Geoff Collins reveals anti-depth chart at Georgia Tech

Monday is Depth Chart Day in college football, the day in which coaches have to show their cards in regards to who’s actually going to start when the season finally gets underway this weekend.

Of course, they don’t have to show their cards. Plenty of coaches litter their depth charts with ORs or simply decline to reveal a starting quarterback until one man takes the first snap and the other(s) do not.

And then there’s Georgia Tech’s Geoff Collins.

The new Yellow Jackets head coach is reimagining Ramblin’ Wreck football not just in brand, but in scheme. As such, he has an advantage as a new head coach since he has no starters, and he’s using that to his advantage with this anti-depth chart.

Collins simply lists the players he expects to play in numerical order, but the actual starters are not listed. The program explains it like this:

Since he was first asked about depth charts and two-deeps, Georgia Tech head coach Geoff Collins has insisted that he doesn’t believe in them. He coaches his student-athletes to be ABOVE THE LINE (ATL). Those who are ATL are ready to play and can see game action, while others work to get to that level. In place of a traditional depth chart that often omits some student-athletes who see game action and lists others who seldom enter the game, Georgia Tech will list student-athletes who are above the line, in numerical order by position (studentathletes that started the previous game are printed in bold).

Here’s how it looks.

“I don’t believe in naming starters, I don’t believe in naming backups,” he shared with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution last month

“The second you get labeled as a backup you start preparing as a backup, you start practicing like a backup. But if you know you’re going to play and get meaningful reps because of your preparation and how well you do in practice, you’re going to practice like a starter, you’re going to prepare like a starter.”

Georgia Tech and its ATL players will hit the field Thursday night at No. 1 Clemson (8 p.m. ET, ACC Network).