100 Days to Kickoff – Opponent Previews: Colorado

Georgia Tech’s football season kicks off on Thursday, September 3 against Colorado, finishing the home & home series that began last year out in Boulder with a 27-20 win for the Jackets. Last year’s was the first between the schools, retroactively becoming the 1990 National Championship Game as the two schools did not actually play in 1990 when chasing the national title.

Both teams will look quite different this time around. Of course on Tech’s side, the offense has new leadership between offensive coordinator George Godsey and new starting quarterback Alberto Mendoza. For Colorado, they bring back Carrollton, GA native Julian Lewis at quarterback, who did not play in last year’s game in favor of Kaidon Salter. Lewis only played in four games late year, completing 55% of his passes and throwing for 299 yards in a start against West Virginia.

On the whole, Colorado is not predicted to be competitive in the Big 12 with predictions around the college preview woorld putting them at around 3-4 wins. Deion Sanders’ team is in a full rebuild after version 1.0 of his Buffaloes with Travis Hunter playing both ways and Shedeur Sanders at QB (who both for some reason got their uniform numbers retired immediately after graduating).

Last month at Big 12 media days, Lewis noted to what I can assume was a very startled audience that in 2025, Lewis didn’t really plan for defenses.

“My play, I’m actually looking at the defenses now. Last year, we wasn’t really looking at defenses much, just kind of high school free-balling, just out there playing football. But it’s a lot bigger than that now, so it should be fun.”

Knowing Brent Key has been huge in making sure Tech’s team is fully prepared both physically and in the gameplan, this rings as a major advantage for Tech.

Colorado did get a couple pickups that should make life easier for Lewis. New offensive coordinator Brennan Marion comes from Sacramento State where he’d been the head coach the last two seasons and before then was the OC at UNLV. They also brought in Danny Scudero, a San Jose State transfer who led FBS in receiving yards last season but was only 74th in receiving EPA according to gameonpaper.com.

Along with Scudero, Colorado brought in 42 other players in the transfer portal, effectively resetting the entire team with limited returning production.

Knowing that, it makes it hard to say how good Colorado might be, but at least in week 1 they will be much more behind the 8-ball compared to Tech. While Brent Key does come in with two new coordinators, many returning faces from Kyle Efford to Jordan Allen to Malachi Hosely allows Tech to maintain plenty of key leadership guys. Plus, Mendoza is coming off a national championship. He had to prepare for the most important games of last year all the same as his Heisman trophy winning brother, Fernando. Preparing for defenses was necessary for him. The quality standard at Colorado has never shown, even on their best days, that they can hold up to extremely disciplined teams like Tech.