Brent Key admits he had never met Tyler Santucci before hiring the 35-year-old in January to be Georgia Tech’s defensive coordinator. But Santucci was a name that continued to rise to the surface when Key, starting his second season as Tech’s coach, rifled through candidates for, arguably, his most-important offseason hire.
“When a guy (first-year Tech defensive line coach Jess Simpson) I’ve known for 20 years as a coach, as a person, stands on the table for a guy like he did, especially a guy that’s younger than him, that’s when the vetting becomes even more than talks and conversations,” Key told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution earlier this month. “Did the due diligence that I always do with coaching decisions. The personality and the demeanor matched the stats that you have.”
Simpson and Santucci both worked on the staff at Duke in 2023 before former Duke coach Mike Elko departed for Texas A&M. Key brought Simpson and Santucci to Atlanta this offseason and handed the reins of the Tech defense to Santucci.
A former star linebacker at Stony Brook, Santucci began his coaching career 14 years ago at his alma mater. He earned his first DC gig at A&M in 2022 where he helped coach the nation’s No. 1 pass defense. Last season in Durham, N.C., he directed the best scoring defense in the ACC.
Now he’s charged with turning Tech’s porous defense into one that can help elevate the program into conference title contenders.
“To me it’s all about starting from square one and having no preconceived notions on anybody or anything but building it the way we believe as a defensive staff and the way that coach Key wants it built,” Santucci said. “And I think with that we can’t cheat steps, we can’t skip steps and we will get to where we wanna get to in a timely matter.
“But I know foundationally it’s gotta start with how we play, our effort that we play with, how we communicate, how we treat one another and how we care about one another. If we do those things, I feel like we’ll get to where we need to get to.”
Santucci’s defense will base out of a 4-2-5 alignment, he said, with two high safeties, two cornerbacks and a nickelback. It will have a buck (outside) linebacker and mike (middle) linebacker and four defensive linemen aligned as two defensive ends, a defensive tackle and a nose tackle.
But as for schemes and coverages and personnel groupings, Santucci said none of that is on the forefront of Santucci’s directives during the first few days of spring practice. Instead, he’s drilling into his defensive players how to go about their business, how to attend meetings, how to play together, how to swarm to the ball and how to communicate.
Santucci added he’s asking the Yellow Jackets for a lot of trust early in the process.
“They show up each and every day and they wanna be coached. They wanna be coached hard, they wanna understand and know the why, ‘Hey coach, why are we doing this?’ Those are the best guys to be around,” Santucci said. “Every challenge that we as a coaching staff have thrown at them, they have answered. And they’ve shown up, they have not relented and that’s all we can ask. From Day 1, all we ask is like, ‘Hey, there’s gonna be a little bit of blind faith here. But you gotta trust that we’re gonna put you in position to where you guys wanna be and ultimately we wanna be as a defense.’ ”
Tech’s defense ranked last in the ACC in 2023 in stopping third down conversions, against the run and total defense. It was the second-worst team in the league in tackles for loss, scoring defense and first downs allowed.
It’s a unit that returns some experience, however, in linebackers Kyle Efford (the team’s leading tackler in 2023) and Trenilyas Tatum, defensive backs Clayton Powell-Lee, LaMiles Brooks and Ahmari Harvey and linemen Zeek Biggers, Eddie Kelly, Horace Lockett and Makius Scott, to name a few. Tech also brought in transfers E.J. Lightsey (a linebacker from Georgia), Jackson Hamilton (a linebacker from Louisville), Ayo Tifase (a defensive lineman from Florida State), Jack Barton (a defensive lineman from Furman), Warren Burrell (a cornerback from Tennessee) and Syeed Gibbs (a cornerback from Rhode Island).
Santucci’s determination on who among that group can perform on Saturdays in 2024 won’t be known until August, but his evaluation toward that endeavor began this month.
“This will be a merit-based defense,” he said. “The way that we perform, the way that we communicate, the way that we hold the standard will be how the depth chart is created.”
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