Everything From Brent Key's bye week press conference

The Yellow Jackets head coach met with the media today in the midst of the bye week for Georgia Tech

Jackson Caudell | Oct 10, 2023

Everything From Brent Key's bye week press conference /

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Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets

Coming off of a huge win against Miami, Georgia Tech is now in their bye week and they will be preparing for the second half of the season, which begins next Saturday against Boston College.

Head coach Brent Key met with the media today for his only press conference during the bye week. Here is everything the Yellow Jackets head coach had to say today.

Opening Statement

"A great win on Saturday night for this team, for the players, for the coaches, to be able to go on the road and play a night game on the road, they had a good crowd, a good atmosphere, had a little bit of rain to cool us off a little bit. But all of that aside, just happy for the kids, happy for the coaching staff to be able to rebound and get the win on Saturday night. We said last week that the previous game was going to define us, we knew it would and it was our choice on how it would define us, and now we have to put another week together and the most important thing right now is this bye week. We don't necessarily have an opponent on Saturday but we have a lot of work to do.

The most important practice of the year is today and now the most important practice will be tomorrow. I use the example of... it is always a good example to use when you have linemen in front of you, I asked them what they ate on Sunday and it was all sorts of answers and I don't want to say names, they may or may not be partners of ours, but it was all sorts of pizza and burgers and all sorts of things today and I asked them if they were still hungry and they said yeah, I'm starving and that's the point of it, what you ate yesterday does not fulfill you today and the hunger we have to have each week cannot be fueled by the previous week and we are fueled by the hunger going into that game, a hunger to play the right way and we played with the right competitive discipline in the game and when I say competitive discipline, I mean the discipline to compete for 60 minutes and that is what they did.

We have to have the same hunger going into this week, to attack this week in the same way and know what we are getting out of this week, what we are working on, what we are working to improve on and clearly define those things to the players and the staff so once this week gets towards the end, we can take a little time to continue to rest our bodies up and get ready to play Boston College in two weeks. It is always a good analogy with young guys when you can use foo, so you use that.

Another thing is, I got home and was getting ready to watch the game last night and someone on the TV last night was talking about our game and I told the team that there is this thing about talking about the decisions that were made on their sides of the ball that impacted the game and I told the team and the staff that it was you guys on the field and chose to play that down as hard as you could, you chose to play that down as hard as you could. If you listen to the noise, if you looked at the scoreboard, if you saw the timeouts that we did not have, if you saw the time on the clock, if one person on the defense plays at 90% or 95% on that last play, then we don't get the outcome that we like. We turned it around to go 75 yards in 26 seconds, to go that length of the field... If one person did not play the way that they can, if they had not played hard and played with everything that they have, if they had payed attention to what the clock said or the scoreboard said, then we would not have had that outcome. That is the way that I look at it. Our guys were the ones on the field and chose to play the way you're supposed to play. We challenged them to play 60 minutes and we had to wash a stigma off of us on this football team and we went out and did that.

Now it is about what follows up, its about this week of preparation for the bye week and then it is about the preparation next week for Boston College so we are pleased to get a win, it was an outstanding win for this team, for the fans, for this administration, for everybody, but now it is on to the next and we have a lot of work to do."

1. On how he approaches the bye week...

"Good on good. There are certain numbers that we need to hit each day that began yesterday with a lift and a team run, a 30 minute team run, we watched the film and today we went out there in shoulder pads, and helmets and had 20-25 minutes of indy to really work on fundamentals and techniques of the game of football that we have to get bac to. Then we had good-on-good 7-on-7, pass rush, then we went to a corrections type of period, it was a 10-15 period of what offense and defense needed from the first six games, whether it was a certain blitz or a certain run scheme that we had seen before and hit on us and we went back and looked at those vs the scouts and then we had a special teams period and then we had a good-on-good competitive 1's vs 1's, 2's vs 2's and then the 3's went out there and did 3's vs 3's, we had a couple of competitive two-minute situations, about an hour and 20 minutes on the field and tomorrow we will go about two hours and 10 minutes of really the same model.

Thursday we will start to look at the opponent a little bit with a good portion of that being good-on-good to get ourselves better. We will hit those certain thresholds each day and if we hit those... the thing you don't want to do is lose conditioning. The one thing that I do believe we have done is play fast. Our team looks fresh for the most part in every game so we want to keep that going so we have to make sure we don't lose that conditioning, but also keep guys healthy and that time will come on Friday and Saturday to get rested up."

2. On being able to confuse Tyler Van Dyke with new coverages...

"We put some tweaks in the coverages, different coverages in down and distance and in parts of the field and it was more about what we felt was the best thing for us to play in that down and distance in the game. It was really more steered to us than it was Van Dyke so luckily he ended up getting... what did you say, confused? They were good changeups."

3. On the play call that resulted in Haynes getting a touchdown...

"I thought there was a 3rd and 4 where we handed it off to Jamal, then he scored on a run and he scored. The way that our defense was playing and a lot of things that I have spoken before, we gameplan through the week on where we are going to be aggressive on 4th downs and not on 4th downs and touchdowns vs field goals, when you get to the game, a lot of it comes down to who the defense is playing, how the offense is playing, how the kicking game is at that point and the field position battle, are you up scores, are you down scores do you have great momentum. Again, forgive me if I don't remember the exact run, it depends on the situation if the call stays the same or if the call changes."

4. On recruiting...

"We have to keep recruiting. We have to use the momentum that we gained, we have to stay the course. On Thursday, we will practice Thursday morning then the majority of the staff will head out to be in place then the rest will be out on Friday morning, I will work through the day on Friday until Friday afternoon... I think I have three games on Friday night that I will be at so full speed ahead."

5. On what else Kevin Sherrer can do to tweak the defense on the bye week...

"The biggest thing right now we are doing, and I just walked out of a staff meeting, is organization on that side, Where everyone is one the field when he is calling it. We have multiple signalers, multiple ways to get calls in, I mean there are probably five or six different ways to get calls in, so just the organization of those guys, the substitutions when they are coming, we have more personnel groupings on defense that we are using, just the management of all those things, the organization of all those things, that is a big part of what today is as a defensive staff is getting those things together.

How we are going to present the opponent each week, the information we are going to give the kids, the information we are going to show in a unit presentation as a whole defense, what is in the scouting reports, how we are doing the corrections each day, how we are addressing the corrections, practice fundamentals, practice some of the group work things that we are doing. It is really more of an organizational thing that we are focused on and once we get those things cleaned up today and part of tomorrow then we will go into more of the schematic stuff."

6. On the improvement in tackling...

"Yeah, like I said after the game, I was as pleased and as happy with the secondary with the way that they tackled and I have been saying for a few weeks now, go take a shot, make the tackle, don't be afraid to sit there and stutter and have your head down and not make it, the other 10 guys are coming and I think that showed up a lot in the game they hit there shots. We had five, six, seven guys coming to rally around to be at the ball and that is what defense is. You can talk about schematic calls and blitzes and fronts and all of that but at the end of the day, are those 11 guys going to be around the football every single time and turning and putting there foot in the ground and transitioning to the ball and the effort they played with and I thought they improved in that and we have a ways to go in that but I thought there was some improvement."

7. On Chase Lane and Jordan Williams possibly being back next week...

"I think so. Jordan was running around out there today, he did not do the contact today, he stood there with me in the back and I said, dang Jordan, you did not go on the trip this week, what does that mean? He laughed and said that that means I am on every one from now on. Chase was out there moving around and it is to the point now with both of those guys that it is about pain tolerance with them, we are not going to put those guys in any jeopardy to play before they can, but I am hoping to have both of those guys back next week and that would be a tremendous addition to have both of those guys back."

8. On whether Jordan will move inside or stay outside when he returns...

"We will have the five best guys on the field when he is back and ready to play."

Everything From Brent Key's bye week press conference

Jackson Caudell | Oct 10, 2023

Opening Statement

1. On how he approaches the bye week...

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