Any candidate but Key, please!
Brent Key facts:
- Bad loss to a soft Virginia team at home that cost us bowl eligibility
- Multiple bad gametime calls (two punts inside opponent's 40!)
- No excitement to him as next head coach
- No demonstrated ability to lead a program
- No demonstrated ability to recruit
- Several years of failure here while he was an assistant coach, particularly poor OL play (his position group)
The pro-Key people seem to want him because he's had marginally more success with someone else's team than them and because he's a "Tech man". Woopty do. Hiring a former player for a coaching job instead of hiring purely on merits is a dumb move that we've done before (e.g. Roof) and other schools do which often leads to failure.
Let's compare Key to George O'Leary as interim coach:
- GOL failed to win a game
- GOL lost to a mediocre (5-6) Clemson team 20-10
- GOL lost to a bad (3-8) Wake Forest team 20-13
- GOL got blown out by a mediocre (6-4-1) UGA team 48-10
Under these criteria, GOL never would have been hired as HBC at GA Tech. I think we can all agree that would have been a big mistake.
To your summation of Key's demonstrated leadership, yes, he had the bad loss to UVA. That was bad. However, he has indeed led a program to beat 3 teams (Pitt, Dook, and UNC) with winning records, two of which (Pitt and UNC) were ranked at the time - UNC from 17 points behind with creative use of his #3 and #4 QB's.
To your summation of his recruiting, he has served as Recruiting Coordinator for 11 years, including the personnel that transformed UCF into a winning program, ultimately winning 69 games between 2007 and 2014, before O'Leary crashed and retired in 2015. That personnel included #1 QB Blake Bortles. Two years later, under HC Scott Frost, the juniors and seniors of Key's last 2 classes won 25 games in two seasons (2017-18) under Scott Frost.
To your summation of his OL, his OL has gelled remarkably well since TFG left, after Key reinstituted a set 2-deep, indicating an established 1st team with clear accountability to perform. He also returned to playing his OL as a unit - even all FR/SO's - so they could learn to play together as a unit, rather than plugging in transfer after transfer looking for a quick fix. The growth has been significant over the second half of the season.
No, Key is not the perfect candidate. Chadwell may even be the better option - I doubt we know. However, he is not a bad choice, though it appears you have convinced yourself that he has no merit at all.