It wasn’t always pretty on Saturday night, but Georgia Tech beat Duke 24-14 to move to 4-2 on the season. After the win, Yellow Jackets head coach Brent Key spoke to the media and here is everything he had to say.

Opening speech…

“I thought it was a really good football game. I mean, it was a good football game on both sides. Duke has a good football team. I do think we came out, played fast, and that’s exactly what I was looking for.” Because after the bye week, we look fresh, like we’re fast again, and we’ve had that in training during We saw that week where we had improved our team’s speed again and we saw that tonight on defense. I was flying around and doing a good job. I think they’re really improving every week and doing a good job against the run. That’s a credit to Tooch and Jess and Kyle Pope, those guys with the front seven, uh, you know, made some big stops When they had some, they had an explosive kickoff return in the second half. You know, they had some, uh, you know, we played, as far as bat position goes. We had three or four, uh, drives that started at minus 10 minus, you know, three were at minus nine, I think, and you know, one or two at minus 10, uh, you know, we need to do a better job of controlling vertical field position in the game of football.

So we don’t get into these holes as often and we have the long fields in front of us. But we moved the football with nine real possessions and then took a knee at halftime on the 22nd possession at the end of the game. Scored four points from three touchdowns and a field goal. We’ve become a little more productive on these things, but we’re making progress in the long run. So we had to do a little better. The children played hard. I thought they played smarter tonight. That’s really true, except before halftime on defense they had some strong plays after the penalty on the punt. We’ll look at the penalty and see exactly what we need to talk about with this penalty on Sunday. But otherwise I think both teams played really hard. It was a good football game and I’m really happy that I was able to come out as the winner. I told the guys in the locker room afterwards that it was a – enjoy the win, enjoy every win. But then I challenged every person in the room, man to man, that when we come back tomorrow, the first thing we’re going to do is make sure at the start of the team meeting that we’re going to make sure that everyone on this football team knows how to do a Ramblin’ Wreck Georgia Tech to sing. There are a few young people in there who aren’t entirely focused on what they’re doing. You’re not entirely focused on the matter. So we have a lesson in that first. But it’s a challenge for everyone to be as critical after this game as they were two weeks ago. And to make sure that we improve in this regard next week, because we have a difficult stage ahead of us. And we have a kick-off at 12pm on Saturday. I think it’s 12 o’clock or 8 o’clock. 12 o’clock kick-off, so we get back to work. but really happy, happy for the kids, happy for the coaching team.

1. About the team’s performance in the 4th quarter…

“We challenged the guys that it was going to be a big field position game in the second half. I know Duke really took a lot of pride in winning teams in the fourth quarter and winning games in the fourth quarter. “But that’s what we have, regardless of the outcome of some games. And that’s what they continued to do in the scrimmage, I think our guys tended to lean, and I’ll watch the tape and see for sure, but I thought we started to wear him down a little bit, some of those runs early on, You know, it was three yards, four yards, two yards, you know, six yards And they started crashing. You know, Jamal had a good performance in the football, but I thought Chad Alexander had some really tough physical runs there and some big downs.

2. On some of the new wrinkles to tonight’s offense…

“Yes, it’s been a bit too crowded for us in the last few weeks and we’ve been playing in a telephone booth for a bit. So we wanted to make sure we spread it out and work the field, not just north and south, but also east and west. “Well, we have guys who are explosive with the ball in their hands and the biggest challenge What made this happen was that Haynes was able to negotiate the throw across defensive lines almost the entire game. So that was the challenge. We wanted to do that and spit the ball out. I mean, we didn’t have a lot of long, big passes, but we had some key catches and some key situations, I thought.”

3. About Chad Alexander…

“Chad had some really good, hard runs. I mean, he had a couple of third runs there too. Ramp got behind his pads. And for a smaller back, he’s got – he’s an explosive guy. And then I thought, he showed it to him.

4. About Jamal Haynes…

“Yeah, I have to mentally and emotionally even deal with this weekend at work? Yeah, I mean, every time you don’t perform as well as you can, it’s hard. But see, this doesn’t just affect Jamal. I thought we played better as a unit up front tonight, and especially in some short-yard situations we added a few wrinkles that helped us. But some of those things came along because we were able to have guys But after the game I gave them all a big hug and said, “It was really nice to see a 100% No. 11 out there, really from Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday.” “, the boys who are broken during training wear a black jersey. And at the end of training I went out and had the equipment people get his jersey out of his locker and took his black jersey. In the last training session I went through the trash can and gave him back his white one. It must be like Superman took his away. I don’t think that would have been very wise. He’s a tough kid, we have some tough guys on our team.”

5. About Jordan van den Berg…

“Yes, he played better every week. He earned the start tonight with what he did in the last few production games. It’s not even close to being the strongest player on the football team. I mean, he could be.” I mean, he’s a powerful, strong guy, but he also has enough agility and speed to be disruptive, so he’s getting better every week. There have been some nagging injuries along the way. And I was on a roll tonight, and I think that really helped us there.

6. How they were able to contain Duke’s hasty attack…

“We closed our gaps, we played the blocks well. I can’t say enough about Jess Simpson and the work he does coaching technique in defense. He understands the big picture on defense and he understands the big picture on offense.” . And he’s a great teacher, which shows that these guys have become very smart at football. A few of those who splashed out to make bigger wins were actually on our side. We’ll take a look and see exactly where we messed up, but I’m very proud to keep getting better because we have a big challenge ahead of us next week.”

7. About executing long attacks on the offensive…

“I mean, I would like to score every time. But no, it’s free football. All right, and, you know, we could line up and throw the ball on every play or keep the tempo on every play, but you know? We get together a lot, the coordinators meet on Thursdays and discuss how we interact with each other It’s not just about the offense, not just about the defense, not just about the kicking game. We need to play complementary football – time of possession is not always a meaningful value of winning and losing games, but if it suits the style of play you play, it takes away the time they have to play And at some point, when it was about 10, we had, you know, several possessions, I think at halftime it was kind of a two-on-one possession, but it was a three-point game. Therefore, you also have to be efficient with these drives. And I think, like I said when I opened up, we need to be a little more efficient in some of those things, some of those drives and finishing with the points on the board.”

8. About Taye Seymore and Billy Shaw…

“Yes, Taye deserves what he deserves, the place he is in. I mean, there was a string in it The main thing we talked about this week was playing fast, not playing fast, you know, we all know that, right? If you’re fast, you have to play fast, right? You play fast when you start when the game slows down, right? , correct? You know, now you’re one step ahead, two steps ahead. The more he plays, the better he gets,

One of the greatest players to play here, Billy Shaw, and that was it. It was a, just for him, who passed away yesterday. And, you know, NFL Hall of Famer, incredible career here, incredible career in the National Football League. And I believe that to this day he is the only person in the NFL Hall of Fame who never actually played in the NFL. And he was with the AFL Buffalo Bills the whole time. Only someone who is 83, 84 years old and apparently passed away at 85 became a good friend. Just someone who met you, you know later and later and he just sent me text messages otherwise we couldn’t talk on the phone and you know, it’s just a good, good man and he’s a technician and he has here done a lot, done a lot for this place, and every time someone shows up at Canton and says they went to the greatest university in the world, you know, they love this place.

9. The turning point at the end of the game…

“No, that was it, we really started playing field position battle. We had, like I said, two that were down nine in the first half, one that was down ten, and then, boom, down nine again.” Again, we’re able to kick the ball out, turn the field over, a big stop on defense after they went the length So we were able to get a bit of an advantage down the field, but I think we started to wear them down a little bit and that’s a credit to getting the ball a little better let him run and protect better as the game progresses, stop the run and improve his coverage more and more. That’s really a credit to what these guys do in the weight room starting in January, February and March. Not just in the last week of training or anything.

10. Be aggressive on the secondary…

“Well, they need to continue to be more aggressive and they have done that. They challenged the receivers. That’s something we’ve really emphasized over the last two weeks. And from practice last Sunday into the week.” “We got more balls, had more interceptions, more strips because it wasn’t just emphasized, but on every single play. So it’s good that this could happen.”