Georgia Tech football to face Georgia State for the first time Saturday

If familiarity breeds contempt, then Saturday’s matchup between Georgia State and Georgia Tech has the makings to become quite contemptuous by the 8 p.m. scheduled kickoff at Bobby Dodd Stadium.

Players and coaches on both sides of the field have worn the other school’s colors as recently as nine months ago. It’s a storyline certainly to consider when these two programs, separated by a few miles, meet for the first time.

“Great opportunity this week to play a place from right down the road,” Tech coach Brent Key said Tuesday. “We start out the season with goals of winning a state championship and winning a conference championship. You talk about our goals are right in front of us. I think it’s a great opportunity for two schools to play each other that are close, that have a lot of guys that know each other, coaches and players, so I think it’s gonna be a really good environment on Saturday night.”

Key hired two former Georgia State assistants during the offseason, bringing in Trent McKnight to coach Tech wide receivers and Cory Peoples to coach defensive backs. McKnight had been with the Panthers since 2017, Peoples with State since 2020. Also, defensive lineman Thomas Gore played at Georgia State for four seasons (2019-22) before transferring to Miami for the 2023 season.

On the flip side, GSU’s roster now includes quarterback Zach Gibson and safety Kenyatta Watson, both of whom wore white and gold in 2023. Defensive coordinator Kevin Sherrer was Key’s defensive coordinator for the final three months of the ‘23 Tech season.

State’s offensive coordinator Jim Chaney was on Tech’s coaching staff in 2022, and former Tech quarterback TaQuon Marshall is a graduate assistant for GSU.

The Panthers (0-0) are under the direction of first-year coach Dell McGee, a Columbus native who played at Auburn. His coaching career has spanned time leading Carver-Columbus to a state championship in 2007, a year at Auburn, two seasons at Georgia Southern and the previous eight seasons with Georgia.

He undoubtedly has strong relationships with many of Tech’s native Georgia coaches as well as an ample number of Georgians on the Tech roster.

“The biggest thing we gotta do is just match their physicality, and I just wanna see our guys have fun,” McGee told 680 The Fan on Tuesday about the matchup. “We wanna try to improve from our last scrimmage to see where we are now; that’s the biggest thing we’re preaching. Don’t play to the scoreboard. Let’s make sure we’re out-hustling and out-hitting whoever we play.”

Cordialities aside, both teams have a task at hand, tasks strikingly different in their respective natures.

Tech is fresh off a 24-21, last-second win over No. 10 Florida State halfway across the world in Dublin. The Yellow Jackets (1-0) should be on full trap-game alert, now having to guard against the so-called letdown performance after what will be a week of pats on the back.

Saturday’s affair is the season opener for State, a team that abruptly lost coach Shawn Elliott in February (Elliott took an assistant position at South Carolina), but also a team a program that went to a bowl game in four of the past five seasons and won three of those.

So while there may be some unknowns about what sort of personnel McGee deploys and what sort of game plan he may have, his roster generally is full of players who have experience winning.

“It’s kinda neat. It’s kinda like two Game 1s for us, which I’ve never been a part of,” Key said of GSU prep. “It’s no different than it was in the first week. You don’t know what they’re gonna come out with, you don’t know what type of – you think, but you don’t know. It’s about us being able to play the best football we can play, not overcomplicating things, being able to be simple with what we do, appear to be complicated with what we do and then our ability to make adjustments.

“You have to take the unknowns and uncertainties, all that gray that people wanna talk about, and you have to define it. How do you define it? You define it in improvement in your own team.”