Inside The Chart: King of the Hill

King of the Hill: Georgia Tech enters the year with sky-high expectations. But in Haynes King, their Texas-tough quarterback, it has someone who has prepared his whole life to handle them.

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

The man who broke the ACC record for single-season completion percentage has a secret.

The right arm that Haynes King used last year to complete 72.9 percent of his passes? The one that has propelled him to 4,956 career passing yards and 41 touchdowns at Tech, tied for fourth most in school history? The finely tuned, finesse-laden piece of biomechanical engineering that has led the Yellow Jackets to back-to-back winning seasons and inspired a level of optimism not seen around North Avenue in some time?

Haynes King is actually a lefty.

Throwing right-handed happened, quite literally, by accident.

Before he began playing organized sports – he can’t precisely recall his age – the Longview, Texas, native was horsing around with his cousins at the home of his grandparents, Jerry Wayne and Linda Stillman, over the Christmas holiday.

“Being kids, probably doing stuff we weren’t supposed to,” King recalled. His family used to joke that it wasn’t a Christmas get-together unless someone got injured and required medical attention.

This particular year, someone was running on Nanny and Pop’s treadmill, and in a flash of mischief, King decided to mess with him.

He still doesn’t know how it happened. But suddenly, as if caught in a rip current, his left hand got pulled underneath the belt of the treadmill.

“My hand ended up getting stuck in the bottom of it and ripped the skin off. I [had to] go to the emergency room,” King said.

His left hand was still scraped up when Tate Casey, a star on his dad’s high school team who later played tight end at Florida, visited the Kings at their home. Casey started teaching Haynes how to throw right-handed.

“He didn’t know I was a lefty at the time,” he said. “Since that day on, I throw right.”

Some faint scars remain on the middle two fingers of his left hand. King still writes left-handed, as Tech fans may have noticed on one of the countless autographs he’s signed this offseason. When he’s warming up, he may toss a few left-handed passes on a whim (for the record, he never considered throwing southpaw when a shoulder injury limited him last season). But that non-dominant arm may soon hold the key to a dominant season for Georgia Tech, which starts Friday against Colorado at Folsom Field in Boulder (8 p.m. ET, Georgia Tech Sports Network).

Unlike their quarterback’s natural throwing arm, the Yellow Jackets won’t begin the year a well-kept secret. The buzz around Tech has grown throughout the offseason, capped off by a fourth-place prediction in the preseason ACC media poll.

The Jackets have earned those expectations. They embrace them, even if they insist their own standards are much higher.

But there’s a fine line between feeling empowered by expectations and feeling burdened by them. And while head coach Brent Key has assured he has a locker room full of leaders, no player carries those expectations as singularly as the quarterback.

How he manages them often sets the tone for the rest of the team. Yet the player who has seemingly accomplished the most at Georgia Tech still acts like he has the most to prove.

“I’ll say this. Haynes is as dedicated a quarterback as I’ve ever worked with,” said Georgia Tech quarterbacks coach Chris Weinke.

“You have to fight human nature every day to be able to sustain and create consistency. This guy models that, right? He works as hard as anybody I’ve been around. It’s important to him,” he added.

King has had a lifetime understanding the weight of expectations. Growing up a coach’s son in east Texas will do that. Every fall in Longview (pop. 81,000), 50 miles from the Louisiana border, the town’s hopes rode on the Longview High teams coached by his father, John King.

While his dad paced the sidelines, King soaked it all in from the stands, dreaming of wearing Lobos green and white.

“I was one of those kids, I was all decked out in Longview gear – full pads on during the game, all that type of stuff,” King recalled. “Helmet, shoulder pads, cleats. I tried to match the color jerseys with the pants.”

“I was ready. Always ready,” he laughed.

Longview has won 17 district championships in John King’s 20 years as head coach, with a steady stream of Division I prospects and future NFL players like Malcolm Kelly and Trent Williams passing through his program. The Lobos have gone 118-9 in district play during his tenure.

Standards are high. Playoff success is expected.

King grew up around those locker rooms. He observed how his dad’s players handled that dynamic, when the pressure mounted and the attention increased. He experienced life in the fishbowl before he ever truly realized it.

He’d need to use that accumulated intuition his junior year at Longview. Think managing high expectations at Georgia Tech is tough? Try giving your football-mad hometown its first state title in 80 years – with your dad as your head coach.

“The year before, we lost in the semis. It was a heartbreaker. We probably should have won, kind of screwed it up,” King said.

King delivered, leading Longview to a 16-0 record and a 34-29 victory in the 2018 Texas Class 6A Division II state championship game. Playing in front of 48,421 fans – Colorado’s Folsom Field seats 50,183 – King threw for 423 yards and two touchdowns and was named Offensive MVP.

Looking back, King said the pressure never really registered with him.

“Guys knew how to play, knew how to handle themselves. It was more like, ‘Hey, this is our goal, this is our standard. That’s where we’re going,’” he said.

It’s easy to see the parallels. Seven years later, the redshirt senior leads another team into a season brimming with promise, fueled by a sour ending to the season before, hoping to give them a similar storybook finish. King comes in with a boatload of individual honors – mentions on every watch list imaginable, a spot in ESPN’s ranking of the top returning quarterbacks in the FBS, even a runner-up finish in the voting for ACC Preseason Player of the Year.

All those accolades just throw more coal into the furnace of expectation. Yet even coming off a school record for completion percentage, King still believes he can be more accurate.

“If your feet are bad and all over the place, the release point is going to be different. If you keep the feet consistent, that’s what we’ve been working on every day with Coach Weinke,” he said.

Friday’s game could also complete a redemption arc for him. In his second career start for Texas A&M, as a redshirt freshman in September 2021, King faced Colorado at Empower Field in Denver. He fractured his leg on a first quarter scramble and wound up missing the rest of the season.

“I came out there, and it just so happened that on the second drive I get injured. But I went out there as soon as I could and tried to support my team,” he said.

Then, like now, King knew his example carried weight. And with the expectations for Georgia Tech as lofty as they’ve been in a while, he’ll continue to apply what he’s absorbed and learned his entire football life to keep him and the Yellow Jackets focused.

“It’s just the same mindset every day. We don’t take anything for granted. We don’t try to waste any opportunity. Each and every day, that’s our standard,” he said.

“The only thing that matters to me are the people in this building and how we go and improve, and go out there and compete.”

The first opportunity to compete begins in Boulder, fittingly on a Friday night. And when the 2025 season kicks off in Colorado, Haynes King will hope to lead Georgia Tech to a success that won’t come by accident.