Georgia Tech Football: Top 5 reasons Geoff Collins will succeed at Tech

A few days ago the Yellow Jackets got a new head football coach and enough time has passed to fully digest what the hire means going forward.

Georgia Tech‘s replacement for a retiring Paul Johnson was relatively unknown to the fan base prior to his press conference last week. After his press conference, however, Geoff Collins seems to have a clear direction for the program.

Here are five reasons why the newest coach of the Yellow Jackets will find success on the Flats:

Flexibility

Perhaps this path to success for Geoff Collins will be most apparent in his early attempt to take over the roster for the flex option and implement a pro-style offense, but the willingness to change can also come into play later down the road.

Collins is a defensive minded coach, which means he may have some quirks on that end of the ball, but it will be interesting to see how his apparent open-mindedness on offense makes the most of a back-heavy roster that doesn’t currently even include a tight end.

More from Yellow Jacked Up

• Georgia Tech Women’s Basketball: Yellow Jackets find out opponent for Big Ten-ACC Challenge
• Georgia Tech Football: What the new ACC scheduling format means for the Yellow Jackets
• Georgia Tech gets six new commits to 2023 class after official visits
• Georgia Tech hosts a plethora of 2023 recruits this weekend
• Dontae Smith slated for big season in 2022

At Temple, Collins recorded two winning seasons and largely did it with players he took over from someone else. It’s easy to see the Owls were trending in the right direction upon his departure. How many games can a 2019 patchwork Georgia Tech squad put in the win column?

Recruiting

Talking players into coming to Georgia Tech is often presented as some sort of mysterious, nearly impossible task, but that’s rubbish. There are plenty of top-tier players around college football who make the grade and do so in non-traditional campus settings.

Collins helped put together several classes of talented players that helped Tech win a lot of games in the Georgia O’Leary era. He also had a hand in the program’s memorable 2007 class that put a lot of players in the NFL and won an ACC title. The Alabama class Collins helped piece together started the run the Tide are still enjoying and a good number of his Central Florida recruits won a Fiesta Bowl.

Certainly recruiting stars aren’t everything and players don’t always live up to the hype.. but more often than not, they do and wins follow suit. Collins can get those players to Atlanta. The tradition and history are there, the facilities are there and the value of the education is there. He’s just got to build the brand. That’s something that has already started.

Location

As sort of part II to recruiting, Atlanta should be an easy sell to players and coaches as Collins puts his program together the way he wants it.

It’s not going to be difficult to recruit top-tier assistant coaches and quality staff to the epicenter of the college football world. In fact, location is one of the factors that Collins himself has continuously stated drew him to Georgia Tech and made it his dream job in the first place.

Any coach worth his pay could put a quality roster together with just Georgia and Florida in play, and Atlanta is a nice base camp for pulling in those players. Not to mention the busiest airport on earth has easy access to flights to and from just about anywhere recruits can be found.

Relationships

Geoff Collins left his staff in place behind at Temple through the Owls’ upcoming bowl game because he didn’t want to disturb his former players as they transition. He has been careful not to step on the toes of a future Hall of Fame coach in Paul Johnson as he prepares for his final game (for now). Collins often speaks of how important relationships are and how that translates to success in the classroom and on the football field.

Collins has already been burning the ground up recruiting players for the upcoming class and building relationships with those recruits and their parents and coaches could pay dividends far into the future at Tech.

A coach focused on relationships above all else tends to see players succeed academically, which is of great importance at Georgia Tech. It can also pay off with performance on the field and program loyalty for players and assistant coaches.

Drive

It seems every coach starts a tenure with that “it” factor that gets fans and players excited about the future. Collins definitely exudes that drive and confidence.

Fans may remember that Paul Johnson seemed to have that fire when he first arrived in Atlanta 11 years ago, so it will be something 47-year-old Collins will need to maintain to keep the excitement at a high level around the program and on the field.

Johnson admitted upon retirement that the whole process just wasn’t fun anymore. Collins already seems to have brought the fun-o-meter back up to snuff and he hasn’t even coached a practice yet.

If the drive that brought Collins up through the ranks to the head coach of a Power 5 program can be maintained in Atlanta, there’s no reason that shouldn’t translate into a lot of wins for the Jackets.