Jackets Set to Open 2024 Season Against Defending ACC Champs

GEORGIA TECH FOOTBALL vs. NO. 10 FLORIDA STATE

Aer Lingus College Football Classic · Saturday, Aug. 24 · 5 p.m. IT/Noon ET · Dublin, Ireland · Aviva Stadium

Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland is the stage for Georgia Tech’s 2024 opener versus No. 10 Florida State

• Georgia Tech football opens its highly anticipated 2024 season with a mammoth Atlantic Coast Conference matchup versus defending ACC champion and No. 10-ranked Florida State on Saturday in the Aer Lingus College Football Classic at Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland.

• Georgia Tech returns 16 starters from last year’s team, which went 7-6 overall, 5-3 in ACC play (good for a tie for fourth place in the 14-team conference standings), earned its first bowl berth since 2018 and its first bowl victory since 2016 with a season-ending 30-17 triumph over UCF in the Gasparilla Bowl.

• The Yellow Jackets’ 16 returning starters include eight on offense, led by r-Jr. QB Haynes King. A year ago, King put together a historic first season as a Jacket, joining Heisman Trophy winner and eventual No. 2 NFL Draft pick Jayden Daniels as the only Power Five conference players with at least 2,800 passing yards, 25 touchdown passes, 700 rushing yards and touchdown runs in 2023.

• r-Jr. RB Jamal Haynes also returns for Tech after becoming Georgia Tech’s first 1,000-yard rusher since 2018 with 1,059 yards on the ground last season.

• Georgia Tech also returns four of five starters from an offensive line that helped the Jackets lead the ACC and rank among the top 15 nationally in both rushing offense (203.8 ypg – 12th nationally) and fewest sacks allowed (1.15 pg – 15th nationally).

• Defensively, Tech has a new coordinator in Tyler Santucci. In 2023, Santucci was the defensive coordinator at Duke, which led the ACC in scoring defense (19.0 ppg) and ranked among the nation’s top 50 in eight statistical categories, including scoring defense, rushing defense, passing defense, total defense, tackles for loss, third-down defense, fourth-down defense and red-zone defense.

• Georgia Tech is opening its season in the Aer Lingus College Football Classic at Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland for the second time in the last nine seasons.

• Saturday’s game marks only the second time in Georgia Tech’s 132-season history that it will play a game on foreign soil.

• The Yellow Jackets’ first international game also came in the Aer Lingus College Football Classic at Aviva Stadium, when they rallied to defeat Boston College, 17-14, on Sept. 3, 2016.

• Trailing 14-7 with under six minutes to play, Tech pulled within four points on a 40-yard field goal by current Kansas City Chiefs place kicker Harrison Butker with 5:57 to go.

• True freshman running back Dedrick Mills capped a scored the winning touchdown on a four-yard run with 35 seconds remaining on the clock. On their 11-play, 59-yard game-winning touchdown drive, the Yellow Jackets converted a fourth-and-19 (on a 22-yard pass from QB Justin Thomas to slot back Qua Searcy) and a third-and-10 (on a 26-yard pass from Thomas to WR Ricky Jeune).

• Although the Yellow Jackets are crossing the Atlantic Ocean for the second time, it is only tied for the second-longest trip in program history. The longest was a 4,490-mile journey to Honolulu, Hawaii for the 1991 Aloha Bowl, where the Jackets defeated Stanford, 18-17. That trip was 569 miles longer than the 3,921-mile trek that Georgia Tech will make for this weekend’s game.

• However, the 3,921-mile trip to Dublin is nearly four times longer than Georgia Tech has ever traveled for any domestic conference game. The farthest that the Yellow Jackets have ever traveled for a conference game within U.S. borders have been a pair of 1,068-mile treks to Chestnut Hill, Mass. for ACC matchup at Boston College in 2008 and 2020.