On a breezy, cool Atlanta morning Tuesday, the 2025 Georgia Tech football team practiced for the first time as part of the long road ahead toward the start of the season.
The Yellow Jackets began the ritual of spring practice with a workout on Rose Bowl Field and inside the Brock Football Practice Facility. It was an important day to mark off the calendar as third-year coach Brent Key begins the evaluation of how his team will line up Aug. 30 at Colorado.
“We wanna be a consistent football team, consistent players. We wanna be competitive. We wanna love to compete,” Key said. “You really wanna be a competitor as opposed to a player. You wanna be somebody that seeks out the discomfort and the pain of preparation and doing the things that, necessarily, a normal person just doesn’t wanna do. In order to be a championship football team or an elite football player, you’ve gotta do those uncomfortable things.”
Being a championship football team is undoubtedly what these Jackets need to work toward. Not that Key’s previous teams didn’t have collecting trophies in mind when they came together, but this particular squad has the foundation of back-to-back seven-win seasons under its feet and the voices of a handful of veterans who have been inside the program long enough that know — and how to raise — the standard.
What Key’s first two teams also didn’t have that this one does is a significant increase in talent, both from the transfer market and the high school ranks. Many of the players that fall into that latter category were on the field Tuesday for their first official practice in white and gold.
“You talk about a group of freshmen that work as hard as I’ve ever seen. They check all the boxes,” Key said. “That doesn’t mean every person that comes in that’s a great talent is gonna play Day One. Everyone’s gotta still develop and be at their own timeline. But I think there’s a lot of guys in that freshmen class that have chance to help us, whether it be the first game or the sixth game or the 10th game.”
The 2025 Tech team has plenty of familiarity to fall back on in all facets of the game. Quarterbacks Haynes King and Aaron Philo lead what Key continues to name as, “the best quarterback room in the country.” Running back Jamal Haynes, now wearing No. 1 instead of No. 11, is back for his third year as a starter and wide receiver Malik Rutherford leads a group of relatively new wide receivers, but a group that includes Bailey Stockton (now No. 7) and Isiah Canion (now No. 4). Tech’s offensive line still features left guard Joe Fusile and right guard Keylan Rutledge along with Ethan Mackenny at left tackle.
Perhaps most significant on offense for Tech is that Key retained all six of his primary offensive position coaches.
While Tech does have a new defensive coordinator in Blake Gideon and a pair of new assistants in cornerbacks coach Kobie Jones and linebackers coach Darius Eubanks, Jess Simpson and Kyle Pope are back to direct a defensive line group led by Jordan van den Berg. Linebackers Kyle Efford, E.J. Lightsey, Jackson Hamilton and Tah’j Butler returned for 2025, and the back end includes 2024 contributors Clayton Powell-Lee, Omar Daniels, Rodney Shelley, Ahmari Harvey and Syeed Gibbs (Key said Efford and Shelley are rehabilitating still from offseason shoulder surgeries).
Seeing if some of those familiar names can hold onto their starting positions, or if new players emerge to earn playing time, started Tuesday.
“My job as a head football coach is to put the best 11 guys out there on offense, defense and special teams. That’s what we’ll do,” Key said. “The competition you have in every room is what drives improvement. That’s what drives improvement in individual players, but also in the positions on the football team.”
The Jackets are scheduled to resume practice Thursday and Saturday this week before two more practices next week and then some time off before the end of March. Tech’s annual spring game is scheduled for April 12.
Between now and then, Key will be belaboring the same message, a message he hopes makes his third football team better than his first two.
“Let’s make no bones about it what the mission and the goal is for this year, and that’s to improve as a football team,” Key said. “In order for us to take that next step we’ve gotta understand what it is to be consistent — in the way we prepare, the way we practice, the effort and the strain that we give and how we go about just every day having a laser-sharp focus on the job we have to get done. You wanna chase consistency and avoid complacency.
“I asked the team after practice what’s another word for complacency? It’s not lazy or tired, complacency is overconfident, it’s ego, self-centered. That’s what happens when people get in that frame of mind. I’m not saying that’s who we are, but we’re gonna very transparent in the way we address things and how we wanna prepare for the football season.”
About the Author
Keep Reading
The Latest
Featured
