Kelly Quinlan: Georgia Tech Coach Brent Key Says Haynes King Is the Best QB in the ACC | CFB

[Music] Kelly quinland Yahoo and Rivals covers Georgia Tech football but college football in general he is in Dublin Ireland that's where Saturday's game Florida state Georgia Tech will be played and by the way Kelly before we start don't give any way any of those secret plays because we have an FSU Alum who's a part of this show who will absolutely contact Mike norell knowing him the way we do so thanks for your time what's it like in Dublin it's uh quite blustery uh it's about 60 degrees and howling wind so uh about what you'd expect uh for this time of year it's going to be pretty cool on a Saturday evening here in Dublin Kelly what is the uh the biggest thing that Georgia Tech has improved on after you know surprising season last year to this year you think you know they're really good on offense last year I think the defense has taken a big step forward with Tyler sanui the new defensive coordinator uh Mike elto disciple um sure you guys talk a lot about what's going on at A&M these days and kind of that defensive philosophy of being attacking um being aggressive on defense and trying to be more downhill I think and that's a big thing that Tyler stuchi is bringing to the table they're trying to be more physical and attacking instead of just reacting and you know the defense last year I think was very predicated on let's try to make some turnovers strip the football make some big plays but they were not as good at fundamentals and down down run stopping run fits things like that I think the defenses made huge strides there Kelly uh Haynes King uh back for another year in the saddle uh had some really good moments last year turned the ball over a bit too much at times certainly but um I don't know seems like he's poised and kind of the the the head of the spear here if if Georgia Tech has a big gear just what's the kind of excitement level around him and what's the expectations just as far as what people want to see and and need to see from him this year it's funny Brent key went so far as to say he's the best quarterback in the ACC Yer so um the expectations are ratcheted up pretty high I think you know people forget with Haynes he played at A&M yes but he didn't play a lot like he got hurt a game and a half into his first season then kind of was benched in that really weird 2022 season uh you know just hadn't played a lot until last year so he made a lot of what we call a young guy on mistakes forcing the ball in the coverage maybe relying too much on PR snap reads with what the defense was doing forcing balls and you know it's not high school anymore and I think it took a little bit of adjustment and I think his Run game came along as well he got a little healthier and um he was really dynamic as kind of a dual threat guy I think the big evolution for him is just eliminating those dumb turnovers he had quite a few just forc throws that were bad decisions on his part and if you can clean that up I think they're in for you know a huge step forward for him and I think he definitely has a chance to be in that conversation with with one of the best quarterbacks in ACC if he does that well you know one of the things he did in high school at Long View he was a gunslinger he was not afraid to try to you know throw it through a keyhole and then that got him at A&M as well uh is that just kind of also even if he tries to avoid that more that's just his style when he plays well that's what he does yeah you know Chris winky the quarterback's coach who played at Florida State one of the hes been there knows a thing or two about quarterback play and he said he compared him to Brett Favre he said that he's like that kind of guy like he's gonna you know get he's gonna screw up every once in a while but he's gonna make some amazing plays you kind of live with it because of the ups that he will bring you as like you said a gun flinger um and you don't want to take that that aggressiveness away and that's the big thing Buster faul off the coordinator talked about too like don't take away what makes him special you want to figure out how to make him make better decisions in those situations but you also don't want to take away an aggressiveness what uh how do you think this game will play out stylistically you know Florida State's offense will probably look a little bit different than it did last year given the fact that they lost a ton of their skill players maybe more running the game you know do you do you think that they're going to try to to run with Florida State or do you think that this will be maybe more of a a tug-of-war I think this is gonna be a tug of war I was here in 2016 when Georgia Tech played Boston College I've watched quite a few of these games over the years all the ones except for when Navy's played in this game and been overmatched have been just absolute floodfest games were one in the fourth quarter um a lot of lowc scoring games the weather can be dicey it's going to be kind of probably in the 50s by the time the game really gets going uh and these guys are they've been practicing in 90 plus degree temperatures for the last month so um it's just gonna be a different animal and I think the the whole vibe is just totally different than anything um you know maybe other than like some of those weird Co games that teams play with no fans other than that I think it's just so weird environment it's sort of like being in a like a bowl game where they play in a baseball stadium or something it just is very different than a normal college football game so I think there's going to be a lot of adjustments and then you know you have Florida state with so many replacement players on their team I'm curious what that all looks like too do you feel like um that they they're over there now they started workouts I think I saw even video of Florida State practicing are two days of practice and then maybe whatever they do on Friday enough to get used to the surroundings so I think everybody's coming over tonight leaving tonight um and I know Tech gets in tomorrow morning I'm pretty sure Florida state does too I think they have that all set up um but yeah so they'll come in Thursday morning basically everybody will do like a walk through kind of practice and that's it there's not really a couple years ago they did they were here for like almost a week I think this is they decided to make it less like a bowl game and more like a just kind of oneoff special experience so they Trimm down the time the jet lag's weird you just either you sleep or you don't on the plane and you make yourself stay up when you get here atj of the time and that's all you can do Kelly quinland with us Kelly quinland with us on 365 Sports on Georgia Tech football Kelly is Georgia Tech deep enough should they let's say they start out and win and win this game are they deep enough to make a run and be in the ACC title game at the end of the year so you know what I've said since the beginning of the year is if the offense plays it similar Pace to a year ago the defense was like bottom it was literally like the second worst defense in the AC so if they jump to 75 nationally 70 I think that puts them on the bubble the problem for Georgia Tech is the non-conference schedule is a little rough you have Notre Dame in Georgia um at Georgia to end the season on Black Friday so I think that you know nationally that'll hurt their ranking but I absolutely think they have an opportunity in ACC they just have a harder slate if you look the like how they split the the votes in the preseason in ACC Georgia Tech plays like seven of the top eight teams and most of the other teams are being picked as favorites don't so um it it they have a tougher schedule on paper but again those things tend to kind of cancel themselves out as the season goes along whether it's Miami or whoever kind of falls on their face early in the year and then those games become less hard as the season goes on so I think it just no one knows because of the portal now it's much harder to handicap all these things in the preseason but they absolutely have a very good offense and a very good uh special teams unit and the defense should be much improved I think that's a good recipe to get yourself in the mix Charlotte anytime we've had somebody who covers rights columnist or broadcaster of the ACC or a team in the ACC we ask him about what has been a tumultuous off season can't wait for games to be played so that will be the focus no matter what happens with the ACC and the uh Florida State Clemson Etc how much of that even resonates with Atlanta Georgia and Georgia Tech I I think everyone's kind of actively following along with with with what has been going on but most people kind of see it for what it is um these are long-term plays like Florida State's making a longterm play to get out of the wayag nothing's going to happen for years this is going to be a prolonged legal battle there's zero incentive for the ACC to settle with them and no one's going to touch them until their rights are clear because it it basically forces any other league if you start to invalidate the grant of rights uh it would put pure chaos basically for every other league right so um what's gonna happen I think everyone's kind of watching it but the reality is Georgia Tech and Atlanta they're decent in football and the basketball team's getting better they will have a seat at one of the three big tables if it were to you know devolve into three power conferences and you have some sort of weird merger of the ACC and Big 12 and then some teams peel off to thec in Big 10 I think they have a seat at one of those three tables uh just because of where they are the history and and what they can bring to the table so that's sort of where Georgia Tech fans are and it I think ultimately everyone would like to see the ACC kind of figure things out but you know that I think it's very difficult to do you guys just saw that with the big 12 in Texas and Oklahoma um if you start catering to teams it kind of basically ruins the the conference and they're trying to avoid that I think right now with Clemson and Forida State what do you uh you they were you mentioned the history they have a fantastic history that I think a lot of people you know don't realize because post 1990 uh you know they haven't won a national title but they were good for you know deep into the 9s uh into the early part of the 2000s and then they they've had little patches of good stretches but has there been a reason for the the downshift in football from a leadership perspective of the University that's maybe now just getting restarted or um were they just you know maybe caught kind of flat-footed like a lot of universities are in the arms race there was sort of a two two-folded issue the first one was when George O Larry was here he right before he left Tak an Notre Dame job he convinced them to expand the stadium they took on like basically $200 million in debt to do this and created a stadium that was too large for the fan base okay so that wasn't even like paying for itself then that debt turned into this thing that kept getting rolled into more debt and more debt and then around the time that Paul Johnson got hired the ad at the time was so worried about the debt he basically became very cheap with everything they did and so that's why I hired Paul Johnson that's why they cheaped out on defensive coordinators they made lots of these P pinching decisions for about a span of I don't know 10 years and there was a change in leadership the change in the school president the ad got fir several ads have been uh processed during that time and now they have sort of aligned ad president and the two coaches in the main sports are actually like having success on the field and recruiting well so it's basically the first time you know I've covered them since 2009 it's the first time I've really seen this since my first year in a beat where things are somewhat aligned and they actually have positive M momentum but L was just you know financially driven issues and the other thing was the rise of SEC and that kind of killed a lot of the recruiting um just the hype around the SEC and all that stuff and then things like huddle and having people recruit Atlanta harder and the state of Georgia harder over the last 1015 Years also impacted recruiting for teams like Georgia Tech but even like if you step down a level Georgia Southern or those type of schools all felt impact from the way recruiting has become more nationalized for every team in the country Kelly you were in France prior to flying into Dublin right uh France Switzerland and Italy so how long have you been out of the country uh I left on the 17th I think something like that oh so a couple man that's that's almost a month yeah here we go yeah we yeah just got a little vacation in what what do you what do you do you Miss America yet or I mean it sounds like you've been just some pretty awesome places yeah I mean I spent um yesterday I was in the matter horn in Switzerland I think it's like 13,000 feet up um on a glacier so uh yeah I'm doing okay right now I think you know by the end of the week I'll miss my kids and my wife just left to go back to America take care of the kids so uh I'll probably miss her too by that point but yeah right now I'm I'm still doing okay that's a great trip we we don't have but you get trying to make something special but you can get a Big Gulp with a bunch of ice so that's it's kind of the same you know it's funny man they give you ice here it's like three little tiny cubes of ice like if you get ice and you're lucky if you get ice like it's like what you would get at you know not even in a bar like um it's like if you were like the end of you walked to the end at a party and someone had like an ice container like what was left in the bottom of the ice container at the end of the party that's what you get in your glass we had Liam Rooney on who covers Florida State for the Tallahassee Democrat and he was in a a scrum I guess before they left for for Dublin among other members of the media and there was a debate about McDonald's and he says that McDonald's like the chicken nuggets are better in Ireland than they are even in the country that discovered and invented McDonald's because of the chick chicken and how fresh it is when they get it yeah so like everything's there's like rules like in France like things have to be a certain distance from where you are to like be cooked in a restaurant like it was just totally different than there's no like extruded chicken goo like they make the McNuggets out of in America like and and it's I'm not KN I like I like some Chicken McNuggets but like if but it is totally different the eating is completely different like it's like little small meals you walk everywhere um yeah I I have car rentals here and um have driven but I've done a ton of walking over 10,000 steps every day um just walking around doing stuff so I see why like we're fat Americans and like everyone's skinny in Europe and stuff I get it now like but um it is very funny to see the differences and like just the lifestyle and like how um more laid-back a lot of people are and stuff with that thing so it is just a very different culture good for you man what a great trip memorable trip and now you got a football game the season begins you're going to be a part of it by covering Florida state Georgia Tech in Dublin hey thanks for your time ke Kelly great feedback on where you are where you've been and also what we have coming up this weekend have a great week the rest of the week there thanks guys appreciate Kelly quinland with us from Rivals and also Yahoo sports covering college football and also Georgia back