Coaching Search Update

Sumlin? Surely we are interviewing better candidates than someone who hasn't had a winning season since 2017.
 
D
THWUGA said:
Since they ripped the ball out of Thomas's hands about 30 minutes after the play should have been whistled dead and

Chadwell may not be coming to GT but he's going to a P5 school, but this article doesn't even mention him.
Click to expand...
Did it against Ball too
The freakin refs were pulling player off pile when a dawg grabbed the ball and ran for decisive score
 
I don’t know why we wouldn’t consider Tom Herman.
He probably wouldn’t come to GT though
 
Schultz: Brent Key has made himself a viable option at Georgia Tech but maybe not No. 1
Jeff Schultz
ATLANTA — Regardless of where Brent Key’s career goes from here — staying with Georgia Tech as its head coach or down the hall to resume his assistant job or leaving for another program — the job he has done is nothing short of remarkable. He was handed a program that went 10-28 under Geoff Collins, including 1-10 against top-25-ranked teams, and has gone 4-3 with road wins against two ranked teams. Collins left all associated with the Tech program humiliated. Key has them smiling, at least periodically, and that’s more than anybody expected.

The persistent question now is where the Jackets and their new athletic director, J Batt, go from here. Tech is a 35.5-point underdog for Saturday’s season finale against top-ranked Georgia in Athens. Key isn’t the perceived long shot most figured two months ago when Collins was fired and the offensive line coach was bumped up to interim chief of a sinking vessel. Players have taken to his straightforward approach and are playing hard for him. They’re playing more physically and with confidence. They don’t sulk when things go wrong, as evidenced last week when they rallied after being down 17-0 at No. 13 North Carolina and won 21-17 with a third-string quarterback.

Key’s response Tuesday when asked how he can keep players motivated going into a game against No. 1 Georgia: “It’s just 10 (sic) spots higher.” It’s like a page from the Paul Johnson screw-them manuscript.

Batt has kept a low profile since his hiring. He has spent much of his time meeting with donors and staff. He has left some with the impression that he not only has a clear vision for the coaching job but that he also has had his top coaching candidate in mind for weeks. He has said little publicly about the search and issued only a generic statement to The Athletic two weeks ago: “I am still in the process of settling in here at Georgia Tech and evaluating our entire athletics program. My focus here on campus is working every day to support our student-athletes and coaches.”

Batt also would like to elevate the budget for coaches’ salaries, which would enable him to hire more sought-after talent. Collins made some progress in this area over what Johnson’s staff was given, but it’s still not nearly at the level of most programs in the Power 5.
Unless there’s some masterful misdirection at play, four potential scenarios have emerged above all others.

Hire Bill O’Brien: There’s a growing belief he is Batt’s first choice. He has made it clear to some that he wants this job. He might not be back as Alabama’s offensive coordinator, and the biggest question is whether he will wind up as a college head coach in 2023 or return to the NFL as an offensive coordinator (possibly returning to the Patriots). O’Brien has not been overly popular or reached expectations with an Alabama offense that includes Heisman Trophy winner Bryce Young at quarterback, although it’s worth noting that when a team loses 52-49 at Tennessee, all of its problems are not on offense.

O’Brien is solid and old-school and not overly creative when it comes to his offensive approach. But he might be open to hiring a coordinator with Georgia Tech. He also did an admirable job as Penn State’s coach post-Joe Paterno and briefly had some success in the NFL with Houston before things unraveled there, mainly after he was elevated to general manager. Mostly what O’Brien would bring to Tech is stability, and he has a good sense for organization and all aspects of a head-coaching job. He also was a Tech assistant under George O’Leary and Chan Gailey.

Keep Key: He clearly has earned the respect of players. He stepped into an awful situation and has started to turn things around. Nobody would say he doesn’t deserve the shot. The team’s worst moments during his brief tenure came after an injury to quarterback Jeff Sims (and the weirdness of Sims’ fluctuating status against Miami). Key also is a strong recruiter. But there would be obvious questions about who would be on his staff and what kind of offense he could run.

Asked about his message to the players after taking over, Key said: “I told them I would be extremely black and white with them, very direct, very open and very honest. I wanted them to have ownership in this football team. With ownership, they needed to understand what comes with that. No. 1 is accountability. If you’re going to be accountable for something, you also have to be responsible for it, for the good and the bad. It’s one thing to just say it; it’s another thing to let them live it. It’s all fun and games until something goes wrong. When you have that level of buy-in, you start to flip the mold from a coach-led to a player-led organization.”

Key predictably would not address any questions about the job Tuesday, first saying, “We have a game against the No. 1 team in the country on Saturday,” then later echoing, “We’re about Georgia. It’s the biggest challenge of my life right now, taking this group of men to Athens.”

Hire O’Brien and keep Key: This scenario normally is off the table because interim coaches either don’t want to stick around if they don’t get the permanent job or the new head coach doesn’t want the former interim on the staff. But this is a unique situation. If Key doesn’t get the job, it’s doubtful he’s going to get a head-coaching offer somewhere else, which means he’ll have to go back to being an offensive line coach. Key and his family love Georgia Tech and living in Atlanta. Keeping Key also would allow him to maintain the trust and relationships he has built with returning players, assuming the head coach is good with that.

One potential obstacle is offensive coordinators and line coaches tend to travel together because of blocking schemes, so Key’s philosophies would need to be aligned. For what it’s worth: Key played at Georgia Tech when O’Brien was on George O’Leary’s staff, and Key was a graduate assistant in 2001 and 2002 when O’Brien was the Jackets’ offensive coordinator.

Hire Jamey Chadwell: This is the sexy move that would excite many fans because Chadwell runs a multifaceted option offense, and he has been highly successful at Coastal Carolina. He is 31-4 in the past three seasons and likely will leave for a bigger job soon. Running the option/spread offense would minimize recruiting disadvantages Tech might have and play to more of the advantages Johnson utilized. At least one other athletic director familiar with Georgia Tech’s financial and academic constraints believes Chadwell should be at the top of the search list. The biggest concern about Chadwell: He has never coached or recruited at the Power 5 level. His head-coaching jobs have been at North Greenville (Division II), Delta State (Division II), Charleston Southern (FCS) and Coastal Carolina (FCS). Hiring him would be a similar risk to hiring Deion Sanders (Jackson State, FCS). It’s high-risk, high-reward.

Key will stay out of the public debate. He’s enjoying this ride while he can, and he’s even receiving some coaching tips from his 4-year-old daughter, Harper.

“She’s a big fan of running the ball, but she’s gotten more into the new-age things,” Key said. “She loves the reverses, the gadgets. She saw (quarterbacks) Taisun (Phommachanh) and Zach (Gibson), and she wants both of them to be in the game at the same time — one of them on a (pass) route, one of them throw and do a double throwback, reverse pass. So if you see that on Saturday, it was all her idea.”

If nothing else, the mood at Georgia Tech is lighter than two months ago. That’s progress.
 
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