Former QB Summers finds home on defense
FRISCO — When TCU coach Gary Patterson looked at high school senior Ty Summers, he didn’t see a quarterback. That was fine, because what Patterson needed was another linebacker, and that’s what he envisioned when recruiting the former San Antonio Reagan dualthreat signal-caller.
Summers, an all-district 26-5A selection, had originally committed to Rice before a visit with Patterson persuaded him to flip in December 2013. But that Power Five scholarship offer came with one caveat: Summers had to stop taking hits and start delivering them on a full-time basis.
“I had one more scholarship, and they told me he was a great kid, he could communicate, was a quarterback, he ran a 10.9 100meter,” Patterson said Monday during Big 12 media days. “And so I needed another linebacker. I thought, well, if you could put a guy like that in your system and he’s a Rice-type of academic, then you’re going to have a
chance to make him into somebody. That’s the way I presented it on his recruiting visit. I didn’t bring him in as a quarterback and change him. I said, ‘Look, I can give you a scholarship if you want to be a linebacker.’ ”
Summers’ freshman campaign lasted one game. He suffered a season-ending injury in the opener against Samford and sat out the rest of 2014 with a medical redshirt.
Big sophomore season
When he got back on the field in 2015, Summers was physically transformed. A gym rat with bowling ball-sized shoulders and a bulging neck thick as a Texas ribeye, he racked up 86 tackles — including 23 in a win over seventh-ranked Baylor — and was an honorable mention Big 12 defensive player of the year selection.
As a sophomore, Summers appeared in all 13 games and ranked second in the Big 12 with 121 tackles, trailing teammate Travin Howard. He earned a second-team All-Big 12 nod and was twice named the conference’s defensive player of the week.
Even before that 2016 breakout, it was apparent Patterson’s scholarship gamble on the twostar prospect formerly ranked No. 2,448 in the nation by 247Sports had paid off. Not that those metrics appealed much to the football lifer who began his coaching career as a graduate assistant with Kansas State in 1982.
“I have always believed that it’s not where you start but where you finish,” Patterson said. “So you recruit whoever you want to recruit; you recruit who fits your program. Doesn’t do you any good to have a good athlete who fits a square peg fitting into a round hole. The guy has to fit that position, or he needs to be good enough that you will create a new position within your defense and offense so he can be successful and he will make you better.
“I think that’s one of the things we’ve always done. We know what we’re looking for.”
Summers wasn’t part of a particularly gaudy recruiting class. TCU’s 2014 group ranked No. 43 nationally and featured only one four-star signee. But even among that group Summers could have been an afterthought.
But there he was Monday at Jerry Jones’ sprawling Ford Center, an exemplar of not only the defense but Patterson’s entire program. Along with senior defensive end and 2017 Big 12 defensive newcomer of the year Ben Banogu, another two-star prospect who in 2016 transferred from Louisiana-Monroe, Summers will be vital as ever for a TCU defense that lost six starters from last year’s 11-3 team, including leading tackler Howard.
With Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield and Oklahoma State quarterback Mason Rudolph unable to terrorize Big 12 offenses from the NFL, the conference feels as wide-open as it has been in years. As for TCU, it will learn to deal with its change under center as sophomore Shawn Robinson replaces Kenny Hill.
Doesn’t miss QB hazards
Summers can’t control what happens on the offensive side of the ball anymore. Those are distant days, and he doesn’t seem all that wistful about calling plays or avoiding blindside rushers. He’s happy where he is, right where all those recruiting services said he’d never be.
“It just shows that it’s not all about those ratings,” Summers said. “There are intangibles that I feel a lot of times they don’t look at. They look at a lot of numbers and the athleticism of a guy, but they’ve got to also see what the potential is too.
“The biggest thing that I was worried about — I didn’t really care about that rating as long as I still got a chance. Which I did, ultimately. Because I knew if I had a chance, I was going to do everything that I had to do to be successful.”