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Pete Thamel, ESPN
DUBLIN — For a school that churns out astronauts and engineers with numbing efficiency, spontaneous moments of joy are easily traced to meticulous preparation.
And that’s why the bruising hugs, violent fist pumps and relentless excitement that Georgia Tech unleashed on Aviva Stadium after upsetting No. 10 Florida State, 24-21, on Saturday night in Ireland represented both a celebration and a culmination.
In beating a Top 10 team for the first time since 2015, Georgia Tech rang in the 2024 season with a rollicking upset — capped by a 44-yard walk-off field goal from Aidan Birr. It also provided the empirical tipping point of Tech’s burgeoning ambitions.
For Tech coach Brent Key, a proud alum and defiant believer in Tech’s bruising identity, all those giddy moments of spontaneity were byproducts of an exacting plan, for both a game and program, concisely executed.
“More than anything, to see or to know that so many people now see Georgia Tech and the brand of football that we play, and it’s not a gimmicky brand of football,” Key told ESPN in a quiet moment after the game. “It’s real. It’s hard-nosed. We’re going to build at the line of scrimmage. That’s where games are won.”
Key’s signature win in his second year as Georgia Tech’s full-time coach came out a former offensive lineman’s fever dream. It was crafted with a grit that would make George O’Leary smile, featured enough quarterback runs to make Paul Johnson wink and conjured the familiar big-game trappings that harkened back to Bobby Ross’ glory days.
The win on a misty Saturday at Aviva Stadium in the Aer Lingus Classic came thanks to deft execution of a game plan that produced 190 rushing yards, a game clock that ran like a podcast on 1.5x speed and a pressure cooker that demanded every possession be treated like a Fabergé egg.
There was star quarterback Haynes King, ducking his shoulder to gut out yardage so often he ran the ball (15 times) nearly as often as he threw (16).
And there was spitfire tailback Jamal Haynes, plunging for a pair of touchdowns, rushing for 75 yards and ending as the game’s leader in grass stains and end zone paint accumulated on his uniform, fitting badges of honor for a game of this tenor. There was leading tackler Kyle Efford (10 tackles and a half a TFL), filling gaps and pushing back piles.
“It means a whole lot,” Key said of the moment. “I love this place, and I give everything I have into this program to try to make sure these kids have everything they need to be successful on and off the field. To see them have the success that they did tonight, it’s great.”
Tech went into the game with a classic underdog plan: run the ball, drain the clock and shorten the game. The quarterback run game has long been the sport’s great equalizer, and the more things change in the sport, the more that will resonate as an eternal truth.
Tech basically made the second quarter disappear with a 14-play masterpiece that grinded out just under eight minutes. It would be framed and hung a wall in the Georgia Tech facility if Key could figure out a way to distill it into a fresco.
Offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner put on a maestro play-calling performance with a delightful array of pre-snap and postsnap shifts and motions. FSU’s talented defense was flat-footed and confused much of the night. But that innovative window dressing shouldn’t take away the collective snarl of the Tech offensive line, which completely manhandled a Florida State defensive line that stood for long stretches of the game with its hands on its hips.
Tech’s determination and power neutralized FSU’s individual defensive talent, which included two All-ACC defensive linemen from 2023. FSU’s starting defensive line didn’t register a sack or a TFL and had just one hurry.
On defense, Tech rolled out seven new starters and a new play caller in coordinator Tyler Santucci. It wanted to change the picture often pre-snap to fluster FSU quarterback DJ Uiagalelei, consistently force him to make long throws to the field and limit big plays. FSU finished with seven possessions, 291 total yards and just 3.2 yards per carry.
“It’s very intentional how we’re building this program,” Key said. “We’re building it with a strong foundation to last a long time.
That’s a drastic difference from the Tech team that finished No. 128 in rushing defense last year. Those who watched Tech closely last year saw the potential of King, the grit of Haynes and the ways Faulkner could bamboozle a defense. But without a defense to play complimentary football, it led to a team that was a bit of tease, beating UNC, playing Georgia to a one-score game and exploiting Mario Cristobal’s epic clock management blunder to beat Miami.
But it also lost to Bowling Green and gave up 21 unanswered fourth-quarter points in a loss to Boston College, as consistency wasn’t available without answers on defense.
“At first we learned how not to lose, then we talked about we learned how to win,” Key said. “The next step in this journey is learning how to win consistently.”
That long postgame embrace between Key and Santucci signified what’s possible with pairing Faulkner’s innovative offense, Key’s ethos of toughness with a stout defense. (Key has 16 former linemen on his staff, hulking reminders of the program’s commitment to the line of scrimmage.)
“That hug was just confirmation what I knew about Tyler already,” Key said. “He said, ‘Thank you for bringing me here.’ And I said, ‘Thank you for saying yes.’ It’s going to be a really good match.”
It’s difficult what to glean about FSU from its loss, as the limited possessions and flurry of new faces make it difficult to jump to any grandiose conclusions. “The importance of every snap in that game was monumental,” Norvell said, clearly frustrated with the limited possessions and short game.
The scary part for the long term was the lack of explosion at the skill positions for FSU, which will need to change. Perhaps the slick grass, Tech’s superior schemes and the Seminoles adjusting to a new identity took a toll and are issues they can overcome.
But as Georgia Tech moved the chains and remained clear-eyed in its identity, it was obvious which team had the superior quarterback. That was King, who willed the game with his legs but also executed with his arm when he had to. On Tech’s other masterpiece drive of the night — an 11-play, 89-yard march to take the lead 21-14 early in the fourth — King completed all five of his passes. (That included a 15-yard pass on third-and-12 to leading receiver Malik Rutherford, which swung Tech from a likely punt to a touchdown drive.)
“Haynes is hands down the best quarterback in this league, and I think he has a chance to be the best quarterback in the country this year,” Key told ESPN. “The cool thing about him is it doesn’t have to be throwing the ball. It doesn’t have to be his running. He can do both and he’s such an unselfish kid and an unselfish player that he puts the team first and whatever it takes to win.”
King did just that, bailing Tech out a disastrous fumbled snap on a motion play gone wrong with a minute remaining. The 10-yard loss detoured Tech from field goal range and loomed as the type of self-destructive play that could foil a near-perfect game plan from the first 59 minutes. But King stayed cool and found star receiver Eric Singleton for 12 yards on third-and-17 on the next play.
“You can’t just say you have confidence in (your players) all week and then get scared that they’re not going to do their job when the games line,” Key said.
And that’s what Tech did, delivering a searing reminder of how rollicking college football can be in 2024. And it also gives a glimpse of what Tech has been planning to become under Key.
“It’s a great step forward for our program,” Tech athletic director J Batt said postgame, “but it’s really where we belong.”