It was a struggle in 2023 for Georgia Tech to reach seven wins and secure its first winning season since 2018. It was a struggle this season, too, but the Yellow Jackets clinched that winning mark one month sooner than a year ago thanks to a dramatic 30-29 win over North Carolina State at Bobby Dodd Stadium on Thursday night.
“It starts from the top with coach (Brent) Key, with who he hires, who he recruits, that kind of stuff,” Tech quarterback Haynes King said about the continued upward trajectory of the program. “He cares about the people in the building. With that being said, we have a really good locker room, and we have a really good building. It just starts from there.
“The kind of people that we have here, it’s just tremendous, and it shows when we have adversity, stuff like that. We know how to respond, we know how to fight through that stuff. Just find a way. It’s just amazing. The people that are here just makes everything in the world just better. It just makes you more confident, more comfortable. What Key does, it just allows you to have fun and play the game instead of just press and always worry about other stuff.”
King is part of the walking wounded on Tech’s roster who willed the Jackets (7-4, 5-3 ACC) to Thursday’s win and through a season that has been anything but a cakewalk.
Nursing an injured throwing shoulder, King played only 20 snaps Thursday, ran for 18 yards on nine carries and completed all three of his passes for seven yards. He split time with freshman quarterback Aaron Philo who led a heroic, last-minute drive that ended with Philo’s 18-yard touchdown run.
One of King’s — and Philo’s — top receivers, Malik Rutherford, left in the first quarter with what looked like an ankle injury. Linebacker Kyle Efford was able to play 26 snaps, but he has been in and out of the lineup for weeks with an undisclosed injury. Starting cornerback Warren Burrell missed a second consecutive game as well.
Running back Jamal Haynes gutted out 36 yards on 13 carries and had four catches, including two pivotal receptions on the winning drive, for 34 yards. He spent most of the evening trying to work through a knock to his left hip.
The aforementioned are only a few of the names on a long list of Jackets who have been on and off the field because of injuries this season. And with Tech having secured bowl eligibility Nov. 9, and with championship aspirations long washed away, it would have been easy for some of those Jackets to rest up over these past few weeks.
But that won’t cut it in Key’s program.
“That starts in January. Starts right when the offseason clicks,” Haynes said. “We go through a lot of things throughout the week. Coach Key kind of prides himself on toughness around this football team, and that’s what we pride ourselves on. It starts up top, and coach Key does an amazing job of aligning us and getting us in the right position to be able to come out here week after week and just ready to play.
“And another shoutout to our medical staff. They do an amazing job here, sunup to sundown, just making sure us kids get our recovery.”
Key, now 18-14 overall as Tech’s coach and 13-9 in ACC games, has secured a $50,000 bonus, per the terms of his contract, for getting his alma mater bowl eligible. He also stands to make a $100,000 bonus if his team reaches eight regular-season wins — it would have to upset No. 10 Georgia on Nov. 29 to do that.
Tech has not won eight games in a season since 2016, when it finished 9-4. Beating the Bulldogs would change that and give these Jackets their third win over a top-10 team this season.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with the team we’re playing. My confidence in this football team stems from what they’ve done, it stems from who they are, what they’ve demonstrated over the course of the entire year,” Key told 680 The Fan on Friday. “It has not to do with who we’re playing or whether the team is ranked. I have confidence in this team to put together the week we have to have preparation-wise and be ready to go.”
Give me that ball
Tech’s defense has been vastly improved from a season ago, but it has curiously struggled to find takeaways for much of the 2024 campaign. That changed somewhat Thursday when it picked off N.C. State freshman quarterback CJ Bailey three times and returned one of those interceptions for a touchdown.
“Coach Tucci, man,” Tech defensive end Romello Height said about the defensive performance, citing Tech defensive coordinator Tyler Santucci. “Coach Tucci is a great defensive coordinator. He always preaching every week, like, he don’t go a day without putting the plan on the board. He recently changed it from creating two takeaways to three takeaways. So coming into this game we had the mindset we was gonna get three takeaways instead of two takeaways. Shouts out to Tucci, man.”
Height’s interception was a crucial play in the fourth quarter that led to King scoring on a 3-yard touchdown run on the ensuing offensive snap. Earlier in the night, linebacker E.J. Lightsey, a Georgia transfer, read an attempted gadget play by the Wolfpack that turned into a 21-yard pick-six. At the end of the second quarter, Tech linebacker Trenilyas Tatum also got his hands on a Bailey pass.
The three takeaways for Tech was its most since recording three in a win at Virginia last season. Tech improved to 12-3 under Key (5-0 this season) when winning the turnover margin. It was plus-2 on Thursday.
Tech also held the Wolfpack to 5 of 12 on third downs, got a fourth-down stop and forced a 58-yard field try as time expired. Had the kick been from a shorter distance it may very well have been true.
“Hat’s off to this defense. They’ve been playing hard every game, all year, every game and, really, it’s just the competitive part of us,” Tatum said. “We wanna win this game, really wanted to win, we knew we wanted to win, we woke up this morning as a defense and we’re like, ‘We’re gonna win this game. The defense gonna win this game.’ We haven’t had a game where we won a game. It had to come at some point. We took ownership and we told the offense we had their back and got a stop.”
Birr, it’s cold out here
An unsung hero Thursday was Tech kicker Aidan Birr, a sophomore who booted field goals of 44, 41, and 45 yards, respectively, on a cold and windy night. Birr also made all three of his extra-point attempts, making him 38-for-38 for the season in that department.
Birr hadn’t made a field goal since Oct. 26, when he made two at Virginia Tech. He didn’t attempt one Nov. 9 against Miami and was 2-for-4 combined in the games at North Carolina and against Notre Dame.
Birr was 6-of-12 on field-goal attempts before his current streak of five in a row made.
“He was struggling, was in a slump. It’s not like it was a secret. Everybody knew it,” Key said. “It’s not one of those things where you don’t talk to him, it’s not the pitcher throwing the no-hitter. Three or four weeks ago, in practice one day, at the end of practice one day we called up field goals and had the whole team come out there and circle around him and he missed a couple, and the team kept staying behind him.
“I thought it was important for him to understand that he’s not a singular person on an island out there.”
Goodbye to Bobby Dodd
Thursday was Tech’s home finale for the 2024 season, a season which saw only five games played at Tech’s historic Bobby Dodd Stadium.
The announced attendance Thursday was 34,591, which gave Tech an average of 38,215 fans per home game this season. It’s the fourth consecutive season in which the Jackets have played in front of an average crowd of less than 40,000.
Tech went 5-0 in its home games this season, its first unblemished mark at home since 1999.
“I’m happy for these kids. All the kids. The kids in the stands. The students. The fans that have come to the games,” Key said, joking none of his current players were alive in 1999. “Those last couple drives, it was loud, it was a good environment. That’s what I’m happy for.”
Tech also played two neutral-site games this season, beating Florida State on Aug. 24 in front of 47,998 fans at Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland, and losing to Notre Dame in front of 59,021 fans at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Oct. 19.
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