Georgia Tech’s defensive coordinator wants to ‘lead the nation in toughness’

“I’m having a blast. I feel prepared for this position. I’ve worked for some incredible coaches in my career that have shown what to do and warned me what to stay away from. I think that second part there is just as important as the first part. What to avoid and how to progress things the right way, both from a leadership standpoint with the staff as well as the players.”

Gideon, 35, is three practices into his Tech tenure, inheriting a Tech defense that led the ACC in fewest first downs allowed, ranked third in third-down defense, fourth in total defense and sixth in both rushing and passing defense. The 2024 Yellow Jackets made a marked turnaround under Santucci, and now Gideon is charged with keeping the train of solid defensive play rolling.

“Let’s see what we can do. Let’s see what we’re good at,” Gideon said of his early evaluations of what he is working with. “These guys were really good at some things this past year. I’m not big on changing things that work just to fit what I want to call it or what I wanna do, whatever dream I had whenever I got this coordinator opportunity. We’re throwing a lot at them right now to get different things on tape and figure out what’s best, what fits our personnel best.

“I know that’s the big looming question of, ‘What are you gonna lean into schematically?’ Honestly, I can’t answer that entirely right now. I’ll have a better idea toward the end of spring, the types of players we have from the techniques up front we wanna play to the structure that we wanna play in the back seven.”

At Texas, his alma mater, Gideon coached the safeties for four seasons and was the associate head coach for the Longhorns’ defense in 2024. His experience playing and coaching the back end was part of what drew Key to Gideon.

Defensive line coach Jess Simpson and defensive ends and outside linebackers coach Kyle Pope returned, giving Key confidence that the front of his defense was in good hands. Cory Peoples also returned for a second season at Tech to lead the team’s defensive backs.

“The big thing was I was not gonna change the way we play our front mechanics,” Key told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “But I wanted to simplify it from a linebacker and safety perspective and improve the back end. I wanted a walk-around coordinator. I didn’t want him coaching a position.”

Gideon began his coaching career a little more than a decade ago at Florida. In 2018 he took a job as cornerbacks coach at Georgia State. It was during that year that he took his then-girlfriend and now-wife to dinner at Canoe restaurant on Paces Ferry Road and proposed marriage on the banks of the Chattahoochee River.

Seven years later he returned to Georgia’s capital after being part of a program that played in the College Football Playoff this past season, a program considered one of the blue bloods of the sport. He brings a multitude of lessons he learned while in Austin, Texas, as well as from his father, a longtime high school coach in Texas.

The biggest lesson, though? Playing with toughness, and Gideon said Saturday he wants the Jackets to be the toughest team in the nation.

“No. 1, you talk about it and you practice it every day. You don’t pick and choose,” he said. “If you’re a real tough guy, and you wanna lead the nation in toughness, then it’s not something that just happens on a Saturday night in the fall. It’s something that’s happening on a random Saturday in March. And then again on Tuesday and then again on Thursday and every offseason day. How about the days when we’re just going to class?

“There’s a mentality in which we wanna do everything, not just the football side of things. It’s how we wanna live our lives. The Georgia Institute of Technology is no slouch. These guys can’t turn it on and off. That’s what we’re trying to build upon. I think the football stuff tends to take care of itself, but it’s the mentality we wake up with every day. To be that toughest team in the nation you gotta do it every day. It doesn’t just magically appear.”