TURNING POINT
Kevin Sumlin’s offseason changes paying off for Texas A&M
Kevin Sumlin’s offseason changes have the Aggies riding high in 2016.
COLLEGE STATION — Texas A&M coach Kevin Sumlin spread his hands 3 feet apart while recounting a tale this fall, as if describing the size of a monster catfish he’d dragged out of the Brazos River.
Instead, he was happily talking rear ends. Monster hindquarters. Allow him to explain.
“Our body types did not look like the rest of the body types in our league,” Sumlin said of his early seasons at A&M. “We were a very lean, very athletic, very fast football team. Not really big. Now, look at the end-zone video. It just looks different.
“There are wider behinds in there (spreads hands). That’s a fact.”
Lean, athletic and fast — particularly all of those traits wrapped in one dynamic quarterback — helped the Aggies stun the Southeastern Conference upon their arrival in 2012. A&M finished 11-2 in its first season in the stout
SEC, earned its first top five finish since 1956, and freshman quarterback Johnny Manziel won the Heisman Trophy.
Over the next three seasons, however, SEC reality set in, and Sumlin discovered the mere trio of lean, athletic and fast wasn’t going to cut it long term in the Aggies’ new stomping ground, and an overhaul was in order. One building wider behinds — now broader butts that might help make a difference for the sixth-ranked Aggies (6-0, 4-0 SEC) on Saturday afternoon at top-ranked Alabama (7-0, 4-0).
“We made changes in our player development, with our lifting program,” Sumlin explained. “Not subtle changes, drastic changes. Whether that changes the results or not, we’re going to see.”
The results so far are encouraging for the A&M fandom, which hasn’t witnessed its favorite program win a conference title since 1998 under-then coach R.C. Slocum and as Big 12 members. A&M has skunked the first half of its regular season schedule, including overtime triumphs against UCLA and Tennessee, and with those six victories has sprang to its best start since 1994, when the Rodney Thomas-led Aggies finished 10-0-1 while on NCAA probation.
“This is a very, very challenging team,” said Alabama coach Nick Saban, whose Crimson Tide have won four national titles since 2009. “Texas A&M probably presents as many issues as any team we’ve played all year.”
State’s standard bearers
The Aggies also are carrying Texas’ torch in the quest for the state’s first national championship since 2005, and prior to that 1969, both won by Texas. Baylor (No. 9) and Houston (11th) aren’t far behind the Aggies, but no other school from the state is among the top 39 vote-getters in the latest Associated Press poll.
A&M also has rebounded remarkably from its biggest crisis in Sumlin’s five seasons, after not one but two starting quarterbacks transferred last December, prior to the Aggies’ 27-21 Music City Bowl loss to Louisville in Nashville, Tenn.
Kyle Allen is long gone to UH and Kyler Murray is the same to Oklahoma, but the Aggies received a big ol’ belated Christmas present from the Sooners in quarterback Trevor Knight. He chose to play his senior season in College Station after losing the starting job at OU to Baker Mayfield a little more than a year ago.
Now, Knight earns another shot at defeating mighty Alabama — exactly what he did with the Sooners following the 2013 regular season in the Sugar Bowl, when he was named the game’s most valuable player. He and Mississippi’s Chad Kelly are the lone active quarterbacks to beat Alabama.
“It’s going to be a blast,” Knight said of once again facing the Crimson Tide, this time on their home turf. “You grow up being a college football fan, and you come to places like this to play in games like this.”
A&M has lost its last three games against Alabama, including 59-0 in Tuscaloosa two years ago, but won at Bryant-Denny Stadium in 2012, in toppling the top-ranked team that went on to win the national title anyway.
‘Drastic changes’
Sumlin, 52, has failed to come close to that successful first season since, with a 9-4 finish in 2013 and 8-5 records in each of the past two seasons. That’s why he used the term “drastic changes” to not
only describe the Aggies’ adjustments in the weight room, but also in their overall approach to competing in the SEC.
“Some of the decisions I made were difficult in December, leaving the bowl game in Tennessee and getting back here and making changes with our staff,” Sumlin said.
Specifically, he turned loose secondyear offensive coordinator Jake Spavital, now in the same role at California, along with veteran offensive line coach Dave Christensen, who failed to mesh with the sprightly Spavital from the start.
Sumlin replaced Spavital with a man about twice his age in Noel Mazzone, 59, and also turned to former A&M offensive line coach Jim Turner, a one-time Marine Corps infantry officer, to once again boss around the “Maroon Goons.” The Aggies’ young line is beginning to show some of the same results it did in Turner’s first stint under then-coach Mike Sherman, when that position was considered the team’s overall strength from 2008 to 2011.
For his part Mazzone, who came to A&M from UCLA, has reintroduced a balanced offensive attack, one leading the SEC in total offense with 533 yards per game. The Aggies are leaning heavily on freshman running back Trayveon Williams of C.E. King, who leads the league with 117 rushing yards per game, and the savvy and leadership of Knight, who’s averaging 7.7 yards per carry.
Defense more SEC-worthy
Defensively, A&M relies on perhaps the No. 1 overall selection in the 2017 NFL draft in monstrous end Myles Garrett, and he teams with senior Daeshon Hall to give the Aggies the most menacing pass rush in the country.
A slew of hard-hitting safeties — Justin Evans, Armani Watts and Donovan Wilson — also are helping lead the charge on that side of the ball. They’re all under the tutelage of a coordinator considered one of the best all-time in the SEC in John Chavis.
The gruff former Tennessee player who helped lead the Volunteers to a national title in 1998 as defensive coordinator, and who built some of the nation’s top defenses over six seasons at LSU, is in his second season with the Aggies.
“We look like an SEC defense this year,” Chavis said of the Aggies’ increased bulk, especially along its previously-maligned line. “We knew we had to get bigger, and we knew we had to get stronger. This game (at Alabama) will be another measuring stick for where we are. It’s a physical league, and you have to be physical to play in this league. We’ve made some progress in that area.”
Five years ago, Chavis’ LSU defense led the way in a 9-6 victory over Alabama in a regular-season collision of the nation’s two top-ranked teams (with LSU at No. 1). The storied programs met again in the national title game, a 21-0 Crimson Tide victory in which the Tigers defense held Alabama to five field goals over the first three quarters, prior to a late Alabama touchdown with the game out of reach.
Chavis, who turned 60 last Sunday, knows of what he speaks in sizing up national championship contenders, and he vowed A&M is on the cusp of competing for its first national title since 1939, wide rear ends and all.
“We’re looking forward to playing the No. 1 team in the country, and that’s what we’re trying to do as part of coach Sumlin’s program here, build to be the No. 1 team in the country,” Chavis said. “I look forward to that happening here at Texas A&M, and it’s going to happen. I’m not saying it’s going to happen this year … don’t misinterpret that.
“But Texas A&M has everything in place that it needs to make that happen at some point in time.”