Key name emerges in Georgia Tech offensive coordinator search

Brent Key is moving quickly to replace star offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner, FootballScoop’s 2025 Offensive Coordinator of the Year as voted by his peers.

And, multiple sources tell FootballScoop, Key is talking with an elite offensive mind.

On Wednesday, Key interviewed Chip Kelly — the former Oregon, Philadelphia Eagles and UCLA Bruins head coach — as well as Ohio State national championship-winning offensive coordinator and NFL’s Las Vegas Raiders offensive coordinator.

It’s a potentially bold move for Key and the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, who spent much of the season as the Atlantic Coast Conference’s top-ranked team and just missed out on a berth in the ACC Championship as well as the College Football Playoff field due to multiple late-season losses.

Faulkner was hired away from Tech by Jon Sumrall and Florida with a multi-year, multimillion dollar deal that far outpaced what he had earned as the offensive orchestrator for the Yellow Jackets. Tech quarterback Haynes King flourished the past two years under Faulkner, setting a number of school records and etching his name into Georgia Tech record books.

Kelly is no stranger to offensive records. He’s been an Associated Press Coach of the Year, an AFCA Coach of the Year and three-time Pac-12 Conference Champion as Oregon’s head coach.

He revolutionized college football earlier this century with his high-speed, frenetic Oregon offenses that taxed opposing defenses and eventually led Kelly to guide the Ducks to a national championship-game appearance.

Kelly’s NFL work as head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles was marked by moderate success in the City of Brotherly Love before a disastrous, 2-16 campaign atop the San Francisco 49ers.

But Kelly returned to college football and won 25 games in his final three years at UCLA; tired of being underfunded and with a lack of commitment to football success in the dynamic changing world of NCAA football, sources told FootballScoop, Kelly departed after the 2023 season for the offensive coordinator post at Ohio State.

After taking a massive paycut from his approximately $6 million salary atop the UCLA Bruins program to orchestrate the offense at Ohio State under Ryan Day, Kelly helped deliver Ohio State’s first national championship in nearly two decades when the Buckeyes toppled Notre Dame in the first-ever College Football Playoff Championship game amidst a 12-team CFP field.

Kelly then returned to the NFL, where he became offensive coordinator for Pete Carroll’s Las Vegas Raiders. There, sources shared with FootballScoop, Kelly was granted a three-year deal worth nearly $18 million.

But the Raiders parted ways with Kelly in late November, and now he’s talking with Georgia Tech about a return to college football.