Two games, two home defeats
Georgia Tech have not won this season. Colorado came to Atlanta and left with the game. Tennessee, ranked 18th at the time, did the same last Saturday and did it emphatically, 45-24. The Yellow Jackets sit at 0-2, and Mercer arrive on Saturday with a number hanging over the home side. Georgia Tech last opened a season with three straight losses in 1989.
Brent Key is not reaching for drama. “The goal this week is to go 1-0,” the head coach said.
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299 rushing yards, and six plays that explain them
Tennessee ran for 299 yards. Key points to six explosive runs as the source of most of that total, and he argues the defensive line held up better in Week 2 than the raw number suggests.
“Three of the six of those came down to one person making the play,” Key said. “And we weren’t able to do that. Shame on us for not having more than one guy there, to rally to the football and get off a block.”
Tackling, then, rather than the trenches. That is a fixable problem inside a week, at least in theory.
Mercer are not a soft landing
The Bears sit 22nd in the FCS Coaches’ Poll at 2-1, and they leave Macon for the first time this season without leaving the state. Their one defeat came last Saturday against conference rival Furman, 20-13, a game that turned on four interceptions from quarterback Jaylen King and a 47-yard touchdown run by Ben Croasdale with 47 seconds on the clock.
Coach Joel Taylor has told his players to file it away.
“A loss kind of magnifies some things that you’ve got to fix,” Taylor said. “I think it also heightens the sense of urgency of getting better as well, but we have a great opponent that’s coming up.”
Mercer carry a real weapon in Brayden Smith. The receiver was named Southern Conference Preseason Offensive Player of the Year and leads the league with 284 receiving yards from 17 catches, with one touchdown.
The two programs have met once in the modern era, in 2016, when Georgia Tech won 35-10. A decade later the gap reads a lot narrower than that scoreline.
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