you're Eric Singleton and you run 10 -3. That's being fast. Playing fast is being able to process and make a decision quickly. Trusting that that decision is the right decision to make. The only way you do that is to-- is to prepare and use a repetition in practice and kind of equate it back a little bit to the special forces in the US military. Whereas They trained for months and years for certain missions and in no way am I equating this to those guys putting their life on the line every single day for our country, but it's the preparation that is the same. Those guys go into a SEAL team, goes into a special mission and regardless of what preparation they've done, There's nothing that's going to be the same as having a bullet who has passed your head. So they have to rely on their training, their preparation to make split-second decisions, or otherwise people lose their lives. And if you can take lessons from the greatest really fighters and warriors in the world, the seals and the Rangers, You can apply those to really a lot of different things and you know, that's something that we've got to apply the Making those decisions in real time quickly.

So it comes back to a lot of things. It comes back to Our installation making sure there are practice. We install things the right way We coach things the right way. We prepare the team the right way from a mental standpoint from a physical standpoint So that when those times come and they have to make an adjustment, it doesn't slow them down. And that's been the big focus this week for our team is talking about the being able to play fast. And you know, it's one thing to, you know, you're at the line of scrimmage where you're covering somebody and then, you know, you're pursuing across the field to the ball, one of that. That's running fast. Processing fast is being a linebacker and anticipating uh, anticipating what's gonna happen, seeing it and making, you know, two steps, and you're in the hole, right? Uh, anticipating a blitz, um, as an offensive lineman, or running back, right? 'Cause you've repped it, you've trained yourself, and you're playing fast, you're not second guessing. So, that's been a big part of, uh, the emphasis this week, uh, is to be able to do that, uh, when we show up here at eight o 'clock on Saturday night. And, and it is such a great feeling to know we're playing at home, playing the night game at home, you know, being to just see our students and our fans. And I said on Tuesday, you know, what an impact on the student section. And the students have, I think I heard earlier, there's what, 8 ,000? Over 8 ,000 students, student tickets already out there. So let's get more. Let's get 10, let's get 12. Let's add to it every week. Let's create a great environment. This is a great environment to go watch a football game. But it's also a great environment for our students to be able to congregate and be together and have fun almost Saturday night. So that's what we're excited for as a team. That's what I'm excited for as an alumni of here. Brings back a lot of good memories, man, when you see the students up there having fun and having fun celebrating the team after wins. So we hope to create some of that again on Saturday night and we need the help of everybody and we need to help the students in particular to be there and be loud, be loud the whole time except when the offense is on the field. You know if they're when their offense is on the field we need to be as loud as possible all right. They're you know they're you know their punt teams on the field. We need to be as loud as possible you know forced to communication factor so make it where they can't make it where they can't hear that's what we want.

So one thing I want to talk about just quickly is you know kind of the weekly award winners that we give out student athletes of the week Chris Elko and AJ Cheeks scouts of the week on the offensive field Cade Adams and Will Kiker and on the defensive field Ben Guthrie and Ryan Purves and then captains for this for this week. Team captains this week are offensively Joe Fusile, defensively Jason Moore and special teams Henry Freer. And there's a lot of things going on a lot of you know externally a lot of things said about you know the future of college football and the future of walk -ons and you know every one of those guys is a walk -on or a former walk -on here at Georgia Tech and I wanted to make sure that they understood how special they are and how important they are to our success, to our preparation every day, and to know that as long as we're willing to enable, you know, with the rules allowing, we're going to do everything we can to make sure we have a walk -ons here at Georgia Tech and on the football program and because they're a vital part of our entire organization. And just to know, you know, someone comes in and might not have been recruited at high lightly recruited or heavily recruited inside and still to come because they wanted to come to Georgia Tech. You know, it's just providing opportunity to those guys. Really giving them something that they wouldn't be able to have and you know to be a part of a team and help a team prepare to win. I think it's pretty cool. I mean, those guys sacrifice a lot. So I just wanted to give a thanks to those guys in a very, very visible way. So, and they've earned, it's not like it's just a throwing them a ball and those guys, you know, Jason Moore's been glued for a long time and he came in as a walk on O -line and then moved to D -line, ended up, earned himself away, did an earned in scholarship and just proud of all those guys. Joe's been an integral part of the offense for several years and Henry you know no one usually knows who the long snapper is unless they mess up so but I think everybody knows what Henry Freer is based on what he's done here scholastically at Georgia Tech over the years and what he'll continue to do for probably many many more years to come so make sure y 'all get his number if y 'all don't have it so he'll be hiring here in two years."

1. On the team being able to create margin...

"Yeah well I mean you know if there was a secret sauce I think we would would all be ordering it and have plenty of it but it's not it's it's going out and preparing and yeah You have to prepare, you have to practice, right? You have to be confident in yourself, confident in the plan to make those decisions. 'Cause we don't have a huge margin. We're not gonna have a huge margin in any game we play. And we're playing that 5-0 team coming here who has earned every bit of those five wins, right? You know, they've been down, you know, big scores, they've come back, they've won close games. You know, they've done all of it. Every game in this, you know from here on out it's gonna be it's gonna be a very evenly matched game so we do have to create that margin right we have the things we're doing well we have to keep doing well we have to continue to play hard all right we have to take care of the football all right we need to you know things we've worked on for for really for 10 weeks but you know really over emphasize the last couple you know of creating All right, you know, stealing possessions, you know, smart with penalties, you know, not having, you know, stupid bone -headed penalties, pre -snap, post -snap penalties. Those are ways you increase the margin of inseparation. And then when you play a team that does the same, right, now you're, now you're, I mean, you know it's going to come down to the fourth floor, right? And, you know, who's going to be in better condition? Who's going to be in better shape? And then The final piece of it is really the psychological part of it, the mindset of it, who goes in and you're not going into a game to play well. You go into every single game expecting to win and working for that goal to win a football game. And that's what you have to do, you have to go in and expect to win every game regardless of what the score is and keep fighting, keep playing, whether you're up, whether you're No, those don't need to matter. So the process is the right thing. Continuing to get people to consistently, I think, execute it, that's what's hard. That's what's hard, but that's also the challenging part. It's the fun part of it. Seeing guys develop, mature, be confident in themselves. Those are the great things about coaching."

2. On if having Tyler Santucci and Jess Simpson on the staff help with preparation with Duke's personnel...

"I mean, I think a lot of that's overrated. I really do. You watch You see their weak, you know the strengths their weaknesses, you know individually how they play collectively as a unit How they play collectively as a team how the head coach manages the game is a is a full full team So I don't I don't think it bears anything. They have one way or the other I don't believe that at all."

3. On Malik Rutherford and Eric Singleton...

"You know, but fast guys have to play fast, you know, big strong guys have to play big and strong. And that's where you start to decrease the football team is when your fast guys start slowing down and, you know, the advantages you have and you're able to create aren't there as much. So, yeah, getting them fresh last week was a big part of it."

4. On what has allowed Duke to play well in the second half...

"I mean you really if you look at the Duke program you can go backto really when Coach Cutcliffe was there and the culture that he instilled in the program and the way they played the game, schemes differ, coach to coach, but when a freshman comes in and they see a junior and a senior doing something, they're going to do it that way. Those guys are there, coach leaves and the new coach comes in, as long as that coach has a structure in the organization and the discipline within it, those So those players aren't going to change, you know, the hard work, those things. So, you know, it's something in their program that's been there over the course of, gosh, probably, like, 10 years, 8 years, 12 years, probably longer than that. If you look at when they kind of turn the corner a little bit, it's a program, it's a football program. And, you know, they're a good team and they have been for a long time. And, Like I said, the culture of the players in the locker room, coaches can come and go with those things. Alright, as long as that coach comes in, and Manny obviously does, Manny's a really good football coach. He preaches things the right way, does things the right way, builds his team the right way. So you're not going to lose those positive things that you had over the course of time. You know, from the time Mike was there in the backwood for him when Coach Cut was there."

5. On any injury updates...

"We're pretty healthy right now. I don't have anything to share. I don't. I got a lot to share, but I'm just going to share it. No, I don't have anything in regards to that."

6. On Freshman offensive lineman Harrison Moore...

"Yeah, first off, in recruiting, you always want to make him independent, regardless if they go to the same school. I saw one of the games last Friday night, brothers being on the same team. You recruit people independently. I mean we've had a lot of times when there's been an older brother, younger brother type thing. You know guys I might have been friends with. I mean you know Harp is a perfect example, right? You know you recruit those guys for them independently not because of who they are related to or those sorts of things. So you know it was a it was a name that he come across early on in recruiting. you know then that previous summer he committed somewhere else and things about 230, 240 at the time I think he was originally a tight end and then moved to O -line and you know he would turn his tape on about halfway through the year last year and you know I think you know Chris was recruiting Graham so you know Chris was involved with it and then you and then obviously Geep gets involved and Buster involved and you look at a kid that's playing really good football, that's listed at 240 and you talk to me, "Oh, at least 270 now. Oh goodness, this kid's got a chance. He's super athletic." So at that point, us, right? So it was an independent recruitment. Now it did help that when Chris, Graham was already committed to went out there to watch Graham play he's like whoa this kid he's a pretty good player so I mean recognizing the springtime so you know the coaching staff out there does a really good job with their team and then developing players and but when you when we met him came for a game last year on an official and when you sit down with him and you meet him you just different about this guy there's something different about him and the maturity A lot of that's credit to his high school coaches out there and how they've built their program. But the maturity level of him, you knew that it was going to be a matter of time when he put the weight on and added the strength, the athletic ability and the toughness and those things were going to stay and they have. So he ended up coming for that game of the visit, he still committed to the other place. Had a really, really good visit with him. And we got a call, really the next, I guess, that Sunday night, maybe, that he was going to move forward with switching and coming here.

They have the greatest tailgates at their high school football games now. So my home visit there, my home visit, was for Graham and Harrison, both Harrison both same time right and went to their stay there's the quarterfinals or semi -final game out there it was in in the old ranger old Ranger stadium out in out in Texas and and you talk about tailgate mean they just the barbecue set up so I'm gonna like trailers from from the wall here all the way out there these huge massive you know big -screen TVs in them and these smokers and cookers and fryers for an O-line man that was pretty those pretty awesome. And if you ever get a chance to talk to him, ask him a story about his tooth, So we're in something, it was preseason camp. And we're doing a red zone drill. And It's obviously good on good during camp. He comes running off the side, to the sideline, send it over, he's holding it, and I'm like, what are you coming out for, what are you coming out for? He goes, I'm not, I'm trying to find my tooth. I'm like, huh, can't find it, goes back to the huddle. He gets back in the game. I'm like, what did he just say? So I walk over there, they get ready for the next play, he's in the huddle, he breaks the huddle, he's going up to the line of scrimmage. I was like, "Oh my goodness, there's the whole tooth !" The huddle, like, root all the way, laying on the ground. Like Harrison, Harrison! He turns around and it looks like a Halloween character. I mean, just covered in blood. He's like, "I'm good." I said, "No, you're not." They saved the tooth, put it back in, didn't miss one rep of one practice, and right then I said, "I want to play it for us up front, man."

7. On how he and the program have grown since his first home win vs Duke two years ago...

"Well that's the second part first I mean that's probably the most noticeable to myself you know I tell you guys a lot that the self -assessment that takes place every every day every week you know the the comfort level of being the head coach on the sideline in the game right you you know when those times are where you're not 110 percent every single second, you know, there's a drive taking place. Okay, I can decompress for a minute, watch the flow of the game. You're always trying to think two or three plays ahead and the management of it. Scenarios within the game. A lot of those things, you know, you can rehearse all you want until they occur. There's one in particular that I learned from tremendously in that game there. I mean, it was the whole thing on it, but it was a fourth down call and it ended up having to, you know, end burn the timeout get in the punt team out there, kick it in the end zone, should have used a delay, just all those things, the situations that happen so much quicker now, and just the comfortability at work. Comfortability. Comfortability. Okay. On the sideline, right now, the elevated level of awareness, I think his increase, though, as well. So, I think it's going from being a stress, you know, part of the game to it's now a higher alert, higher sense of alert of being able to be aware of things that are going to take decision. We practice that two days a week. From probably two o 'clock to four or four thirty, me and Pat will sit in my office and we go through situations after situations after situations in games that happened the previous week. Clock management, timeouts, spot in the ball, all those different things. So that's been, there has been growth there, there has, you know, you're getting better, or you're worse, right? And then, you know, just as a program, just every, you know, part of the program, when I say program, I mean the athletic programs, you know, Georgia Tech Athletics, and really that's the credit to Dr. Cabrera and J Batt for the job that they've done and putting people in line, aligning people and having a singular vision of success in the classroom and success on the field for all of our athletic teams. And just not so thankful to those two and President Cabrera for allowing us to be in so support of us and allowing us to be able to do those things. So, You know vision of J as well, it's you know, it's been a tremendous amount of growth."