AJC: Brent Key has the players to win in ACC

bonham

bonham

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Pretty fair piece. Talks about how Tech has enough talent to be a winning program in the ACC. Just need the coaching. At first, I didn't think Clown Boy upgraded the talent all that much but Cunningham seems to think he has.

www.ajc.com

Michael Cunningham: Georgia Tech’s Brent Key has the players to win in ACC

Former Georgia Tech coach Geoff Collins got the recruiting part right, if not the coaching. Coach Brent Key has inherited the kind of player talent than can make the Jackets winners in the ACC.
www.ajc.com www.ajc.com
 
The LOS talent was bad to awful when Collins took over. Throw in QBs that wouldn’t make a roster in the ACC and there was a lot of turnover needed. Doesn’t excuse how bad the results were or that he didn’t have an actual plan.

Key is in a much better place with the roster and .500 in ACC and overall is very doable and should happen. I figure it will be his 3rd season when we find out if he is GOL or Gailey. A winner or a do the minimum.
 
bonham said:
Pretty fair piece. Talks about how Tech has enough talent to be a winning program in the ACC. Just need the coaching. At first, I didn't think Clown Boy upgraded the talent all that much but Cunningham seems to think he has.

www.ajc.com

Michael Cunningham: Georgia Tech’s Brent Key has the players to win in ACC

Former Georgia Tech coach Geoff Collins got the recruiting part right, if not the coaching. Coach Brent Key has inherited the kind of player talent than can make the Jackets winners in the ACC.
www.ajc.com www.ajc.com
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From the article that sums the state of the program perfectly:

The most important reason why the Yellow Jackets aren’t a salvage project for Key is that he has a pretty good player talent base to work with. That’s incongruent with Tech’s 14-32 record (11-22 ACC) over the past four seasons. Chalk some of that up to the rough transition away from the triple-option. Put the rest on Collins’ inability to demonstrate that he can win at the Power Five level.

One thing Collins did right, though, was to increase the level of player talent at Tech. After Hall of Fame coach Paul Johnson ambushed opponents with his specialized offense, there now are more good players in Tech’s program. They just need better coaching.
 
infinijacket said:
Collins did not significantly improve the talent level, except maybe slightly in his first year. Look at the ratings.
Click to expand...

Through HS recruiting, agree he did not. Aside from Gibbs there’s hardly any difference. But through transfer recruiting I’d say he clearly did. We went from hovering in the 8-10 range of total team talent (ACC rank) in the CPJ years to being in the 5-7 range in the Collins years. Our DL especially was noticeably more talented / performed better the last few years.

I still don’t subscribe to the “bare cupboard” narrative. Part of the reason it looked so bare on the field is because he didn’t know how to use what was in the cupboard. Skill positions and secondary look about the same to me. But certainly the talent in trenches have improved to my eyes.
 
infinijacket said:
Collins did not significantly improve the talent level, except maybe slightly in his first year. Look at the ratings.
Click to expand...
just more lazy media regurgitating a talking point they have no interest in fully exploring.
I recall buried somewhere deep in a story Ken did early on in the Clown era that said the new coaches were pleasantly surprised at the talent they inherited at the skill positions. Of course, Clown didn't trumpet that because it would go against his own narrative.

That 2020 class initially was impressive. But how much of it is left? And how many of the top recruits remain? I think only 11 of the 22 signees are still around and four of the top five, in terms of rankings, have left. Of the 11 left, five of them have barely played or not played at all. So that's not a lot of production remaining from the class Clown hung his floppy hat on.
 
Uh, someone tell Cunningham we don't have a two-game win streak against Boston College.
You know, that's stuff easy to look up.
Never been a fan of Cunningham's work anyway. This just makes me less of one.
 
That headline is also misleading as hell. It says Tech can win the ACC. Cunningham writes we can be winners in it, i.e., not bottom dwellers. There's a difference, especially when he writes about the level of talent Clemson and Miami and Florida State are compiling.
Then again, it's Cunningham writing, and he's wrong more than Bradley is. That's saying something. Something not very good.
 
Pretty good look. The ACC sucks, but will be tougher to win with the elimination of divisions. Duke may never play for another ACCC in history.
 
To see it for free you can also open the link in a private/incognito window and quickly press CTRL+A then CTRL+C before the blocker loads and then paste it somewhere to read it.
 
Every single student athlete is a now a free-agent at the end of the season, thanks to the transfer portal. So Tech can have all the talent in the world if we can convince five-star kids that calculus is a fun way to spend three mornings per week. Or pay them enough.

The talent level is the same as it's always been here. The last four years were bad because a ööööing moron was the head coach.
 
Walton said:
The LOS talent was bad to awful when Collins took over. Throw in QBs that wouldn’t make a roster in the ACC and there was a lot of turnover needed. Doesn’t excuse how bad the results were or that he didn’t have an actual plan.

Key is in a much better place with the roster and .500 in ACC and overall is very doable and should happen. I figure it will be his 3rd season when we find out if he is GOL or Gailey. A winner or a do the minimum.
Click to expand...
I disagree with this. The talent at OL was good (but not great), it just wasn't suited to the type O we wanted to run. Two of those guys were still playing a lot last season, in year 4, despite the transfers and newer recruits. Same for QB. What we did not have was much depth. Those guys might not have made an ACC roster that was running a pro style O, but they could certainly have run that RPG we were trying to run had we had an OC who was worth a hoot and designed his O to their strengths. In fact, I'd say it was the coaching talent that largely wouldn't have been on the staff of another ACC program. I think Key and Choice were likely the only two offensive coaches we had that may have made it onto an ACC staff.

All that is water over the dam now, though. Things will get better directly under new leadership.
 
Having a great season also depends on how you avoid the injury bug...or not. Teams deep with talent are better able to weather such storms. GOL always said our starting 22 could compete with anyone. Once you get past that is where top tier programs start separating themselves from a depth-talent standpoint.
 
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