Saturday, the No. 18 Tennessee Volunteers will head to Bobby Dodd Stadium in Atlanta to face the Yellow Jackets of Georgia Tech. Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. EDT and will be televised on ESPN. This is a dangerous spot for the Yellow Jackets. Coming off a home loss to Colorado to open the season, they now have to avoid an 0-2 start.
The Vols will look to seize the opportunity to begin 2-0 and, in doing that, clean up some things from their 56-9 opening win over the Furman Paladins. This is true freshman quarterback Faizon Brandon’s first road game in a sold-out Bobby Dodd Stadium. I’m sure the crowd will be heavily populated with Tennessee fans and give him and the team a more balanced environment. Thursday, Georgia Tech head coach Brent Key addressed the media ahead of Saturday’s contest. Below is everything he had to say.
KEY (opening): “We have a talented Tennessee team coming in this week to be able to play Saturday night in Bobby Dodd, and we’re excited for the opportunity. Had a good week of practice up to this point and excited to be able to play on Saturday. So, with that, I mean, I’ll keep it short like we have been doing and open up for any questions on the Tennessee game.”
Q: You mentioned on Tuesday that they had a unique offense. What kind of challenges will they bring to your defense?
KEY: “Yeah, they have good players. They have good players executing a good scheme. They can play with super fast tempo. They can slow it down. They can check with me. They can do a bunch of different things. But at the end of the day, they’ve got good players executing the scheme. They have fast guys at receiver, running back. They have a big offensive line. They really latch on to you, and they move their feet well. Get guys covered up and create seams for their running backs.
“They get you spread out with some of the splits and whatnot. But it comes back to discipline you have to play with and be able to go out and execute the scheme. And that’s what we’ve been working all week. Again, freshman quarterback is as good of a freshman quarterback as I’ve seen in college football in a long time. The thing I’m so impressed with is his poise. Behind center, you don’t see him get rattled. Very impressive young man to watch on film this week.”
Q: A couple of players yesterday mentioned playing up to the standard that they’ve set, and you mentioned some of that on Tuesday. How much of this week was fixing mistakes, getting back over that standard, and balancing that with being prepared for Tennessee?
KEY: “We’re getting ready to play Tennessee Saturday, so that’s what we’re preparing for. Every week you correct mistakes, and you work to elevate your team’s ability to go play well in games. But we’re preparing for Tennessee. And I don’t really know what else on that one. I mean, we talked a lot about the game last week on Tuesday. So everybody knows where I’m at on that. And we’ve been working all week and looking to play an exciting game in front of our home crowd again on Saturday night.”
Q: Running the ball is always going to be a priority, but we saw in glimpses, Alberto, some throws in that fourth quarter with the passing game. What’s the process like with a new quarterback and a new coordinator being able to make incremental gains, either through spring or through games, to grow confidence in that passing game and eventually open up to what you guys think it can be, where the ceiling is?
KEY: “Yeah, I mean, we’re going to plan on opening it up. It’s not really opening it up or not opening it up. Getting a flow. We’ve gone through one game together. We’ve already talked about that. And there’s marked improvements we plan to make. And you’re going to do what the opponent gives you. And there’s going to be times where you’re backed up in a corner and you have to get something done, and that’s where you have to go execute. You have to execute up front. You have to execute at the quarterback position. And that’s whether it’s run or pass. I don’t get caught up in that. All schemes are personnel-driven with us, and we’ve got to do a great job of putting our best players in position to make plays in the game that matter.”
Q: When you open up with your first game and you have to, one of your best five linemen is playing center and he’s starting his first game, how much of a jump in performance do you expect from him in the second week? Or is that something that you’re looking for?
KEY: “I expect everyone to make a jump between the first game and the second game. That’s where we make the most improvement is between game one and game two. That’s what I expect, is to make improvement. It’s not just the center, it’s not just the tackle, it’s not just the corner, not just the kicker or the quarterback. I mean, it’s everybody. We’re a team. I think that’s what gets lost a lot of times is externally, everybody wants to talk about individual players, right? We’re a football team. We’re a team, and we have to play together as one. Talk about the center, well, the offensive line is the greatest example of what a team is. It’s five guys that have to play as one. Well, we got to get 11 guys to play as one when they’re on the field. We have to get 105 guys to play as one as a team, right? And that’s what we’re looking to do on Saturday.”
Q: Speaking about the offensive line, I know there was some moving around during fall camp to create depth, versatility. Is there anything from week one to week two where you feel like you’re going to shift things around? Are you sticking with the same five guys?
KEY: “I’m not going to make drastic changes on something that for eight months we’ve evaluated, we’ve practiced, we’ve repped, right? Our job is to put the best five on the field, and that’s what we’re doing. There’s some guys that will come back here at some point, and they’ll be on the field. There’s some guys that develop. They’ll get on the field. I mean, there’s one in particular right now that I moved up today. You know, culmination of what he’s done and how he’s improved and what he did and what he was able to execute and go out and do in developmental practice today. There’s one I moved up. So, look, you don’t have a game like that and blow everything up, right? You don’t do that. That’s a recipe for disaster for the entire season. That says you have zero confidence in what you’ve done the previous eight months. Does that mean that people aren’t going to move and change at some point, some time? I don’t know. It could be Saturday. It could be in eight weeks. I’m not going to sit up here and say everybody’s job is on the line.
“I have confidence in the players that are out there on the field. I have confidence in the coaches that are coaching and calling the game. And this week has been a hard week for everyone. I’ve been hard on everybody. I’ve been hard on myself. I’ve been hard on the players. I’ve been hard on the coaches. And rightfully so. Rightfully so. But they need to understand, and I told them today, I’m hard on everyone. That’s my job. It’s because there’s a standard that we have to play to. It’s not about the outcome of a football game. Just like it’s not about the outcome of a football game this Saturday. It’s about how you play, how you go about doing your business, the style of play on the field, not making the mistakes that cost you, the pre-snap penalties, the lack of discipline, the lack of focus. That’s what’s got to take place. That’s what we’re working towards, and that’s what we’re building on. But I have confidence in the guys that are out there, and you’ll never hear me sit up here and say that about my players or my coaching staff.”
Q: Just in general on this matchup, this game meant a lot 100 years ago and then through the 50s, 60s, 70s. Are you glad to see a team like Tennessee, proximity and maybe some of this history? Are you glad to see this kind of team on the schedule?
KEY: “Yeah, look, I don’t get into the scheduling part of it. That’s for other people to talk about, for me to have a conversation with them. We’re excited to play the next opponent on our schedule. We’re excited to play a team that’s two hours away from us, two and a half hours away from us, that’s had a lot of success in the last three or four years. Josh has done a great job with that program. He’s instilled a lot of confidence in them right now. He’s taken a program that really kind of got turned upside down for a couple years and shot a lot of life back into them. There’s confidence in the way they play. They have good players doing it. They’re in a quality conference that we’re excited to go compete against on Saturday night at 7 o’clock here.”
Q: Talking about Rahkeem Smith, special teams player of the week in the ACC. For a guy that came in before last year to finally see him get his chance to shine last week and how big of a weapon he is on the special teams, talk about how proud of him you are.
KEY: “Yeah, he was also student athlete of the week this week. But like I said, guys, I’m proud of him, and I expect him to have a really big role in the game this week. So moving forward to this week, yeah, I expect him to be back there. I expect them to be honing in on him, though. And the guy took one 105 yards back and had a chance to break a second one. So that means everyone on the kickoff return team is going to have to elevate their play. If they think what they did last week is going to be good enough to do it this week, they’re wrong. If they think what they do on Saturday is going to be good enough the next week, they’re wrong. You have to elevate your game every week. You’ve got film on you now. And I know that we keyed in on him returning it, and we’ve got to be prepared for whatever may come that way.”
Q: There’s been a lot of publicity about Tennessee getting their starting linebacker back after a possible suspension and all that. How big is that for their defense?
KEY: “Yeah, I mean, he’s one of the better players in the country at that position. He was out last week, but there’s plenty of game tape on him that we know what he can do and what he has done. He’s a leader on that team. I mean, he’s a ball hawk. He’s as good of a linebacker as you’ll see anywhere in the country. So anytime you get a player back that’s that talented and has that much experience on the team, it’s big. But they’ve got depth, too. I mean, they have depth at that position. Some of those guys came from Penn State, with the defensive coordinator, with Jim, and they know the scheme and they know the defense. So I expect to see him out there and expect to see a lot of guys out there on the field along with him. So he’s playing, that way those guys play fresh as the game goes on, and that’s where we want to get to as well.”
Q: We talked about the atmosphere from last Thursday. I announced yesterday another sellout, fourth straight home sellout. Just talk about how locked in this fan base is right now, how much you guys want to put a good product out there on Saturday for them.
KEY: “We want to put a good product out there for ourselves, number one. These guys need to go out and earn the right to be a dang good football team. They’ve worked to do that. We didn’t do it previously, so the last game is really your resume. Our fan base allows us the opportunity to continue to be in those games. As bad as we played on Thursday, as bad as that game was, you have an opportunity to win it at the end. That is a huge credit to our fan base. That is a huge credit to the environment that’s been created here at Bobby Dodd Stadium. I can’t thank those people enough. I can’t thank the fans and the student body. I fully expect them to be in full force on Saturday. We need them. We need them to be loud. It’s our job to go out there and give them something better to look at. That’s what we’ve been working on this week. We’ve been working since January. Let me put it that way. We failed at that this past week. Saturday, it’s on us to go out there and give the fans what they’re looking for. I can’t thank them enough for being there.”
