It’s rivalry week in the state of Georgia.

Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate is this Saturday and Georgia Tech will play host to the No. 1 team in the country. The Yellow Jackets clinched bowl eligibility last week and Brent Key has his alma mater back in the postseason for the first time since 2018. They are playing well, but they have their biggest challenge of the season ahead of them on Saturday when the Bulldogs make the trip from Athens.

Georgia head coach Kirby Smart held his weekly press conference today and discussed how Georgia Tech has improved this year and his familiarity with Key and Yellow Jackets offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner:

They’ve won games because they’re playing good football. No. 1, they’ve done a good job upgrading talent. He understands what it takes to win at Tech, what kind of players to go recruit. I think as he gets recruiting classes in there, he’s not going to do anything but get better. But when you’ve got an offensive line coach as a head coach, you’re going to have a physical, tough team. That’s No. 1. Haynes King is like that. He’s fast. He’s athletic. We’ve got several coaches that came from the Texas area that talk about his athleticism in high school, and you see it on tape. Buster’s done an unbelievable job with him, and he utilizes his entire skill set. These guys know how to run the football now. They are really good at running the football. They find best runs available, scheme runs, quarterback runs, unbalanced runs. Good backs, really tough O-line. It’s a day’s work when you go to play these guys with the way they play in terms of toughness and those things. That’s what’s allowed them to win is they have identity.”

Smart also would not say if he thought that Georgia Tech was the No. 1 rival for the Bulldogs:

“Well, geographically, they’re close, right? They’re in our state. You’re playing for something every time you play them because you’re playing for a state championship. I think that’s always important. They do a good job. It’s the next opponent. You know, I don’t rank them any higher than anybody else because I look at all the games as rivalries, and I let everybody else debate what’s the highest. I don’t get into those comparisons. A lot of respect for Brent and the job they do.”

Georgia Tech has one of the top offenses in the ACC in terms of yards per game and rushing yards and Smart talked about that and what he thinks makes the offense so diverse and tough to stop:

“I talked about it a little bit earlier. They have a quarterback that can run the ball, which gets you an extra hat in there. He’s really fast and really athletic, who happens to throw the ball really well too, and he has speed on the perimeter. They’ve gone out and gotten some really good, fast receivers, some through the portal, some through the high school ranks that are playing at a really high level. They know what they’re doing in the run game. They know how to attack you, where to attack you. They understand it and have good backs. Same questions you have against our offense. When you have people who know what they’re doing, and they have good players doing it, they become really hard to stop. They are really good offensively.”