Mailbag 4/19

CTjacket: What was your biggest takeaway from the Spring game (positive or negative - or both)?

Ben: Biggest takeaway from me is that the QB battle is anything but decided. Pyron looks to have picked up right where he left off, but Haynes King was arguably more impressive. No matter which of them starts, I am cautiously optimistic about improvement on the offense. I think it is also difficult to take anything super meaningful away from the game since it is a glorified scrimmage. But that won’t stop me from being optimistic!

Jack: I’m with Ben that the QB battle certainly is a question to still be answered, and that’s exciting. Hopefully that means we have multiple serviceable QBs, giving us an insurance policy of someone goes down with injury. The crowd was also very good relative to past years. I’ve been hearing that J Batt has done a good job in pulling season ticket holders back into coming to games this year, which is critical as the team desperately needs continued outside investment.

Burdell91: Is Tech baseball ded?

Ben: Who’s to say? They just got swept by an average Virginia Tech team and smoked a subpar Georgia State team. Can things get better? Sure, but things don’t look great.

Jack: It’s perpetually half alive. Put them against a competent team, and the pitching gets exposed. Put them against a sub-par team, and the bats explode. They have talent, but cannot for the life of them figure out how to throw enough strikes (see: 18 walks in a single game last weekend). Some serious questions need to be asked yesterday about how we’re developing our pitching staff.

DressHerInWhiteAndGold: What’s your Bill Murray top 5?

Ben: As I look through Bill Murray’s IMDB page, I realize just how few Bill Murray movies I have actually seen. Speaking of, I completely forgot he was in Osmosis Jones, and all of the memories of that movie just came pouring back into my head. Good god.

Jack: I’m a huge Wes Anderson fan, so my top five here is overwhelming tied in with that. 1. Rushmore 2. The Life Aquatic 3. The Royal Tenenbaums, and the rest I don’t care to rank since I’m not a huge Ghostbusters guy.

tyler_pifer92: With some transfer guys with ties to Tech (Jarvis, Minor, Bamba) signing elsewhere, are there any other top guys connected to Tech? I only know of Hugely from Pitt.

Ben: I saw this morning that Griffin Scroggs entered his name into the portal. He is an OL for UGA that was previously committed to Georgia Tech. Harrison Bailey is apparently in the transfer portal again. There was a lot of smoke about him coming to Tech previously, but if Brent Key is comfortable with Pyron and King, which I think he should be, I don’t think that’s a likely option. Beyond those two names, I’m not seeing a whole lot of Tech connections. There is also hundreds of players, and I am quickly skimming through the list on 247.

DTGT: Can we has hope?

Ben:

Anyway, yeah, I think this is a very hopeful time for Georgia Tech football. As I said earlier, I am cautiously optimistic that things are headed in the right direction. A turnaround is not an immediate thing, but there is definitely a case to make that Tech can and should improve this season.

DTGT: Favorite outdoor dining/drinking spots for good spring weather?

Ben: I know this is absolutely not the answer you are going for, but my wife and I recently got a little canopy tent for our patio, and now we love doing everything out there. It’s just wonderful.

Jack: First, let me plug my family’s establishment, Wild Heaven Beer (genuinely one of the better breweries for families in Atlanta). Besides there, I love El Tesoro on Arkwright Place. Brickstore in Decatur has an outdoor patio that sprung during Covid, and it’s a lovely spot with the highest quality taplist in the metro area.

Anuj Bhyravabhotla (submitted via email): How aggressive do you expect Buster Faulkner to allow the QBs to be in running the football (i.e.: calling more designed runs, letting the QBs take on more contact, etc.)

Ben: I don’t expect him to be super aggressive with running the QBs simply due to injuries. Both Zach Pyron and Haynes King have dealt with injuries in the past, and I can’t tell you the last time a GT quarterback made it all the way through a season.