GT HC Geoff Collins Plans To Build Roster Like Notre Dame's

Second-year Georgia Tech head coach Geoff Collins is very clear about knowing “exactly” what his roster needs to and – according to him – will look like in the future.

He’s effusive in his praise for the players he currently has and goes out of his way to point out accomplishments that may go unnoticed by the novice viewer.

During a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, Collins said the reporters covering the team were aware of how he was trying to change the program.

“Everybody who has been on this call understands how we’re trying to build this roster, how we’re building this roster physically through development in the weight room,” he said. “How we try to develop and build and recruit guys with length, guys with size so that we can have a longer, bigger roster.”

Collins certainly addressed those things with his first full recruiting class in 2020, which was ranked in the top half of the ACC and around Top 25 nationally. Freshman quarterback Jeff Sims and running back Jahmyr Gibbs receive much of the attention from that group and deservedly so, but Collins also pointed to defensive linemen Kyle Kennard, Jared Ivey, Emmanuel Johnson as sneak peeks of what to look for in the future.

It’s also clear Collins sees Notre Dame, his opponent this weekend, as another example of what he expects to see in his own locker room one day.

“It’s a really good roster, it’s a really good coaching staff,” Collins said of Notre Dame. “They play physical. They play hard. There’s a lot of good things that we can say about them and I will say about them because I have a tremendous amount of respect for that program and how they play.

“Big guys who play physical, who have really good effort, are very athletic, have a good scheme that complements what they have on the roster.”

He specifically pointed to the Irish’s stockpile of weapons at tight end.

“Over the last four years, there’s probably been 20 elite tight ends in recruiting in high school football,” he said. “Notre Dame’s got five of the top 20 of the last four years.”

Collins said the first two things he looks at when studying opponents on film is the field goal/PAT block unit and the kickoff coverage unit.

“When you turn on Notre Dame’s kickoff coverage, I think they average 235 pounds on the kickoff coverage unit,” he said. “They run down the field, they’re physical, they’re aggressive, they’re athletic.”

Collins is excited to see how his guys take the field on Saturday “against a really, really, really good football team,” and it’s clear he respects the construction of Notre Dame’s roster.

“We will continue to build ours in a not-so-dissimilar manner.”