What Georgia Tech coach Brent Key said about Georgia

Georgia and Georgia Tech will meet in Atlanta on Friday to renew some Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate. Yet, for the first time since 1912, they will do so at a neutral site.

Here’s everything Georgia Tech head coach Brent Key said ahead of the matchup:

On whether the Georgia game ‘hits’ different

“It does for me, yeah. Yeah. It does, it does for everybody on both teams. I mean, that’s what in-state rivalries are about. They’re about playing against the guys that you grew up with or grew up playing against and grew up playing with. You know, majority of players on both teams are from the state. And, one of the things that, high school football in the entire country. And to be able to have a showcase, what really ends up being it’s a showcase of the high school talent and the high school programs and the high school coaches of all their players really competing at once. I said, that was one of the cool things about last year’s game at the end of it, as it kind of went through the weekend, you saw the different things taking place in the games and the fighting and all that stuff. And, you know, you didn’t see a lot of, you didn’t see that in this game. And, it doesn’t mean they don’t play hard. They really play extremely hard, but fighting that is not a representation of playing hard.”

On the importance of Gunner Stockton to Georgia compared to Haynes King…

“I mean, he’s a good football player. He’s playing good football right now. I don’t think you can compare the two. I mean, I’m not in their building. I’m not in their locker room. I’m not around them. So, I don’t, I don’t know.”

On Georgia’s team as a whole…

“Well, I mean, right here, they’re top 30 in the country in total offense, scoring offense, rushing pass efficiency, defensively, total defense, scoring defense, rushing defense, they’re top 10, top 15, and all those, they’re top 10 national special teams. So, I mean, what are they doing? They’re doing things well. They got a lot of young guys too, a lot of young guys that are playing, and they’ve matured over the course of the year, and they’ve been able to play, you know, continue to build on it and play good football, and they’re playing their best ball right now.”

On whether he talks to his players about the importance of this game…

“Yeah, I mean, we talk every, every week about it different. You know, there’s different points of emphasis every week for different teams. This week’s no different.”