It’s that time of year again, time to throw logic to the wind and get BOLD. Tomorrow we’ll have reasonable season predictions here at FTRS, but today we’re getting crazy. Sit down, strap in, and make sure you have a bucket of ice water ready because these takes are on fiyah!

GT Rob

• AJ Gray makes 1st team All-ACC
• Justin Thomas has a bounce-back season and enters the Heisman conversation at some point
• Tech goes undefeated at home
• Jackets beat all 3 schools from the Carolinas that are on the schedule.
• Mark Richt is a flop at Miami, Hurricanes miss out on a bowl game
• After trouncing BC, Tech’s flight to Atlanta is delayed while the team searches for CPJ in the Pubs

Ramblinwreckcle

• The trivia question in the Boston College game will be "Which five FBS schools don't have university in their name?
• Ricky Jeune will fully develop his chemistry with Justin Thomas and will put up a Deandre Smelter-like performance
• Paul Johnson will be the next "Dancing Coach" craze when he does whatever dance becomes big in two months
• A-Back depth becomes a serious issue for one of the first times I can remember
• The linebackers assert themselves as the best unit on the team

Danny Duncanson

• For the first time since 2009, Georgia Tech will have multiple players go over 1,000 yards of total offense (rushing yards + receiving yards). In 2009, it was Jonathan Dwyer, Demaryius Thomas, and Joshua Nesbitt. In 2016, it will be Justin Thomas (not bold enough?), Ricky Jeune (still not bold enough?), and…Clinton Lynch. Lynch will be just the second A-Back to top the 1,000 rushing-plus-receiving mark, following Robert Godhigh’s 2013 season. There’s a lot of hype around some of the other A-Backs on the roster, but Lynch was really good as a redshirt-freshman in 2015 and will only get better
• On the other side of the ball, KeShun Freeman shakes off the sophomore slump and gets double digit sacks
• Harrison Butker doesn’t miss a field goal all season on his way to setting the school record for career points scored (he only needs 76 to break Luke Manget’s record of 322)

Josh Brundage

• Georgia Tech goes 12-0 during the regular season behind a resurgent offensive line and a newfound pass rush matched with a ball-hawking secondary.
• The season ends with a 5 touchdown victory over their rivals in Athens, who lost to both ACC teams they bookended their season with.
• However, Tech is left out of the Playoff after losing their rematch game in overtime against Clemson in Charlotte. The committee couldn't bring themselves to put 2 ACC teams in the playoff
• Tech still goes on to play in the Chikfila Bowl, where they run roughshod over LSU and become the first controversial snub of the playoff era

Conner Knapp

• Georgia Tech returns to 2014 form with 10 wins or more and wins the Coastal Division

Rane Martin

• Mills finishes the year as leading rusher and ACC freshman of the year
• Justin Thomas has the best season of a GT QB we have seen
• The GT D finishes in the top 25 in total D
• AJ Gray enters legendary status as a sophomore with his performance all season and against UGA
• ACC starts the year 3-0 over Sec on opening weekend. Goes 4-0 over the SEC on rivalry week

Ben Tankersley

• Dedrick Mills finishes as Tech's leading rusher
• Justin Thomas finishes with 2,000 passing yards and 1,000 rushing yards, in addition to 35-40 total touchdowns
• Keshun Freeman and Anree Saint-Amour, though splitting time, both finish with at least 8 sacks
• Brant Mitchell finishes 1st team All-ACC and borderline All-American
• AJ Gray finishes as an All-American and finishes as a finalist for the Jim Thorpe (best DB)

Joey Weaver

Georgia Tech will finish 2016 undefeated at home

This might not seem like a particularly bold pick, given Georgia Tech has seven home games this year and five are against Mercer, Vanderbilt, Georgia Southern, Duke, and Virginia -- all teams that Georgia Tech should be favored against anyways. Another is against Miami, where the Yellow Jackets will serve as the first test for Mark Richt's inaugural team in Coral Gables, and where I think Manny Diaz will struggle to adjust his defensive schemes in his first time coaching against Paul Johnson's offense. Not a particularly crazy conjecture to think Georgia Tech could go 6-0 against that set of teams, right?

Oh, and there's also Clemson.

The Tigers are the reigning conference champions and national runners-up. They bring back the best quarterback in the country and all sorts of firepower on offense. They smoked Georgia Tech last year and are being predicted to go undefeated this year by several.

They won't. Georgia Tech will beat them.

The game happens in late September, on a Thursday night, with both teams playing on short rest coming off of games the previous Saturday. By all means, Clemson will and should be favored, but my long-standing theory had been that weird things happen to opposing teams in night games at Bobby Dodd Stadium.

That theory will hold once again as two teams enter undefeated, and only the home team keeps a goose egg in the "L" column.

Georgia Tech is going undefeated at home in 2016. You heard it here first.

#strongtakes

Were those takes not quite hot enough to satisfy your appetite? Should we take it up to 11? Too bad, we’re doing it anyway. Buckle up.

Kieffer Milligan

• With the hype Mills churning at full speed, Dedrick is the first 1000 yard B-back since Anthony Allen.
• Looking for help at the WR position, CPJ enlists the help of Nivlac Johnson, a 30 year-old Tech student. ACC coaches protest, claiming that using a player that old compromises the purity and spirit of the game. New UVA Head Coach Bronco Mendenhall doesn’t see the problem.
• Miami wins all their home games, but nobody is there to see it. Philosophers debate as to whether or not it actually happened
• After the injury to starting QB Thomas Sirk, there will be someone new Manning the helm for Duke this season. It won’t be the announced starter. Insiders have told FTRS that a mysterious masked man, said to be trained by Cutcliffe, has been practicing with the 1st team. FTRS has acquired an exclusive photo of the new Duke starting QB, which can be seen here.
• Duke’s defense isn’t good enough to lead this new QB to a Super Bowl ACC Title, and they finish 5th in the Coastal
• On an unrelated note, 3 new Papa John’s franchises open on Duke’s campus
• BC Quarterback Patrick Towles dedicates his season to Harambe, then proceeds to lead an offense with less life than a dead gorilla. Nobody in the Boston area notices, as they’re all too busy wondering what Tom Brady is doing while he’s suspended.
• Georgia Tech makes the Russell Athletic Bowl, shows up wearing Under Armour

What’s that, you want even hotter takes? Well, you asked for it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

MagnaCarterGT

• Still trying to reach twelve members, the Big 12 invites Pumas de UANM and Tigres UANL from Mexico, which despite representing Mexican universities are actually top-flight professional soccer teams. The Tigres manage to win the conference in 2018 anyway, defeating Big 12 North champion Iowa State in a penalty shootout. Because the Big 12 has also added penalty shootouts
• Alabama is slotted into a postseason bowl against former NCAA, WWE, and UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar. No one else. Just Lesnar. The Tide lose; Lesnar returns to his home in Saskatchewan to fight bears for eight months
• Not a single Rutgers game is televised and people begin to wonder if the Scarlet Knights are even still a member of the Big Ten, or if they ever even existed at all
• Under new coach Will Muschamp, South Carolina starts the season 7-0, but the Gamecocks' season takes a turn during their game against Tennessee when, in the third quarter, Muschamp loses his cool, Hulks out, and goes on a rampage, destroying a third of Columbia. The Gamecocks are forced to fire Muschamp and vacate the season, as Hulking out during a game is an NCAA violation
• The UVA-VT rivalry has an added element of intrigue, as the new coaches of both teams are the same as the ones in the infamous 2014 Miami Beach Bowl ,Bronco Mendenhall and Justin Fuente, decide to settle the score with a one-on-one fistfight at halftime
• All the preseason talk about one conference putting two teams into the college football playoff ends up coming true. That conference is.... the Sun Belt. That's right, after spending the past two years getting their legs in college football's top division, Georgia State and Texas State are taking over
• The Battle of Bristol is such a success event organizers begin planning a followup that involves a college football game _and_ a NASCAR race _at the same time_, thus creating the southern redneck singularity
• After falling far short of expectations, Texas fires Charlie Strong six games into the season. His replacement, to begin coaching immediately, is Lane Kiffin
• Notoriously aggressive Stanford football fan and SB Nation writer Ryan Nanni is banned from Twitter for his online behavior. His pitches to Stanford alumni venture capitalists for a competing platform called Treeter are unsuccessful

Got any BOLD predictions of your own? Let’s hear ‘em!