Georgia Tech falls 14-13 to Colorado despite Mendoza's 237 yards
Alberto Mendoza's first start looked the part right up until Boo Carter blocked the field goal that would have won it, and Brent Key isn't interested in blaming the kick.
17-for-23, 237 yards, and a debut Mendoza refused to grade on a curve
Everything the staff had been saying about Alberto Mendoza all camp showed up in the box score: 17 of 23 for 237 yards in his first career start, an opening strike to Jordan Allen for 30 yards, a scramble that found Allen again on the 4-yard line, and the go-ahead touchdown throw that had Bobby Dodd on its feet. Allen finished with career highs of 8 catches for 113 yards, the connection that carried the offense in the fourth quarter even as he was fighting through a couple of fumbles and a drop earlier in the night.
Mendoza wasn't in the mood to grade himself on the flashes. "We lost, I wouldn't grade it too high at all... I just want to win. I'm a winner, been a winner all my life. I don't expect that to change at all. If we won, it would have been a great first start. We lost, so not so great," he said afterward, per SI. It's the right instinct for a guy who spent a year in mop-up duty waiting for this — the tape was good, the record still says 0-1, and he knows the difference.
Brent Key isn't blaming the blocked kick, and that should worry Georgia Tech more
The Flats sold out for Deion Sanders and Julian Lewis as much as for Colorado, and it came down to the final snap anyway — Boo Carter blocking Aidan Birr's 45-yard attempt as time expired to seal a 14-13 Colorado win, after Georgia Tech had blocked a Colorado field goal of its own earlier and led 10-7 with 7:35 to play. Colorado got inside Georgia Tech's 40-yard line five times all night and scored just 7 points doing it — a defense that mostly held, and lost anyway.
Colorado13-14Key wasn't interested in letting the last play carry the blame. "If that ball goes in at the end and everybody's in here cheering and having fun, does that really change how we played 130 other plays in the game?" he told reporters after, per SI. It's a fair question and a pointed one — he's telling his team the issues that let Colorado hang around all night are the real story, not the kick that ended it.
The one play from the losing side worth replaying wasn't even on offense: Rahkeem Smith took a return 100 yards to the house, the kind of play that empties a student section even in a game the Jackets didn't win. It's a first-game loss with a legitimate season-opening result underneath it, not just a fluke ending.
Tennessee gets its best linebacker back just in time for Atlanta
Georgia Tech's next opponent just got considerably scarier. The NCAA reduced star Tennessee linebacker Arion Carter's suspension from 3 games down to 1, meaning he'll miss only the Volunteers' opener against Furman and will be available for the trip to Atlanta, per Yahoo Sports. As recently as late July the expectation was that Carter would sit out the Georgia Tech game entirely — the appeal changed that, and Georgia Tech now has to prepare for a defense with its best player in uniform.
That defense also looks different than the one that struggled in 2025: Tennessee hired Jim Knowles, fresh off a season at Penn State and three years running Ohio State's defense to a national title, as its new coordinator. A first-time Georgia Tech starting quarterback against a defensive mind with that résumé, with the Volunteers' best linebacker cleared to play, is a considerably tougher Week 2 than it looked a month ago.
A rebuilt Tennessee defense comes to the Flats, and the total says nobody's sure what this is
Georgia Tech is back at Bobby Dodd Stadium on September 12 vs. Tennessee, and the line opened with Tennessee favored by 8.5 — a real number for a Volunteers team breaking in its own first-time starting quarterback, but a real number all the same after what Georgia Tech just showed defensively against Colorado.
The total opened at 56.5, a figure that reads as middling for two teams that just spent their openers grinding out low-scoring, mistake-filled football — Georgia Tech's loss went final at 14-13, hardly the shootout that number would suggest either side is capable of. With Arion Carter now available and a new Tennessee defense finding its footing under Jim Knowles, this next one may come down to the same kind of ugly, one-score football that just cost Georgia Tech its opener.