Brent Key Turnover Issues & States The Root Cause Of The Problem For The Yellow Jackets

A big theme in the press conference on Tuesday for Georgia Tech head coach Brent Key was the turnover issue the team has been having early in the season. Fortunately, it hasn’t affected them to the point where it is costing them games because the defense is playing at a high level and is now allowing opposing teams to score points on them when the turnovers come. They’ve done a good job of playing complementary football and getting the ball back to the offense while it figures things out. Coach Key was asked how the defense can produce more turnovers to help with the turnover battle, and he had this to say about it.

“Well,  as opposed to producing more defense, how about we eliminate the ones on offense?  That's the ones that are killing us. Right?  That's what's unacceptable.  Unacceptable. You know, has there ever been a year ago where there were zero turnovers? I don't know.  Not that I can recollect, but I know this it was game eight last year before we even had two or three. I say all the time, last year means nothing about this year.  When you do a deep dive, we dive into it, and you see kind of what they're coming from. It goes back to practice,” said Key.

One of the main things Key talked about was technique when it came to turnovers. Not putting the blame on one sole person, but the entire team and everybody making sure they do their job. From the center who is snapping the ball, to the quarterback, running back, and even the exchange. Everything has to be tight-knit and run to a T. It is something that has been in the back of his mind and something he wants to fix and quickly because he knows winning teams don’t turn over the ball.

“It is technique. It’s doing things the right way all the time, right?  If you track inside the foot of the guard or the front side foot of the center, then that's what it needs to be. Right?  If your eyes are on the football and football is supposed to be right here, then it's supposed to be right here. Quarterbacks have a lot of things to look at now. I mean, he's looking at coverage. He's looking at frontal reads. He's looking at all this if he has to take his eye off for the football, I mean, that throws the whole thing off. All right, it's not just one person. It's not just the one person who put it on the ground. Okay, it's ultimately everyone involved from the time the ball snapped until that whistle blows and the play is complete,” said Key.

“All right, so there are a lot of things that go into it. You know, we've had two exchange issues. We've had a high snap that ended up being a turnover, two interceptions. Then we had the one where we had the botched play on the first drive of the game in the second game of the year, had a botched play, and Aaron pulls the ball down and they end up stripping it out. Yeah, they're in my head. They're stuck in my head. I know exactly why they happened. To play winning football, you can't turn the ball over. If the ball continues to get turned over, right, in the same way, we either won't run those plays or we won't continue to do it that way. But to do the same thing, expect to get a different result is idiotic to me.”

Saturday will be a good test to see how the Yellow Jackets come out and if they can avoid turnovers and mistakes. We saw last week against Temple, the Yellow Jackets have one of their best quarters of the season, scoring on three consecutive drives and putting up 21 points while the defense pitched a shutout. Then the struggles came in the second quarter when the offense could only conjure up nine total yards and went 0-3 on third down. There are ebbs and flows in games, and you have to do a good job of managing them, which is what Georgia Tech did on Saturday. However, they have to avoid the slow starts similar to what we saw against Colorado and Gardner Webb. If they can put together fast starts and take care of the football, nobody in the ACC, let alone the country, is stopping this Buster Faulkner offense. It is just too good with a myriad of weapons ready to touch the ball and make a play.