ATLANTA —
Georgia Tech once claimed a relevant and competitive football program, even with academic mandates and economic realities that limited its ceiling among top FBS competition. The Yellow Jackets occasionally contended for ACC titles or upset ranked teams, even the Godzilla of a program to the east in Athens.
But that’s not the Georgia Tech of today. The Jackets have spiraled to unforeseen depths of inadequacy and humiliation. They are 10-27 since 2019 when coach Geoff Collins took over for the retiring Paul Johnson. Collins has lost eight straight games to FBS opponents — the past four by a composite score of 183-10.
Along the way, the Jackets also have dropped games to The Citadel,
Temple and
Northern Illinois, and last week they were blown off their home field by Ole Miss (42-0). The
Rebels ran the ball 62 times for 316 yards because, in short, Tech’s defense, couldn’t stop them. Lane Kiffin, the Ole Miss head coach, referenced his team’s rushing numbers as “kind of old Georgia Tech numbers” — a nod to the option offense embraced by Johnson — and said he would’ve liked to call more passing plays to give his backup quarterback some work, but he had, “empathy for what was going on in that game on the other sideline, and the hot seat, or whatever he’s on. I just didn’t really feel like it was right.”
Asked if he would fire Collins if he was in charge, former fullback Zach Laskey, “I would. I don’t know what the reason is that they’re not. I’m guessing it’s a money thing. I mean, he’s done some good things, and he’s come up with some catchy slogans. But at the end of the day, I don’t care about slogans. I care about winning football games.”
Former guard Will Jackson said he doesn’t feel it’s his place to say the words, “Fire Geoff Collins,” but his comments clearly support that position.
“I’m not sure what the administration saw last season that was encouraging enough to bring him back,” Jackson said. “The way we finished last year, that decision was completely lost on me, particularly when you look at a school like Nebraska that basically sent up the Bat Signal who said, ‘We’re really serious about football, and we’re so serious that we’re going to eat X millions of dollars to get this guy out of here, sooner than later and let the next guy know we’re invested in this program.’ It felt like Georgia Tech was going in the complete opposite direction because it was clear the train was going the wrong way.”
Jackson said even with Tech’s limitations, “seven wins a year should be the floor. … I don’t speak with anyone who is positively inclined about Georgia Tech football. It’s, ‘I have better things to do on a Saturday,’ or, ‘Why am I watching Ole Miss run for 300 yards in our stadium?’”
“You don’t even want to wear your Tech gear at times,” said former center Freddie Burden, who supports Collins’ firing.
In ESPN’s predictive rating system, Georgia Tech currently ranks 99th nationally out of 131 programs — behind the state’s two Group of 5 programs, Georgia Southern (86th) and Georgia State (98th). In Sagarin computer rankings of 261 FBS and FCS programs, Tech ranks 113th, between Incarnate Word and U.C. Davis.
A dozen players left the program via the transfer portal after last season. The total was close to the average for college programs, but it was noteworthy that running back
Jahmyr Gibbs, by far the team’s best player, left for
Alabama, and two other players,
Mike Lockhart and
Wesley Walker, referenced “uncertainty in the program” in social media posts on the way out the door.
It also was significant that five assistants left for other jobs, notably running back coach Tashard Choice, who went to Texas despite having played for the Jackets. Choice was their lead recruiter.
Burden said, “A change needs to be made, honestly. … We guaranteed a guy seven years, and we haven’t seen him be successful. I guess he was a pretty good coordinator. But what are we really doing? Coach is getting paid a crazy amount of money, and our budget is such that you can’t just go get anybody. It’s a tough spot for the AD and a tough spot for Collins, but at the end, I think you need to make a change.”
Former guard Trey Braun, a recent president of Georgia Tech’s Letter Winners Club, said he doesn’t want to call for a firing because he believes “public complaining can have diminishing returns.” But he conceded the evidence to support a change is overwhelming.
“No one is in disagreement about the state of the program and the necessary path forward,” Braun said. “The only mistakes that can be made at this point are indecisiveness mistakes. I want things to move forward professionally, and that seems to be a lost art. Everything is so emotionalized.
“Now I understand the frustration at sitting in a state of limbo, especially since we’ve collected the data this season. There was a ubiquitous understanding that last Saturday was a form of a test, and there’s nothing left that can (dispute) that. We’ve gone through every test possible, and the results are in. Every opinion that matters is on the same page at this point. Everybody’s opinion, including the fan base, has been heard and validated. The results indicate there needs to be a change. I don’t want edifices of opinions to poke through. It’s important that the results speak for themselves.”
Laskey believes there’s a lack of accountability when players make mistakes. He puts that on Collins, who has refrained from criticizing players publicly: “I can appreciate a player’s coach and how he doesn’t want to throw anybody under the bus. But where’s the accountability? We’re not seeing it translate over from practice to games. You can see that with the blocked punts. I’m a little bit more old school. I think guys should be held accountable, and good teams should want to be called out. If you’re a good, tough team, you can take criticism.”
Roddy Jones, a former running back turned broadcaster, called the Ole Miss game “embarrassing” on his College Sports Now podcast and questioned the team’s toughness: “Not only are they not as talented as we were promised as they would be at this point, but there also seems to be no toughness to this team. There’s no want-to or will to win.”
Jones called this a “low point of Georgia Tech football over the last 50 years,” then reminded himself of the 1-10 season under Bill Lewis in 1994 and said, “maybe 25 years.”
This wasn’t expected. But Jackson recalls watching Collins’ introductory news conference, and, as a Knoxville native, he thought about former Tennessee head coach Butch Jones, master of “championship of life.”
“It was reminiscent of a coach (Jones) who won every press conference, set expectations and said a lot of nice things, but when you set up expectations like that, it sent up a lot of red flags for me,” he said. “Then we get on the field, you watch us lose to The Citadel and Northern Illinois and not even being competitive against the Clemsons and the Georgias of the world. It made it pretty obvious we were not headed in the right direction. And it’s tough right now. I hate it for the players, I hate it for the fans. Everybody wants to be just relevant.”
Reminded that Jones actually had two nine-win seasons at Tennessee, Jackson said, “Yeah, it’s probably a disservice to Butch Jones to compare the two.”
theathletic.com
