We are within 100 days of kick-off for the first Georgia Tech football game, so it’s time to start talking football again. Given how the past few football seasons have ended (and the baseball season too I suppose) I have had a hard time deciding on how to properly grade the team’s performance. While I would have to say that the past 2 seasons have been the highpoint of Georgia Tech athletics over the past decade (although that doesn’t say much), they have also ended in truly brutal fashions. Tough
Bowl game losses, tough losses to rivals, and frankly a horrendous collapse at the end of last season have felt like having dirt shoved down your throat after eating a 5 course meal.
So this year to give myself a better guideline, and because its a good way to have fun during the offseason. I’m going to put together a grading syllabus based on my current expectations for the upcoming season. That way I can know exactly how to grade the season no matter what twists and turns it takes.
Of course this is just a fun exercise so if you disagree with any of my grading parameters or have any of your own you would like to add please bring them to the comment section and lets talk about what we are expecting from the season.
Course Description
Last year was a culmination of three years’ worth of development for the program. While last year’s team did have many transfers it was clearly a team that Brent Key and Buster Faulkner had worked to build around the idea of our star QB Haynes King leading an offensive juggernaut. Now Faulkner is gone, Haynes King is gone, and a fair bit of our coaching staff is also gone and it is up to Brent Key and his new hires in George Godsey at OC and Jason Semore at DC to rebuild. Fair to say that the national media doesn’t have high expectations for the team this season given how much GT has had to replace this offseason. If you ask Brent Key though the expectation hasn’t changed, we should be aiming to win it all.
As a fan Key’s outlook is the priority. Georgia Tech is not a blue blood despite what some fans may want to believe. It’s fair to expect that Georgia Tech will struggle to keep players and coaches following any given season. This is because nationally we are not viewed as contenders, we’re viewed as a good team that can be used as a launching pad for careers. I don’t think it’s fair to GT to view them as a middling school that will never be able to retain talent, but I think its true that’s how most of the NCAA views us. Even so, just because the rest of the world views us that way doesn’t mean that should be the expectation of our coaches or our fanbase. That’s probably my favorite part about Brent Key is that he truly believes we should be competitive the same way the fans do.
So this year the expectation is to maintain the momentum Brent Key has built. In spite of all the losses of players, coaches, and supporting staff that we can still outperform what Vegas and the experts at ESPN think of us. Unlike Key I don’t expect us to win it all, although I would love to be proven wrong, but we should have a winning record, be achieving upsets, and cover the spread against the tougher teams on our schedule because that’s what a good football program does. If we are the program I think we are then even when we are down I expect us to keep moving towards success.
Core Projects – 50%
These are the base expectations that need to be met this year an make up a majority of my grading scale. I have 5 requirements that each make up about 10% of the overall grade. While there is some wiggle room (I may allow leniency for random injuries or other outside factors) for the most part these are pass/fail requirements, so we either meet them or don’t. If we do not meet all of these then expect this year’s grade to drop significantly.
- Win 7 or more regular season games
- Improve yards given up on defense (2025 Ranked 92nd out of 134 with 399.2 yds surrendered each game)
- Have a Running Back with over 700 Rushing Yards on the season
- Achieve one upset win during the season
- Win more than half of GT’s home games this season
Most of these requirements are pretty self-explanatory, although I probably could have been harsher on a few of them. The 7 wins expectation comes from the current Vegas O/U for the GT win total which sits at 6.5. Every year Key has hit the over on our total wins compared to the Vegas betting line, so while I could have put the win expectation at 8 games I felt the bare minimum would be to win 7 games and once again beat the expectations.
Improving the defense is common sense. Our defense actually gave up less scoring last year than many may realize (ranked 69th overall which is nice) but we can’t keep giving up yardage and losing time on the field to long drives by the opposing offenses. With a big turn over on coaches I can see this being a challenge, but its hard to get expectations for our defense any lower than they currently are so I don’t feel wrong for expecting some improvement from bottom 3rd of the NCAA on yards given up per game.
The Running Back expectation came from one of our big moves this offseason of bringing in Justice Haynes. I love the move to get a big recruit in Justice and it feeds into our goal of being a run based team, but I want to see the running coming from our running backs if we are going to be paying them big money to come here. Last year Haynes King covered the majority of the running (950 rushing yds on the season) even if Malachi Hosley (697 rushing yds) and Jamal Haynes (531 rushing yds) also had decent years, Alberto Mendoza is not Haynes King. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, I think Alberto is great, but I don’t want Brent Key and the offense to grow into the habit of thinking a scrambling QB will be able fix everything with their if plays don’t go to plan. If we are going to be a run based team we need to show it with our running backs. I don’t think its unreasonable with the talent we have to expect at least 1 running back to top the 697 rushing yards Malachi put up last year.
The upset is another Brent Key staple. Every year since Key started coaching he has achieved at least one top 25 ranked upset during the year. If we are setting expectations to win then upsetting at least one team every year should be a goal every year Brent Key coaches.
Another Brent Key staple has been impressive home game performances. in 2025 we only lost one home game and in 2024 we didn’t lose any home games. This year we play Colorado, Tennessee, Mercer, Duke, Boston College, Louisville, and Wake Forest at Bobby Dood. While this is by no means an easy slate I don’t think it is unreasonable for us to expect Key to win at least 4 of these 7 games, especially if we expect to win at least 7 games this season.
Homework – 15%
This would be general work that needs to be worked on throughout the year. These goals are more vague goals that generally represent “improve what was a weakness last year” so I may change the overall goals and will be more lenient with how these are graded but I do expect some progress to be made towards these goals during the season.
- Increase the number of defensive turnovers (8 turnovers last year)
- Improve 4th down conversion rate (7 for 16 [42.86%] ranked 113th nationally in 2025)
- Improve time of possession on offense (79th nationally in 2025)
- Increase number of TFLs this year (63 total tackles for loss, 102nd nationally in 2025)
- Improve special teams coverage (specifically on punts, 106 opponent punt return yards, 114th nationally in 2025)
Jason Semore wants us to focus on getting more turnovers and pressure so both the turnover numbers and tackles for loss should go up this year. Time of possession should be high for us if we are focusing on being a running centric team so it would make sense for those numbers to go up, the requirement also ties in with the other defensive goals by expecting the defense to stop long opposing drives. Special teams have gotten better in general under Key, but we still have a problem with giving up big returns on plays and should focus on limiting those.
The 4th down conversion rate issue was really just picked because I had a hard time finding issues with the offense to improve on from last year. 4th down conversion rate was surprisingly low for us last year, and while we can be thankful that we didn’t need to convert on 4th down as much as other teams it’s still concerning that we couldn’t convert half of the time when we really needed a first down. While I picked 4th down conversions specifically, I think this more represents the idea of predictability of our play calls. I want us to be less predictable to opposing defenses on impactful plays (i.e. something other than QB sneak or QB scramble), and I think most fans would agree with that sentiment.
Quizzes – 15%
All games are important during the football season, but I picked 5 games that may impact how the season is trending for an additional grade. I’m expecting to mark a win and cover as 3%, a win without covering is a 2% a loss but cover the spread as 1%, and a loss without covering the spread as 0%.
- September 3rd versus Colorado
- September 26th at Stanford
- October 31st at Pitt
- November 14th at Clemson
- November 21st versus Wake Forest
Colorado is a challenging but winnable game to start the season at home which will start the trend of how we expect the season to go. Stanford is our first ACC game, and while Stanford is not the most difficult team to play going to the west coast can have serious impact on team performances. Pitt is a payback game from last year’s loss to end the ACC regular season and the start of our second half of the ACC slate. Clemson is a rival, and while I don’t think they are our most concerning rival this year, beating them would still mean plenty to fans. Lastly, Wake is our last home game so it would be ideal to win that game.
Midterm – 10%
The midterm and final are both single games that will be graded based on overall performance. I don’t necessarily need GT to win these games, but I do need GT to be competitive in these games. If we look like empty husks out on the field I’m certainly going to grade more harshly.
Virginia Tech is about the midway point of the season and the Hokies are probably the team expected to have the most improvement going into 2026. VT will be a big challenge and winning or losing this game will change the entire outlook of the GT season. It will also be an important battle of two rival programs who are trying to rise back to their levels of past prominence. GT’s performance in this game will weigh heavily on my mind at the end of the season.
Final – 10%
It’s uga, it was always going to be uga. I don’t think I need to expand upon this much. Clean Ole’ Fashioned Hate remains a big game for GT fans and it will continue to be until the SEC breaks away to do their own thing. Big game means big impact on the grade of the season. Simple as that.
Bonus Credit
There is of course the opportunity for bonus credit this season as well. It’s hard to predict exactly what this will be and how to count it towards the overall season grade because there are too many variables at play before the season starts. That said bonus credit can be applied for the following and more:
- Achieving and Maintaining a top 25 ranking for multiple weeks
- Maintaining a long winning streak
- Having players/coaches nominated for season awards
- Winning the ACC
- Making the College Football Playoff
These are not expectations but if the Jackets are able to achieve any of those goals, then it will be hard not to give them bonus points for the season, not to mention the Jackets will likely already have met some of their other grading requirements if they achieve this bonus credit.
So that’s my expectations with grading for the upcoming season of Georgia Tech football. My grading system might need some fleshing out for the future, but overall I think my expectations are reasonable for the upcoming season. Hopefully this will give me and maybe some other readers perspective for how things look at the end of the season. That said, let me know what you agree with and what you disagree with below and lets start getting our expectations ready for another year of Georgia Tech football. Go Jackets!
