As Georgia Tech’s roster continues to evolve, shift and change, there could be some additions to the fold in the coming days.
The NCAA’s transfer portal opens Wednesday. Tech coach Brent Key will be scouring the names in that database to see if there are any players who could help the Yellow Jackets in the 2025 season, but not before he focuses his attention on the current players in the locker room.
“This is an opportunity for us to make our football team better,” Key said Saturday after the White and Gold spring game. “But I told our staff numerous times, I’ve told our team, the most important portal is in that locker room right there. Those are the most important guys in the country to me. It’s not people somewhere else.
“If we have an opportunity to add guys in here or there to fill a hole, that’s great. But those guys right there, those are the most important ones to me.”
Tech has seen a few players already announce intentions to leave, notably running back Anthony Carrie and defensive back Syeed Gibbs. It’s likely that a few more may opt to leave Tech in the coming days; thus, Key will have roster spots to fill between now and the start of the team’s preseason camp this summer.
The names that potentially could plug those holes shouldn’t be unfamiliar to Key or his staff, he said, with the new era of college football being a never-ending cycle of talent acquisition.
“If you think it starts up now, or starts up tomorrow, then somebody has got their head in the sand,” he added. “This has been something that’s year-round. This is something that we’ve really started attacking a couple weeks ago.”
Tech was active in the portal market over the winter as well, adding nearly 20 new players to the roster to supplement the current team.
Key focused his efforts on the defensive front seven by adding defensive linemen A.J. Hoffler (Clemson), Matthew Alexander (Central Florida), Ronald Triplette (Texas-San Antonio) and Brayden Manley (Mercer) and linebackers Melvin Jordan (Oregon State) and Cayman Spaulding (Tennessee Tech). Important offensive additions included Florida International transfers Eric Rivers and Dean Patterson and wide receiver and running back Malachi Hosley (Penn).
The line of scrimmage on offense and defense could be an area that Tech zeros in on this week, as well as the secondary, where Gibbs and freshman Nehemiah Chandler are expected to transfer and freshman Troy Stevenson will miss the 2025 season because of injury.
But Key, speaking last week on radio station JOX-FM in Birmingham, Alabama, reiterated that continuing to keep sentry over his current team from poachers is just as vital finding the final few pieces to join the ’25 Jackets.
“I’m sure I’m not the only coach that’s going through what every coach is going through right now,” Key said. “Let me just tell you, they know who your good players are regardless, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the spring game. It has zero to do with the spring game. Nothing.
“Everybody knows whose everybody’s good players are. It’s pretty evident by what we’re all going through right now.”
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