Everything From Georgia Tech Head Coach Brent Key After The Yellow Jackets' Spring Game

Georgia Tech held their annual White and Gold Spring Game today and the end result was Team Wreck'Em coming out on top thanks to a late two-point conversion stop. After the game, head coach Brent Key spoke with the media and here is everything that he had to say.

Opening Statement

"I guess I'll get up here and give the status quo statement that you do after every spring. Well, I guess not many people are doing it as much anymore. But today was a perfect example of why I think it's important to play spring games. There's a lot of reasons behind it, you know, fans and your student body and people around. But the importance is when you go out and scrimmage and you have people in stands, and it's a different environment. And you don't know how you're gonna scrimmage by the way you practice necessarily. You hope you do, all right? Well, then you don't know how you're gonna scrimmage in a stadium with people in it, you know, as opposed to a stadium that's empty, all Alright, well then it comes to play in the game. So it's just everything we're doing, trying to shrink that gap between, you know, our preparation and playing in the game. And this is another step towards that. Really it's the only time in college football that you have an opportunity to play in front of people and see what guys are gonna do. Are they gonna be looking in the stands and talking to people? Or are they gonna try to do things they hadn't done? But these are all coaching moments and coaching opportunities and chances for us to take things that might have been failures and mistakes that the kids made, or us coaches make, and then be able to get those corrected and go play.

So I was pleased with the effort. I was pleased with the guys. I thought we've had a good spring. And the thing I told them afterwards was, you know, I think we have a chance to have a good football team, but, you know, if they want to have a chance to have a really good or great football team, right, then from this point on, everybody wants to make the, you know, the commitment to themselves and each other and make the decision to do a little bit more and do a little bit more and do a little bit more from this point forward. If we can do that, I like our chances of continuing to come together as a football team and have a chance to play good football this year."

1. On the secondary play...

" Yeah, we've really improved from the first few days and in the first
scrimmage until now with getting off of blocks, rallying to the ball, limiting explosives. You're always going to get-- there's always going to be one -on -one opportunities at some point in the game, And you got to win those one -on -ones. Last week, we didn't have any turnovers. This week, we had three, I think, that we were able to get on the defensive side of the football. And when you're playing us, when you're doing a scrimmage like that, it's a true game scrimmage. You don't necessarily always have situations you want. But we were lucky enough to get some important situations in the scrimmage. You can really see how people execute you in those, whether offense or defense. So you may have some short yardage, we had some fourth downs, had some long field goals, had some fourth and ones. So I felt the secondary. And then of course, you all take one person in the back end. Outline and secondary are so closely related. It's a lot of guys who have to work together in one state. It is. so, but I've been pleased with the improvement I have I've been pleased with the coaching, schematically pleased with what we're doin,g and excited to continue to move forward with it."

2. On what he was looking for today...

"Well, offensive line. We got a lot of young guys and new guys there. And I'll go position by position with it. We wanted to develop the young guys, you know, guys that might be older that have not played as much. You know, we wanted to get those, and really there's not a lot of older guys and you don't have that as much anymore. You don't have that older guy that's, you know, third year, fourth year guy that's been in the program and, you know, ready to, you know, have his time out there. So, it's developing a lot of young guys, seeing those guys come together. We did not mix and match as many on the O -Line up front this spring. Wanted to get some of these guys some opportunities to hone into one position or maybe two positions. So you didn't see us flip -flopping guys as much as normally I have in my past. And I was wondering if we do have young ones there. You go from the first scrimmage we had two weeks ago, I think we gave up 15. Well, defense claims 15, offense claims 10. There was a few I could have blown the whistle on, but you're talking about probably 13, 14 sacks. Then last week, it was probably three or four, and then today a couple.

So the run game, getting those guys used to playing next to each other, they were pretty good on the cadence and getting the snap on. Early on the first drive of the game we had a couple of snaps that were low and then we settled in but like again that's why I believe it's important to have spring games and have people in front of these kids because all sudden fans get out there and the anxiety gets kicked up a little bit and they do things they hadn't done and so now you can coach off of that you know the lot of new guys up front on the D-line and And those guys come in, and for the new guys, really, it was learning how to practice the way we practice. You can never be able to play the game the way we want to play the game if we don't know how to practice. And it took a couple of weeks now to get to the point where we knew how to-- sort of learning how to practice. And you could see the improvement each week. And the coaches worked their tails off, coaching the crap out of it to get better. Last year, we didn't have a lot of depth at running back. And we brought some guys in. And that is one position we've had some guys develop. And excited for those guys, you know, I'm excited. I think Norv (Mackenzie) does an unbelievable job of developing those guys, coaching them up. Other side was, you know, some of the new faces and whatnot at linebacker. And I think we have a deep group there. And, you know, we got four or five guys that can all play winning football for us.

Well, you look at linebacker and safety, tight ends, those positions, running backs, that's also the core of your special teams, right? And that was something we spent a lot of time on from the offseason, in the last year until now is really, will there be schematically, will there be personnel on the field, will there be personnel in the coaching staff? You know, we spent a lot on the special teams part of it. So, you know, kind of a broad stroke over it all. But I'm pleased at the point where we are right now, from where we started, right? Now that's not saying anything about what the season is going to be or how we're going to go once we get back here in five weeks and then start into summer, but if we can continue and pick up where we left off right now throughout the summer, I'm excited about our chances."

3. On the double pass that scored a touchdown...

"Why not? We're trying to develop the depth at all positions, so including the quarterback position. So we wanted to see if we could all get out there and be able to sling it. I felt like I was duck hunting, or like pheasant hunting, or something, in fact, my 12 -gauge. Nah, it was, now that those guys put some gadgets and trick plays in, just, you know, look, this is a reward for the players to, you know, you go through 14 days of practice and, and I promise you our practices are, they're, they're real practice now. And, you know, that's the thing about spring, you go through all the, all those practices and there's no really reward other than the spring game. You know, the reward is you're, you're getting better, but during the season you're preparing to play games. All right, so give them an opportunity to go out there and play and you want to see guys have fun too. I'm a big, we talk about that all time, about being able to have fun and celebrate with your teammates. Well, you don't have someone who's gonna react in game one if they've never done it before. So this gives them a stage to go out and be able to do those things and have a little fun with it."

4. On handling the next few weeks with things like the transfer portal...

"Yeah, I don't think there's a perfect answer for it, but if you think it starts up now or starts up tomorrow, well you, somebody's got their head in the sand. I mean, this has been something that is year -round. This is something that we've really started to attack in a couple of weeks ago, but the relationships are year -round, the transparency you have to have with your players. You know, the crazy thing is like some people might think, well, you know, a kid that necessarily might not like it somewhere because he's being coached hard and thinks he's not something fair. The kids that usually are sitting in these positions and they want to be told the truth. They want to be coached hard. They want to be developed, right? The second you don't do those things and you're not transparent with them, that's when they're going to see through it. So, you know, the ingrained, you know, really the culture and substance for a program, you know, leads to that. But it's year -round. It's constant.

It's always, you know, relationships lead to all transactions that occur, you know, in a transactional world. You have to have relationships to be able to get there. And then there's some people that, you know, the reason the portal was created was to give people an opportunity that might not necessarily have it at a place and needed to feel like they could further themselves. But, you know, it's important to show guys progression of improvement to show them where they started and where they are now, right? What the plan is, okay? Look, everyone's not a starter, but everyone has an opportunity to be a starter. Everyone does, okay? So say, well, I want to be the starter. Well, then go get your butt and work hard in the weight room. All right, well, what did you do the last two days, right? You start asking those questions and being blunt with them, being upfront and honest. It's important to ask those things. Like, do you If you want to be good, you want to be great. If you want to be great, let's talk about what it takes. Did you do this with your meals? Did you do this with your sleep habits? Did you do this with extra reps with whatever on your own? No, not yesterday or not this week. Well, then don't tell me you want to be great. So it's But this is this is an opportunity for us to continue to make our football team better and better right and I've told our staff numerous times. I've told our team the most important portal is in that locker room right there, those are the most important guys in the country to me It's not people somewhere else All right, if we have an opportunity to add guys in here there to fill a hole that's great, but those guys right there, those are the most important ones to me."

5. On some of the standout performances today...

"Yeah, I mean, I watched I mean, there's so much going on out there for me today. I mean, you get interviewed and talked to. And I'm trying to hear both sides of the calls and listen into the flow of the defense and the calls and the defense going through a game situation. You see the flashes of things out there. But really, those aren't anything different than what's happening. AJ had a bad knee injury a year ago. He's come back from it. Just got this really persevered the program and you know he's a joy to be around guys enjoy being around him you know he's a you know he's a joy to have in the program. Kelvin, I mean Kelvin's out of that that's nothing different than he's done since the day he got here I mean he is a football player and so not surprised to hear that statistics of him and then Zion you know , heard me talk about Zion for the last several weeks now you know he's, he is the true Really When you want to see a player right that is kind of going against the norm, really when you want to see a player right that is kind of going against the norm in college football right now all right, that's Zion Taylor. He's the poster child of development within a program and understanding right? You stay in a program and you believe in what the things are taking place right, you're gonna get better if you pick your ball up and go, go somewhere else and run right well you're starting over again and you're seeing the fruits of his labor now really start to show up. I've been super pleased with him oh the best thing that happened today was Zion, I mean Aaron threw a beautiful ball down the left sideline and then right in his hands and dropped it and then very soon after that made it made a great you know, and then went to him again and made a great play. And that's what I talk about with being able to put a bad play behind, play the next play. All right, whether you do something good or bad, you got to put it aside and be able to go into the next one. And yeah, practice you're doing it, and you try to make practice the same, but when you're out here and you got fans in the stadium and you're your family and all these people and everybody's watching you on TV, and you make a play, and you have a drop like that, you can You know the tank pretty easy just showing the maturity he's had in the program what he's done. I'm, I'm, I'm as pleased with him as anybody"

6. On the vertical passing game today...

"Yeah, I mean we had some guys out today receiver wise and I see some of the other guys go out and play and now I didn't really put any constraints saying hey we want to go vertical or we want to run the ball more We want to do this or that I mean, you know look we had maybe eight or ten plays in an offense if that and maybe four calls on defense that was more so for not one people to see you know things on TV. But now we're past the point of one day. Let's go out and manufacture points in the spring game and you know, have it all exciting and fun. I mean, was it 2019? 2019? That was indicative of what our spring was. Our spring is pretty even now. That was that was a microcosm of what our entire spring has been, right? And I didn't want to go out there and manufacture some type of thing to have points and throw it up against this guy. We are who we are. This program has established itself and has an identity. We're going out and doing what's best for us."

Additional Links

Team Wreck'Em Comes Out On Top vs Team Swarm In Georgia Tech's White and Gold Spring Game

Georgia Tech Baseball Holds Off A Late Rally From Cal to Win Game One 8-5

ESPN Names Storyline, Position, Player to Watch for Georgia Tech's Spring Game Tomorrow