Monday Afternoon Kelly- You’re hired as Head Coach of just say Georgia Tech. For Coordinators, are you looking for Old School and Experience but stale or Young, Hungry yet inexperienced?’
KQ- I think in this era I am going to look for guys who are successful but not too old at whatever levels they've coached at. That is what interested me in Mike Elko all the way back to when he was at Bowling Green with Dave Clawson for example on D or other guys with interesting offensive wrinkles. It also depends on what is my specialty as a HC. Am I an offense guy or a defense guy or am I Shane Beamer and neither.
In your opinion why has our football team not showed more progress this season? Is it more on the players or the coaching?
KQ- They have holes at major positions that were amplified by injuries and Key made a mistake keeping Andrew Thacker as DC and not keeping the entire D staff and whatever the mojo was that worked there. He needed to blow up that side of the ball just like the offense and he only blew up part of it and really the two guys who had the most successful position group a year ago the DL. He needed to cut deeper IMO.
Why are we so flat at home? Can’t really blame the crowd for this game.
KQ- I really have no idea. This has been an ongoing issue for quite some time. The Duke game last year was the first home win for GT against a P5 opponent that finished with a winning record since the end of the 2018 season when GT beat UVA in overtime in PJ's last home game at BDS. How about that stat? Definitely something odd has gone on in the meantime in BDS.
- The softness from Collins still seems here. Should it have been driven out at this point or did you expect it to take longer?
KQ- I've covered a lot of transitions in various forms and you can't just hit delete and change the mindset of the team and you can't just bring in a group of portal players mostly non-critical players except Haynes King, the kid from Princeton and Moala and expect that to change your culture overnight.
If you have ever worked in a job where there was a corporate takeover or the company was sold and there was suddenly new leadership how everyone responds is totally different person to person and if they are trying to change "I had the word but" culture of that business it takes time sometimes years to reimagine it. At Bama, it took Saban several years to really install his culture and set of expectations and it took Kirby about three years at UGA. Miami has been in an ouroboros for basically 20 years because of cultural issues. FSU flamed out and it took Mike Norvell several years to fix it and until this season to have a team with tons of talent back into the top 25.
A while back, you had mentioned that CBK had a plan all mapped out for what he wants to do at GT. How's the progress compared to plan? Also, at what point should we be expecting that we can out physical people? Key preached that as a mantra of our team (BpBuSp) - it just doesn't ever seem to happen, even when we play G5 teams.
KQ- Progress is not linear and Key has made some mistakes as all young coaches do and as I have detailed on here elsewhere. He needs to continue improving the team, tweak his staff and roster and learn from them. If he doesn't and this repeats into next season then he is in major trouble, but people just are not being realistic about anything regarding the fragility of the program and the mindset and how there isn't chemistry with the staff including changing DCs midseason creating issues like the sub patterns in the last couple of games.
How can we come off a bye week with all these issues? Lack of focus, subbing issues, calls coming late/dbs looking at the sidelines as ball is snapped. Thanks for the website!
KQ- Changing DCs midseason is part of it. As more stuff gets introduced like the sub packages Kevin Sherrer wanted to use, guys were not ready for it, the staff screwed up as well because it is a new thing. The focus thing bothers me, the decisions that King is making with the ball and his lack of reading his progressions in the last two games has bothered me as well. Some of it is coaches and some of it is players.
Are we doing doing something different for a home game like not putting the players in a hotel the night before ? or something else that stands out
KQ- They go to a hotel. Key gave a long explanation last week of how he was trying to shake up their home routine after the BG game. They went to class that Friday before BG and no other team I know does that.
What’s up with Dontae Smith? Deep in the doghouse or something else? If he is hurt, why is he dressed and why does he play a little bit?
KQ- I don't know the answer to that other than obviously there is a disconnect and he is not playing. Maybe they haven't liked his work ethic or maybe there is friction or he is in the doghouse or Buster of Norv doesn't jive with him. Something is definitely off there. He is not injured.
If the preseason QB was as close as Key said it was, why hasn’t Key given Pyron a shot in the BG or BC games when King was so off?
KQ- I've wondered that but really more when King wasn't running when he should have. King is not entirely healthy and it is not super easy for him to run, but if you are running this offense with this group of dudes he has to run or he has to come out of the game if they can't run with the RBs. They are not good enough to be one-dimensional.
