Good article. Key's "Job Status" towards the end of the year was as big an issue as any of the coaches. I suspect every team deals with the {Portal" issues and tampering every year. Hopefully CBC learned from last year and can deal wit those issues this year as they will be there every year.
I did too. as long as they kept their focus and coached. Sounds like some of them probably quite part way through the season. quitters suck and through that lens they were far worse.
Not sure what was going on with the OL. I've never seen a group be so consistently dominant between the 20's but so consistently not be able to get it done inside the 20's. It was Jekyll and Hyde stuff. Maybe it's as simple as we had our whole playbook open between the 20's and that selection narrowed to parts of it that we struggled to block inside the 20's. I don't think so, but maybe. All I know is I saw far too much of our OL owning DL in the middle of the field but not being able to move them in the RZ.
The absolute highlight of this for me was the slightly cryptic remark of the adults acting like the college players and “now chew on that one for a minute.”
It was Geep.
He seemed to imply that it was more than just one coach who was looking at their value in the “portal.” This was then verified with all the coaching turnovers. But CBK was diplomatic and professional and didn’t throw any particular coach under the bus at the end of the season but signaled in this interview a lack of maturity on their part.
Don't let Key off the hook. His future was in the Public more than any other coach last fall. Hard to believe that did not impact the coaches as well as some players.
I thought he was pretty honest and straightforward about that in the interview. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to keep staff from going off the deep end with their visions of fortune and immortality. I still marvel that he has said so little about the way certain coaches let the program down with their own hubris.
Seems you are assuming coaches were not being contacted as well as players by other schools. Key's name was in the headlines for weeks as a potential candidate for several Big Time programs. How that impacted other coaches and players is totally unknown. Regardless of what any coach says publicly when their name is tossed around as a potential candidate for School "X" rumors will start within a program.
He specifically said he and other coaches were being being talked about for other programs and it was hard to keep everyone focused. That’s why he got really angry when Tech kept getting ranked higher than he thought they deserved. He saw big problems with the team but it was hard to get the players to see how much work was needed and to focus because certain coaches weren’t helping with their own attitudes. It was a very nuanced but thorough discussion by Key on what wrong with the season. He said a lot of you read it carefully.
Alabama is not hiring any coach that can’t beat UGA. Key is a Tech lifer.
Key will eventually beat them. UGA is currently the premier program in the country. Sure it kills me to say that and I hope when Kirby leaves they implode but the simple fact is they are a top 5 program every year. And with all that said, Key will eventually beat them. As for Bama, they‘ll eventually move on from the current guy and Key will be a top candidate because he’s a Bama guy and will have taken a 3 win GT back to a top 15 program. Did y’all forget we got up to #7 last year. We’ll get here again and hopefully be built to stay the next time. Heck, if we beat Tennessee I can see us being top 15.
My dad, who was a grad student at Bama under Curry, is now retired. That was long enough ago that I doubt even their oldest boosters care about the GT connection
