There was a lot going on this week for Georgia Tech football.
Transfers from other programs have been at Bobby Dodd Stadium and on campus as they consider a possible move to Tech. Yellow Jackets from the 2024 roster have entered the NCAA’s transfer portal and already left the team. Coach Brent Key and his staff are continuing to sift through the film of potential players, both from the high school and college ranks, who could join the program for 2025. It was graduation weekend on campus.
Oh, and there is a bowl game for the current team to play in two weeks.
“Practice is practice, bowl time is bowl time. We good,” Key said Thursday in Birmingham when he was asked how he is managing being pulled in a dozen different directions. “We practiced Monday and Tuesday and worked out some weights (Wednesday and Thursday) and we’ll practice Friday morning. We’re not doing anything Vanderbilt-wise in practice, it’s all about our team and development. We’ll have a good developmental scrimmage (Friday) at the end of practice.
“Balancing time with that and then meetings with our team and players — this is where you really have to trust your staff as well when it comes to the evaluation of transfers. I see probably 1/100 of the ones they see. They’re watching each position and they kind of funnel it up and I get the ones that are coming to visit and if there is any indecision on anything.”
Tech (7-5) was at the Brock Indoor Practice Facility on Friday morning as it got back in the swing of things. Noticeably absent were star receiver Eric Singleton, left tackle Corey Robinson and reserve quarterback Zach Pyron, players who have all declared their intent to transfer (and Pyron has already announced a commitment to Minnesota) since the end of the regular season.
But the rest of the 2024 Tech team was largely intact as it finished up the first week of postseason practice. The Jackets will return to the playing field again next week as they start to hone in on the matchup with Vanderbilt (6-6) on Dec. 27 in the Birmingham Bowl.
“I’d say throughout my whole time here, whenever you’re around this part of the season, the locker room just always feels completely different,” Tech right tackle Jordan Williams said. “But usually when all that happens, we’re really just staying where our feet are, relying on the people that are in the locker room with us, leaning on the man next to you, that’s really important.”
Tech is afforded 15 practices ahead of its bowl matchup, invaluable time for a team still in the early stages of Key’s program. The practices give the team’s younger players even more of an opportunity to showcase their improvement and availability ahead of the 13th game of a season that started with preseason practice in July.
Each Thursday throughout the season Key and his staff conduct a developmental practice for the program’s younger and inexperienced players. Those players then rarely get the chance to play on Saturdays, but that could change in the Birmingham Bowl as roster turnover continues.
“The encouraging thing now is seeing where they are now compared to where they were at the beginning of camp and how they’ve developed and how they know the offense and the defense,” Key said. “I think (Friday) will tell a little bit when we do a little scrimmage time with them.”
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