Inside The Chart: Blocking In The Blood

Blocking in the Blood:  The son of a Yellow Jacket – and nephew of a Blue Devil – Ethan Mackenny continues to give Georgia Tech a steady, sturdy presence at left tackle  

Inside The Chart | By Andy Demetra (The Voice of the Yellow Jackets)

The starting left tackle on the No. 12-ranked team in the nation freely admits he’s not the best blocker in his family.

“I never won once against her,” Ethan Mackenny said.

The redshirt sophomore won’t sidestep the truth. Those one-on-one battles on the basketball court with his mom, Joannah? They never ended well for him. When your mom was a 6-foot-3 former center at Georgia Tech, who still ranks fourth in school history in blocked shots, rejection comes with the territory. And Joannah’s firstborn wasn’t spared from the demoralizing.

“Oh yeah. For sure,” Mackenny replied when asked if his mom blocked any of his shots growing up.

“There was no mercy in Candy Land. There was no mercy in anything, and especially no mercy in basketball,” Joannah laughed.

But strong blocking still runs in the family, as Mackenny has once again demonstrated this fall. After an early-season injury limited him to four regular season games last year, the Marietta, Ga., native has re-trenched himself as the Yellow Jackets’ starting left tackle, helping an offense that has become one of the more balanced and dynamic in the country.

The Yellow Jackets acknowledge that their goal isn’t simply to be ranked No. 12 in the country. They know there’s another level of consistency to unlock on offense. They also know their numbers may come under siege from ACC co-leader Duke, their opponent this Saturday at Wallace-Wade Stadium (Noon ET, Georgia Tech Sports Network). The Blue Devils rank fourth nationally in tackles for loss (51.0), and senior defensive end Vincent Anthony Jr., whom Mackenny will be lined up against, leads the ACC in sacks (6.5).

Ethan Mackenny is one of college football’s top-rated pass blockers. (Danny Karnik photo)

But for Mackenny, a “little three-star” in his mom’s words, whose varsity teams went 10-30 in his high school career, who became Georgia Tech’s first commitment following a 3-9 season, whose first career game ended ignominiously, the Jackets’ 6-0 record and national ranking gives him plenty of pride.

“Honestly, I’m just happy to be back playing, working hard with my teammates and my brothers,” the 6-foot-5, 310-pound Mackenny said.

“Getting to win these games, being undefeated, it’s an amazing feeling. I can’t even explain it to you.”

***

The bloodlines certainly portended an athletic career. Mackenny’s late grandfather, Bob Kauffman, was a three-time NBA All-Star, a 6-foot-8, 240-pound forward who played with the Seattle SuperSonics, Chicago Bulls, Buffalo Braves and Atlanta Hawks. He also had a one-year stint as head coach of the Detroit Pistons in 1977-78.

Kauffman and his wife settled in Lilburn, Ga. after his coaching days and raised four daughters, all of whom played college basketball. The youngest, Kate, played at Clayton State (2000-04). The oldest, Lara (1989-93), played at Georgia Tech and spent two years as an assistant coach with the Jackets.

Joannah (1994-98) finished her Tech career with averages of 8.2 points and 5.1 rebounds across 62 starts, and her 49 blocks as a freshman remains a school record. She was named a team captain as a senior in 1997-98.

Carey, the second oldest, played at Duke from 1991-95, which may add some extra familial spice to Saturday’s gridiron matchup.

“I love my aunt very much. Of course, she’s a massive Duke fan, but she always cheers for me,” Ethan said. Carey, who lives with her family in Denver, attended Georgia Tech’s season-opening win against Colorado in Boulder.

Carey and Joannah’s playing careers only overlapped for one year, but Duke athletics has a picture in its archives of the two standing together during a matchup at Cameron Indoor Stadium. Joannah had never seen the photo until this week, but she could instantly color in the details.

Ethan Mackenny’s aunt (Carey) and mother (Joannah) squared off in 1994-95 as members of Duke’s and Georgia Tech’s women’s basketball teams, respectively. (Duke Athletics photo)

“Lara was coaching me my freshman year (she was an assistant coach for two seasons following her playing career at Tech) and ‘NBA Inside Stuff’ came that day to see who Mom and Dad would be cheering for. It was also the game when I was shooting free throws while the Duke band chanted ‘Ca-rey’s bet-ter [clap, clap, clap-clap-clap],’” she remembered. Joannah made both free throws, then shot the band members a scowl.

(Though opponents that day, Carey delivered an invaluable assist to Joannah a few years later. While working in the Atlanta offices of Manhattan Associates in the late 90s, her company once welcomed in a group of workers from their London branch for a two-week visit. Carey implored her sister to meet one of them, a native of Folkestone on the country’s southeastern coast. That man, Matthew Mackenny, is now her husband and Ethan’s dad.)

Ethan admits he didn’t grow up around football – his father favored rugby and soccer, while his mom’s side of the family was littered with hoopers. Competitive basketball had a head start by several years. When he first expressed interest in playing the sport in the fourth grade, Joannah naturally had concerns about concussions. She went to Ethan’s pediatrician to discuss the pros and cons.

The pediatrician sized up her son and offered his sound medical opinion.

“He was like, ‘Jo, I’d be worried about the other kids on the field,’” Joannah said.

Mackenny joined the Lassiter Junior Trojans that fall, where coaches were happy to add a kid of such birth certificate-straining proportions. Mackenny’s on-field demeanor, though, didn’t initially match up to his size.

In a jamboree, he recalled, “I hurt a kid, and I went over to my coaches on the sideline and I was crying because I hurt the kid. I was like, ‘Guys, I didn’t mean to.’”

“My mom referred to me as Ferdinand, (after) ‘Ferdinand The Bull.’ I would smell the flowers and I would get stung by the bee and then I’d get mad and make something happen,” he added.

Mackenny still played basketball but soon found a love for football, rooted in the camaraderie he felt with his teammates and coaches. By his freshman year of high school, he said he also shed his Ferdinand-ish tendencies and began to relish, as he put it, “the concept of, ‘Wait, I get to hit this guy? I can legally drive this guy into the ground? I’m not going to get in trouble?’”

Mackenny played both sports when he enrolled at Lassiter High School in Marietta, Ga., where Joannah teaches in the special education department and took over as head coach of the girls’ varsity basketball team when Ethan was a freshman. He gave up the family stock-in-trade after his sophomore year; he was tired of bulking up for football, only for that newfound mass to melt away during basketball season. If he wanted a shot at a Division I football scholarship, he knew he not only needed to add weight, but keep it.

Head coach Brent Key likes to tease Mackenny by pulling up a picture on his phone of the two smiling together at a Georgia Tech lineman camp.

“I think it was the end of my sophomore year. I was 236 pounds,” Mackenny recalled. “Coach Key was telling, ‘Hey, we’re going to see if you can put on this weight, and we’ll go from there.’”

As he bulked up, his football team endured some lean times. In four years with the Lassiter varsity team, Mackenny’s best record was a 4-6 mark as a junior. Some of his teammates transferred to other schools to enhance their recruiting looks and find a more competitive environment. Mackenny opted to stay and build with the players he had known for years.

“It’s been really emotional for me. Choosing to stay and build his school team, when other people went to other places. They went and they got to have a state championship and get those accolades. Ethan never got that,” Joannah said.

“He had a lot of licking his wounds and getting back out there. He did take the harder path, but it was the path that had a lot of lessons in it. A lot of good relationships with his coaches and teammates,” she added.

Mackenny has no regrets.

“Losing a lot growing up taught me a lesson or two, really – how to get back up on my feet, not to let these losses defeat me as a person. I can push forward no matter what,” he said.

Despite those tough seasons, Mackenny’s body thickened, his highlights flashed and his nimble feet from basketball didn’t lose their quickness. Scholarship offers started trickling in, including one from his aunt Carey’s alma mater, Duke. Georgia Tech was actually one of the last schools to offer him – much to the chagrin of Joannah, who overlapped with Key for two years as undergrads at Tech. She remembers them running in similar friend groups and exchanging hellos around the Edge Athletic Center.

When Key visited Mackenny at Lassiter in the spring of his junior year, Joannah came out to meet him at the school’s fieldhouse, fully loaded with sarcasm.

“I walked up to them and went, ‘Where the hell have y’all been?’ And we just start laughing about it,” she recalled.

Mackenny was unbothered by the delay, committing to Tech in June of 2022 and becoming the first pledge of the Jackets’ 2023 recruiting class. He never took another official visit.

“I have trusted Coach Key from Day One. I knew this was the place I wanted to be. Honestly, I don’t know why I didn’t commit sooner. I knew what I was buying in on,” he said.

After a brief dip, that investment has started to pay off again.

***

Asked to recall Mackenny’s debut as a true freshman, when Georgia Tech faced Louisville in the 2023 season opener at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, “played” isn’t quite the word Geep Wade uses.

Ethan Mackenny lines up against Louisville’s Ashton Gillotte in Mackenny’s collegiate debut in 2023. After matching up with Gillotte, an eventual third-round pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, in his debut, Mackenny would go on to earn freshman all-America honors. (Danny Karnik photo)

“Got thrown to the wolves,” Tech’s offensive line coach remarked.

Mackenny rotated in for 59 snaps at left tackle, though more times than not, the Cardinals’ defense had him chasing vapors. He finished the game with a microscopically low pass blocking grade of 0.4 from Pro Football Focus.

If he was overwhelmed, those feelings didn’t linger – and Wade’s trust in him didn’t waver. Mackenny started the next nine games at left tackle, earning a spot on On3 and ESPN’s Freshman All-America teams, as Georgia Tech clinched its first bowl berth in five years.

A follow-up season proved frustratingly elusive: Mackenny missed the first eight games of 2024. After a fully healthy offseason, he’s now back at left tackle, once again entrusted with protecting quarterback Haynes King’s blind side. Through the first five games, Pro Football Focus graded Mackenny the No. 8 tackle in the nation in pass blocking, a far cry from the grade he posted in his first-career game.

“I don’t want anybody to go near him or touch him,” Mackenny said of King.

“He’s always on me, always trying to get on my nerves, get me going for practice – in a good way, of course. But he’s always been in my corner, and he’s really been a big role model for me,” he added.

Wade continues to be unsparing on his offensive line, which on Wednesday was named to the midseason honor roll for the Joe Moore Award recognizing the top unit in college football. That includes the man he calls “Wild Thing,” after the mullet Mackenny started growing that Wade thinks resembles Ricky Vaughn’s coiffure in the movie Major League.

“He’s a kid that didn’t grow up a lot around football,” Wade said. “I tell him he’s now in sixth grade. You’re not in 12th grade yet, but you’re in middle school. He’s learning ball.”

It’s a different type of ball than the one his mom, aunts and grandfather mastered. But as Georgia Tech enters the second half of the season, Ethan Mackenny is once again ready to go one-on-one with some of the most formidable pass rushers in the ACC.

Going one-on-one with mom in hoops?

That will wait for another time.