JOL Mailbag 9/8 Sponsored by Auto-Owners Insurance

Georgia Tech hosts #12 Clemson after a year without the two teams playing in the new ACC scheduling format. The teams had played for 41 straight seasons before 2024 since Tech joined the ACC. This is a huge game for the conference and could help determine who goes to Charlotte to play in the conference championship game in December.

Tech fans are curious about Haynes King’s status, concerns from the first two games defensively, and wonder what to expect on Saturday at noon. We dive into all of that in the JOL Mailbag.

Thanks to Auto-Owners Insurance for sponsoring the JOL Mailbag.

Q: Which of the newcomers exceeded your expectations in week 1?

I’ll expand your question to both games, but I think defensively, both Andre Fuller Jr. and Christian Garrett look like strong future anchors of the Georgia Tech defense. I like what Tae Harris brings to the table with his speed and hitting ability as well. All three have really bright futures, including helping win games this season.

On the offensive side, we got to see it late in the Gardner-Webb game, finally, but Jordan Allen is a very special player. He possesses elite speed, complemented by very strong ball skills, and will be a dynamic slot receiver and return specialist in college.

Q: Did that recent 100 million dollar donation to Georgia Tech. Will the athletics department get a tiny piece of it?

No, I do not believe so. You can read what exactly is being done with his gift here.

Q: What do you think about the rule changes to the transfer portal? Do you think that helps or hurts Tech?

It will help the sanity of coaches, and it does not help or hurt Georgia Tech in a larger sense. It just keeps coaches from having to worry about what happened with Akelo Stone from happening again. A guy develops over the spring and then gets poached in the portal based on spring film.

Tech has benefitted from some late additions as well, but it stops some of that nonsense.

Q: I apologize if this has been answered before. If it was, I missed it. Regarding the potential of moving to a 9-game conference schedule? When is the earliest this could happen? I know the SEC implemented it for 2026, but I’m guessing it would be too late for the ACC to make it happen that soon?

I feel like it is too late, but you never know. It just depends on the contracts schools have with other programs and how difficult or how much it would cost to change all of that. If the benefits don’t outweigh the trouble, then they could punt it to 2027.

For Georgia Tech, it would be a problem because you have three P4 games in non-conference play, and none of those teams would want to move those games. Tennessee, the newest one, only has Tech, Kennesaw, and Furman, so they’ll want Tech to play that game. Colorado needs the Tech game because they already have a FCS game and a weak P4 game with Northwestern. I am curious what UGA is going to do because they have a home and away with Louisville that I think gets nuked from all of those in 2026 and 2027. In 2027, they would have all P4 games as their non-conference slate.

Q: Why is Haynes King out? Only question that matters and you won’t answer it.

He has a lower-body injury, which appears to be in the hip area from the hit on the first touchdown run in the Colorado game. I’ve been pretty clear on what is going on there. It was a game-time decision, and even as of Friday night, Brent Key was still up in the air on whether or not he wanted to play King against Gardner-Webb.

I do enjoy that people think there are conspiracies at play, when that is very much not the case.

Q: Is this week’s game with Clemson the most important game yet in Coach Key’s tenure?

No, the North Carolina game in 2022, when Key was the interim coach, and the first half of that UGA game were more important because that is why he is the head coach right now. The way he coached up that team and had them playing over their heads in those games, and for most of the time, as the interim coach, got him the job.

We have no clue how good or bad Clemson or even Georgia Tech is right now. It is week three.

Q: Your thoughts on the Secondary through 2 games so far?

It is hard to tell. They’ve been a little short-handed with Rodney Shelley out since early in fall camp and then playing without Savion Riley, who is the third-best safety on the team right now against Gardner-Webb. A few other guys are playing through some minor injuries as well.

The first two games were kind of funky because both times you had to prepare for two different quarterbacks, and both were completely different styles of players. This Clemson game will be the first time all year they’ll have had a ton of tape on the quarterback they are facing all night, running the same offense so far this year.

Q: Do you think our game plan will be to hammer Clemson with the running game or do just enough running to keep them honest? Do you think we will rotate QBs just enough to keep HK healthy and throw them off?

I think it will just depend on what Buster Faulkner thinks they can execute against a pretty stout Tigers front. They have a good defense and a good defensive coordinator in Tom Allen. Faulkner has a pretty good track record of cooking up some effective schemes against good defenses so far in his tenure as offensive coordinator.

This should be the first OC/DC chess match this season for Georgia Tech.

Q: Would Haynes King have played if it was a more important game?

In my educated opinion, yes.

Q: At times it seemed the G-W quarterback had all day to throw. Is this just GT keeping it vanilla or us lacking DL pursuit? I realize we had sacks, but they moved the ball way too much for my comfort

They were not going into Blake Gideon’s bag of tricks to beat Gardner-Webb. The idea was to keep things in front of you and make plays and stiffen as the field shrank. I thought they did that very well the entire game, outside of the quick change early in the game off the Aaron Philo fumble.

Here is a fun stat for Tech fans. On drives that didn’t start with a Tech turnover, Gideon’s defense has allowed 19 points total on 20 offensive drives.

Q: Lots of our corners were slipping while in coverage on Saturday. Is that a turf issue?

It was wet, and they were playing, often a quarterback who was a run threat while playing zone a lot. That is a rough combination when it is a little slick.

Q: How are jerseys issued? why are they not using all the numbers and then having guys who are going to redshirt be the duplicates?

So I trimmed down this question because it was very long. Every school in the country has duplicate numbers. Tech is lucky that they only have one retired number, 19 for Clint Castleberry.

Several players did, in fact, change their numbers because of special teams conflicts; Trelain Maddox, Daylon Gordon, and Christian Pritchett all changed their jersey numbers.

Ahmari Harvey is your best corner and an NFL prospect, and Eric Rivers is an All-American wide receiver who wants to wear #3. Who cares? The only issue was that the alternate jersey was too big.

Q: Maddox in a boot. I guess the injury bug won’t leave him alone and it’s significant ?

I don’t know the extent of his injury, but yes, he was in a boot, per what some reliable sources said. I did not see him with my own eyes, and I don’t know if it is the same foot.

He made it through all of the spring and fall camp, getting hit regularly in practice as a workhorse without getting hurt. Sometimes it is bad luck.

Q: Which position group would you say is the biggest liability right now?

I dislike the term liability because that is extremely negative. An area of concern would be the defensive end spot. Not the edge/outside linebacker spot, but the bigger end position. Right now, they are playing an undersized Brayden Manley there and slowly working up Garrett as a true freshman. Ronald Triplette is out with an injury, thinning it out even more, and we have not seen A.J. Hoffler yet due to injuries either.

Q: What’s up with B. Manley? I don’t think I even heard his name called yesterday? I know he was supposedly double teamed vs Colorado, but he doesn’t seem to be making much of an impact after all the preseason hype. Have the freshman passed him?

He had half a sack in the game, and he has the 8th highest PFF grade through two games on the entire defense. I think your assessment is off.

Q: A few years back when we were looking for an OC after Key was hired, there was some guy who was willing to donate like 700k or something to GT if they hired Buster. My question; does anyone know if he came through with that? I imagine he did but just curious. Was thinking about that this week because if I remember correctly, people laughed this off as if Buster had no chance and wouldn’t be a good hire. Funny how things work sometimes.

I do not remember that, but I have not heard anything about that. I tend not to pry into their contracts and who is paying for what. I did jokingly text Buster when he got his latest contract extension that drinks were on him the next time I saw him.

Lots of things are said during searches. The only time I specifically remember something like this happening was when Ted Roof got hired as the defensive coordinator under Paul Johnson.

Q: Will we end up with a positive turnover margin this season? (I think -4 currently) We maybe had one pbu yesterday and many drops that our DBs got lucky on so not sure they’d come from picks

They had two PBUs, Zachary Tobe had one, and the nickel Will Kiker had one later in the game. They played a very soft zone on Saturday.

Neither team has really challenged Georgia Tech vertically, where you see a lot of non-tipped ball interceptions. Kaidon Salter was 1-5 on deep passes and 1-4 passing on balls 10-20 yards. They were dumping the ball off. You don’t get picks off that.

Gardner-Webb was 2-5 on deep shots, but Cole Pennington did hit on quite a few 10-20 yard passes. He was 7-8 from that range and that is where he did all his damage against the cover 3 look.

Q: The traffic getting down Saturday was miserable. Is this something GTAA can talk to GDOT about for this weekend?

I doubt they can do much of anything. I’m sure someone will ask and look into it, but they’ve been doing weekend construction on I-75 and I-85 since I started on the beat once the summer ends before wintertime.

Q: Can you expand further on the OL situation? Is Tana the better center than Moore or is it that Fusile is a liability out there so they need to shift down?

Joe Fusile has had a slow start to the season, and the best five right now is with Tana at center and Harrison at left guard. I think Fusile isn’t performing up to his own standards so far, and that is the bigger issue.

Q: Looks like Lasiah Jackson is looking around with Stanford looking like a bag of crap on the field. Is GT still pursuing and is academics important or just getting away from the local area?

From what we gathered at the time of the commitment, he just wanted to get away from home. Auburn is closer to home than Georgia Tech, so that is interesting. We are monitoring the situation. Basically, right now, I am waiting to see him show back up on the Flats for a game before I think they are really back in the picture.