As fate would have it, J.T. Byrne explains, when he would study videotape of an opponent during the 2024 season as a senior at California, that opponent would have just played Georgia Tech.
“You can tell on film who people are based on film,” Byrne said. “And I remember telling (Georgia Tech) coach (Brent) Key that as well, like, ‘You guys had an identity on film and it speaks to who you are as people.’ I was just really fortunate and grateful that they wanted me to be a part of that and I was so excited to just to be a part of this culture that wants to win.”
Byrne opted to go into the NCAA’s transfer portal in December in hopes of landing somewhere new for his final season of college football. He was intrigued by Tech, despite never having set foot in Georgia, mostly because of the play of Jackson Hawes. Hawes, a senior for the Yellow Jackets in 2024, now is considered one of the top tight end prospects ahead of this year’s NFL draft.
So Byrne (6-foot-5, 255 pounds) decided to join the team in Atlanta, putting faith in Key and tight ends coach Nathan Brock that they could put him in position to have the sort of success Hawes experienced in his one season at Tech.
“What we’ve done is the last couple of years, I think we’ve done a really good job of evaluating guys that are the right fit for us as an offense,” Brock said. “And the first thing that we look at is the mentality piece of it: How are they wired? Are they hard workers? Do they care about football? Do they care about their teammates? And then from there to kind of develop them.”
Byrne has been thrown into Tech’s first-string tight end position this spring. Senior Brett Seither, who missed 2024 because of injury, is still making his way back to full strength, and redshirt freshman Luke Harpring is still in the development stages of learning the position, having played tight end and defensive end at Marist School.
Senior Josh Beetham also is competing alongside Byrne for reps inside an offense that relies on the tight end heavily for success.
“We view the tight end position in our offense as a guy that creates mismatches for the defense,” Brock explained. “We line them up in a lot of different ways. We ask them to run block, pass block, catch balls. I think that we’ve done a really good job in developing those guys to do it all, and getting guys on the field that have multiple skill sets that can do different things for us.
“I think that if you look at the (group) right now, we’ve got a lot of guys that are working really hard and guys that have played at other places and guys that push each other. So just really developing a total-package tight end, somebody that can go out and do everything that we ask them to do, and not just be one dimensional.”
Byrne has never caught a pass during his four seasons of college (he spent the 2021-22 seasons at Oregon State). But he did grab 66 receptions for 958 yards and nine touchdowns at Carmel High School in California.
Seither has not seen the field since the 2023 Gasparilla Bowl. A former Georgia tight end, Seither played 264 offensive snaps in 2023 for the Jackets.
Harpring played 25 offensive snaps as a rookie in 2024 and had a breakout game at North Carolina, catching two passes for 36 yards and finishing with an offensive grade of 77.4, according to Pro Football Focus.
Tech added more depth in January with former Wake Forest tight end Harry Lodge. Freshmen Connor Roush (Wesleyan) and Kevin Roche (Darien, Conn.) are expected to join the program this summer.
“(Brock’s) done an unbelievable job of recruiting that position, evaluating it, getting the right guys for the locker room,” Tech offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner said. “We consider that (position group) a lot like the quarterbacks, glue guys that keep this thing together with not only what we do offensively, but what we want in the locker room.”
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