Inside The Chart: How He Rolls

How He Rolls: College football got acquainted with Kyle Efford’s old school look – and that sweet neck roll – against Florida State. But the linebacker has shown there’s plenty of substance to back up his style.

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

He’s not doing it for the aesthetics.

Kyle Efford isn’t trying to pay tribute to flinty-eyed, 1980’s linebackers like Mike Singletary or Brian Bosworth.  He’s not trying to cosplay as Lattimer from the movie The Program (though special teams coordinator Ricky Brumfield did nickname him “Bobby Boucher” last year after the main character from The Waterboy). He’s certainly not doing it to chase likes or court clout.

Efford first started wearing a neck roll for protective reasons, not fashion ones. After suffering yet another stinger in the first half of Georgia Tech’s win over North Carolina last October, athletic trainers recommended he wear a neck roll to help absorb impacts better. The original one he wore was even bigger – so big that when he joined Tech’s special teams huddle shortly before the start of the second half, Brumfield took one look at him and burst out laughing.

“That’s still a core memory to this day. We still joke about it,” Efford said.

Efford rarely ventures on social media anymore, but he knows what’s up. With his neck roll, and the uniform squeezed over it to make his shoulders look boxier, and the eye black he smears in triangles like war paint, and the grass stains that chronically streak his jersey, he certainly cuts an old-school silhouette. It’s giving linebacker, a fashionista might say. The look made him something of a social media sensation during Georgia Tech’s season opening win over No. 10 Florida State in Dublin, Ireland, where many in the national television audience got their first glimpse of his gloriously throwback stylings.

Kyle Efford. Textbook LB 😤 pic.twitter.com/qfHiv8NK6z

— Bleacher Report CFB (@BR_CFB) August 24, 2024

“I know of knew that when folks once saw it, they were going to go crazy,” Efford admitted.

“He’s what a linebacker is supposed to look like.  He’s a linebacker’s linebacker,” added defensive back Clayton Powell-Lee.

But there’s another reason why Brumfield calls his 6-foot-2, 230-pound redshirt sophomore “Bobby Boucher.” Like Adam Sandler’s character, he dishes out punishing, guided missile hits like him, too. And eight starts into his career, the Dacula, Ga., native has solidified himself as the snarling, cerebral, old-school heart of what he hopes will be a rejuvenated Georgia Tech defense in 2024.

“He’s such a football player, and that’s probably the best compliment I can give Kyle,” head coach Brent Key said on his radio show.

Say what you will about @GeorgiaTechFB LB Kyle Efford’s neck roll, the fact is…the man put on a football clinic against Florida State when it came to key/diagnose/run fit/explosive hitting ability…the whole damn thing. As good as you will see. Dominant!@kyle_efford pic.twitter.com/BIp3CUF0Ux

— Louis Riddick (@LRiddickESPN) August 26, 2024

Efford racked up both compliments and tackles last year, becoming the first freshman to lead Georgia Tech in tackles in a season (81) since 2000. He picked up where he left off last Saturday, finishing with a team-high 10 stops in the Yellow Jackets’ 24-21 win over the Seminoles. His play helped Tech, in its first game under new defensive coordinator Tyler Santucci, hold Florida State to just 40 rushing yards on 26 carries after the opening series.  The performance earned him his second career ACC Linebacker of the Week award on Monday.

Efford says he’s found a home in Santucci’s 4-2-5 scheme (which brings new meaning to the phrase “fit check”).

#GeorgiaTech RS Sophomore LB Kyle Efford vs #FSU RB Lawrance Toafili. Efford had 10 tackles vs FSU. That's 1/8 of what he had all of last year! pic.twitter.com/ZMdDNaw48z

— Couch Potato General Manager 🏈 NFL Draft (@cpgmNFLDraft) August 25, 2024

“The linebackers are set to make plays. Obviously we’re not going to strain to make plays, but we’ve just got to do our job and we’ll be in a position to make plays,” he said.

And lest anyone think Efford came back from Ireland feeling satisfied with his performance, he answered that as soon as he returned to campus.

“Kyle was the first one in my office [Sunday] when we got back talking about things he’s got to improve on, what he’s got to get better at – his eye discipline, his ability to play the correct gap and feel the fallbacks,” Brent Key told ACC PM.

Added Georgia Tech’s second-year head coach: “That’s the type of player he is, though, and that’s the type of guy you want on the team that are leaders. Sometimes success can overshadow mistakes, and he’s very aware of the things that he’s got to improve on. But at the end of the day, you can improve on things when you play the way he plays, when you play as hard as he plays.”

That last part may explain Efford’s short-lived career in another sport. Joe, Kyle’s older brother by seven years, has played professional soccer for the past decade, an agile winger who’s had stops in Spain, Greece, Belgium and Scotland. With such a gifted soccer player growing up beside him, it made sense that Kyle would want to follow in his brother’s footsteps.

Yet when his parents signed him up for his first recreational league in Dacula, Ga., at four years old, he kept running into a problem.

He couldn’t stop trucking the opposing team’s players.

“I was a defender. I would be going in and taking folks out. I’d get red carded in the first half of every game,” Efford recalled.

Wait – the refs issued red cards to a four-year-old?

“It was worse than you would think. I was really taking these kids out. I was bigger too. I was a little bit overdeveloped as a kid,” Efford laughed.

His parents quickly realized that American football might be the better fit for their son’s physicality. They enrolled Kyle in his first tackle football league at age six, and he hasn’t stopped (legally) hitting since.

That mentality has now carried him to a featured role on the Georgia Tech defense, where even his teammates keep a healthy amount of heightened awareness around him.

“Kyle’s scary, I ain’t gonna lie. Like in practice, sometimes when I’m coming across the middle, he’s somebody I always watch out for. That neck pad can make him intimidating,” wide receiver Malik Rutherford said.

His head coach, a capital letter Football Guy, can attest. Even when the Jackets aren’t in a live tackling drill in practice, Key says his linebacker “tries to run through people.” He once said that when Efford’s alarm goes off, he wakes up thinking about football.  He’s hard-wired to go hard.

But Key also wants people to know this about Kyle Efford. He not only has an old school look, he has old-school sensibilities as well. He’s a front row regular at Georgia Tech’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes meetings. His love for the game and loyalty to his teammates resonate. Key says his impact in the locker room is felt just as strongly as his hits on opposing ball carriers.

“I’ve had guys come in the office at times that were struggling with something, and they say if it weren’t for Kyle, I wouldn’t be able to still go through what I do every day,” he said.

“It’s something that’s instilled in me since I was young. I’ve always had that mindset that I would die for any of my teammates, whether we’re close or not. If you’re on my team, you’re my brother. I’ll go to bat for you,” Efford explained.

That leadership has dovetailed with a new responsibility this year. In addition to the neck roll and eye black, Efford has another accoutrement to his fall 2024 look: a green dot on the back of his helmet, signifying he’s one of Georgia Tech’s defensive players who has in-helmet communication. The NCAA approved the use of in-helmet communication beginning this season. Efford practiced with it throughout the spring and preseason, but he wore it for the first time in a real game against Florida State.

“It’s been very smooth. I thoroughly enjoy having it,” he said. “It was pretty interesting to see how it was going to get when it got really loud in there. I realized I had to cup my hands [over my ear holes] and really lock in.”

It was one piece of a hard-fought win over the defending ACC champions in Dublin. But Efford and his teammates know their game against Florida State hasn’t entitled them to anything yet. They’ll look to deliver a better version of themselves this Saturday when they face Georgia State in a historic first matchup at Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field (8 p.m. ET, Georgia Tech Sports Network).  Georgia State was one of the earliest schools to offer Efford a scholarship at Dacula High School.

When he takes the field on Saturday, he’ll also spot a long overdue face in the crowd. His brother Joe, who turns 28 on Thursday, hasn’t watched Kyle play a football game in person since he was in middle school. His professional soccer schedule always kept him overseas during the fall.

He’s currently at home in Gwinnett County as he mulls a new contract offer. For the first time in nearly a decade, Joe plans on watching his younger brother in person, ready to serve up fierce hits with a throwback flair.

“I’m excited to show him what I can do,” Kyle said.

If the response on social media was any indication, a lot of others will as well, fascinated by Georgia Tech’s feral-looking, neck roll-rocking, old-school linebacker.

Kyle Efford will look to make another statement – and not just a fashion statement.