A New Day at Georgia Tech in 2022
Who Are All These New Yellow Jackets?
Georgia Tech has embraced the strange new world of college football. The Jackets have added 17 players via transfer since the end of the 2021 season. Of those, most are from power 5 programs, including two from Clemson, two from Notre Dame and one from Alabama. None of that news automatically equates to instant success for the players or for their new team. But it does provide reasonable hope that talent and manpower gaps from graduation and transfers out can be mitigated.
All these new faces will cast a different feel to Summer drills as Collins and his new staff get to know –and try to blend– their roster as quickly as possible. After all, Clemson meets Tech in Game One on Sept 5. That’s eight short weeks away. And Georgia Tech is not alone in their roster makeover via transfer. Over 2000 players have switched schools nationwide since last season. USC leads with 20 new players. Ole Miss has added 17.
In a sense, the first week of summer practice from the Yellow Jacket coaching staff might seem more like Spring drills. There will be lots of new faces among both players and coaches. And there are reatively few holdovers from 2021 among the starters– those players who were typically “above the line” in Geoff Collins’ system. On offense, QB Jeff Sims returns after an inconsistent 2021. He will be working with new QB coach Chris Weinke and new OC Chip Long. Their task will be to get more consistent production using Sims’ considerable dual threat talent. But this year, there are new competitors at the position. Transferring in are Zach Gibson from Akron and Taisun Phommachanh from Clemson. Freshman QB Zach Pyron joins the mix along with walk on Brody Rhodes.
The considerable task for Tech coaches is to evaluate the group quickly enough to emerge from summer camp with a leader in place. Their ability to do that will have a major effect on the arc of the Jackets’ 2022 campaign.
There are similar situations at other positions on the team. We will cover those in the days to come.
Patrick Conarro
RamblinSports