Sumlin now taking more measured approach
Forty years ago, then-President Gerald Ford crossed paths with Emory Bellard, and Ford asked Bellard, Texas A&M’s football coach at the time, the story behind an injury to George Woodard, the Aggies’ powerful running back.
On Thursday, A&M football coach Kevin Sumlin listened to this presidential tale from an emcee just before Sumlin’s introduction at the Touchdown Club of Houston luncheon. He stepped to the podium with a smile.
“First of all, I don’t think Donald Trump is calling me any time soon,” Sumlin said, drawing laughter from a partisan audience at the Bayou City Event Center.
Sumlin added that Trump has more on his plate than questions regarding A&M football. But that’s not the case for the Aggies’ sixth-year coach, who will be fielding plenty of them between now and September, not the least of which is whether his team can break the 8-5 cycle of the past three seasons.
“Every team is different,” he said.
Sumlin also knows this time of the year is for pumping sunshine
and compares late spring and summer on the speaking circuit to national signing day in February.
“You never hear a coach say anything about a bad signing class or not being excited about the year,” he said.
Sumlin said he is excited about the upcoming season despite losing defensive end Myles Garrett, who was the No. 1 overall selection by Cleveland in last month’s NFL draft. Fellow end Daeshon Hall also is gone to the NFL, but Sumlin is confident Jarrett Johnson, Qualen Cunningham and junior-college transfer Micheal Clemons will get the job done on the defensive edge.
“Jarrett Johnson had the same amount of productivity (as Hall) with 4½ sacks, and Jarrett played half the time,” Sumlin said.
The coach added that fans can expect to see more multiple fronts on defense than in seasons past, thanks to a handful of talented interior linemen, including Zaycoven Henderson and Kingsley Keke.
A year ago at the same Touchdown Club of Houston event, Sumlin pounded the podium while claiming, “We can’t wait to play our first game.”
A big part of that confidence came from a defense coming off its first season under coordinator John Chavis that had improved from 102nd nationally in total defense in 2014 to 51st in 2015. Sumlin told the crowd a year ago that the Aggies had the potential to finish in the top 15 in total defense.
A&M’s defense took a big step backward in Chavis’ second season, however, finishing 90th. And that is why Sumlin is taking a more measured approach this offseason and has left the podiumpounding for behind closed doors.
“We’ll see where we are,” he said Thursday of the overall state of his program.
Quarterback might be a bigger question than defensive end. Sumlin said all three of his quarterbacks competing for the starting job — redshirt freshman Nick Starkel, senior Jake Hubenak and freshman Kellen Mond — are capable of running the offense. He praised Hubenak’s experience, lauded Mond’s scrambling ability and added that Starkel nearly played last season after then-starter Trevor Knight was hurt in early November.
“We’ve done this before, many times,” Sumlin said of keeping a quarterback battle engaged well into August. “They understand what’s going on … and ultimately it gets down to in the fall who’s the best guy for the situation.”
Last November, A&M was ranked fourth in the first College Football Playoff poll after an 8-1 start, with the only setback a 33-14 loss at then-No. 1 Alabama on Oct. 22. The Aggies unraveled in November for a third consecutive season, and one of the casualties of the late-season swoon was longtime strength coach Larry Jackson, who was fired after the season and replaced by Mark Hocke, a former Alabama assistant strength coach and Georgia head strength coach.
“We made some changes in the program that we needed to make,” Sumlin said.
He did likewise a year ago when he fired offensive coordinator Jake Spavital and replaced him with Noel Mazzone, and he made a similar move two years ago when he fired defensive coordinator Mark Snyder and brought in Chavis.
Sumlin has said Hocke’s hire should help the team prepare for the rigors of November in the Southeastern Conference and said the players were happy to get away from the demands of their new strength coach for a while this month. But they will be back in early June for summer school and more conditioning under Hocke’s watch.
That can’t come soon enough for a coach facing lots of questions even if none of them is coming from the president of the United States.