COLLEGE STATION, TX -- The Texas A&M football team held their annual pre-game press conference on Tuesday at the Bright Complex on the Texas A&M Campus.
HEAD COACH KEVIN SUMLIN
On what he saw from the game film…
“You know the old adage – ‘It’s never as good as it seems, it’s never as bad as it seems.’ Once you get past the initial reaction of losing a football game, you go back and look at what you could do better, whether you win or lose, but particularly when you lose a game. Number one, we assess effort. After reviewing the video, we were very pleased as a coaching staff with our effort on offense and defense. Special teams, not so much. We thought our specialists – our kickers – did an excellent job, and the punters. There were some things inside of those units that we weren’t pleased with. We talked about that as a team, and addressed that yesterday. That’s something that we’re working hard on. The next thing is execution, which at times when you’re playing a close game like that against a good team, sometimes they have good players that can handle things, but there are some things that you can be better at from an execution standpoint. In the first game, or in any game, you can analyze that we can be better at execution. I think that cost us the football. And then did we play smart? And by that I mean, did we handle the turnover ratio? There were no turnovers in the game, which that was a huge positive. Penalty-wise, we did not handle that. Three things that we talk about going into every game: Play hard, play smart, play physical. I thought we were extremely physical. I thought we played extremely hard. The intelligence part of the game, we did not. When you’re in a close game and you have 9 penalties for 78 yards, that’s not going to cut it. They had a formula that every 10 yards in penalties is worth one point. There are a lot of combinations in that. I think our players right now, after talking about that, understand the importance of that part of the game also. That was an emphasis coming into this year – turnover ratio and penalties. We got one of them on Saturday, and the other one may have cost us the football game.”
On freshman quarterback Johnny Manziel…
“For a first start for a redshirt against a defensive team like Florida, I thought he performed well. I think the first thing you worry about with a new guy is turnovers, whether it’s a quarterback or anybody who is handling the football, not just him but a number of our freshmen handled the ball. We put Trey Williams back there as a kickoff return and those guys handled those situations well. We worry about ball security, and we worry about decision making. I think that everybody saw the difference between him in the spring and him in the game. Things speed up when you play here. You look at both of the quarterbacks in that game and neither one of them took chances. Driskel took some sacks and just hung onto the ball instead of throwing it up. Johnny was a little bit closer to the vest too. That’s something that was a lot different than he was in the spring. As experience comes, he will be able to sit in there a little bit longer, maybe go through and read things out a little bit more, look down the field a little bit more. From our standpoint, we have gone back and looked at the video. He understands where he can get better. I think that’s the main thing to take from Saturday. After the initial reaction, you come back and look at the video and you realize ‘You know what, when you play a top-25 team, here are the things that you can’t do to be successful.’ There is a lot of room for improvement. That will be the key concern. If there weren’t a lot of room for improvement and that was the case, then that would be pretty depressing. From that standpoint, I know our team sees that we can play better and that, to me, is exciting.”
On the defensive line…
“I thought coming into the game our main concerns, which I think were everyone’s concerns were our kickers, punters, snappers and our defensive line. You look at Saturday and you know what, our kickers made every kick, our net punt was 49-something and our defensive line really did a pretty good job of containing their running game. I was a little worried when we started a true freshman at defensive end and a couple guys who we were concerned about their size in there. The way our defense is set up to be able to keep Jonathan Stewart clean to be able to make 17 tackles and to rush the passer the way they did, I thought that they did a pretty nice job. You don’t have to worry about Damontre Moore having confidence, I’ll put it that way. You worry about some of these other guys. Julien Obioha comes in thinking, ‘I’m playing my first game against Florida, it’s an SEC game.’ After watching him in practice yesterday, he’s a different guy. He’s like ‘You know what, I just started in 60 plays, 50 plays against Florida. I’m ready to go.’ That’s one of the steps that happens with freshmen. I think our D-line can gain some confidence in that instead of thinking ‘Hey, I don’t know what’s going to happen.’ And our kicking game. Instead of saying ‘You know what, that’s the standard. Let’s go.’”
On Jonathan Stewart having 17 tackles…
“I think it’s important [for him to lead with 17 tackles]. It lends confidence to the reason that he’s doing that. You can’t make 17 tackles if there’s somebody blocking you all the time. I think that says something, too, about our defensive front. That all works together. It’s kind of like a running back and an offensive lineman. You can be a really good linebacker but if there’s somebody all over you all the time, it’s hard to make tackles. I think for him to make 17 tackles, that’s great for us and great for him, but that also says something about the design of the defense and that means there are a bunch of other people doing their job.”
On RS freshman receiver Mike Evans…
“Mike has been doing that since we’ve been here. Here’s another guy – this is his first start - who played one year of high school football, and redshirted last year. He’s very, very raw, but 6’4-6’5. He’s a big guy, and a great basketball player in high school – a tweener, which means when you’re 6’4-6’5 you’ve got no jump shot. That means you’re a post guy. When you use the term ‘great basketball player at 6’5’, that’s what that means. You can’t shoot a three. You can’t defend on the floor. So, he played football. What he does give us is a big threat. He can run. The guy played one year of high school football and redshirted and there he is out playing against Florida, and starting, and playing well and competing. I go back and watch the video of the receivers and they blocked like crazy on the perimeter and he competed with those guys. I think I’m encouraged by the young guys and the old guys. We don’t skip a beat by running those guys in-and-out of the game.”
DEFENSIVE SOORDINATOR MARK SNYDER
On whether the D-Line performed how he had expected…
“You never know until you get to the first game. Transitioning from a 3-4 to a 4-3, I’ve got to give Coach Sumlin a lot of credit for that. The way we practiced – half-line inside drill going good-on-good, I think it showed Saturday. We have two SEC periods every day. I think if you watch the film, we more than held our own up front against Florida.”
On Jonathan Stewart...
“That’s what this system is about. Jonathan played well. He knows he can play better. We’ve got to press the line of scrimmage a lot better than we did. Again, it’s his first game in this system. That’s what is expected of that guy and that position. That might and that will in our system makes a lot of plays if the D-line does their job, which they did. I thought Stew played well. He knows, speaking out of turn, he’s got to press the line of scrimmage more. We’ve got two unblocked linebackers and we’re not pressing the line of scrimmage. Those things are all correctable. That’s what is good about it.”
On dealing with penalties…
“They were aggressive penalties on our side of the ball. I’ve got to be careful there. [Pass interferences] and facemasks, I think it goes back more to tackling – not being in position to tackle when you get a facemask penalty. We cut down the off-sides, the delayed hits, the silly penalties we got rid of. Ours were facemask penalties, that are aggressive penalties. We do address them. I need to be careful because I can handle the aggressive penalties. I can’t handle the stupid penalties. We really didn’t have any stupid penalties. We weren’t in the position to tackle. That’s why we had the facemasks and the penalties that we had. Facemasks and PIs – those are the kind of penalties that you’re trying to make a tackle or go after the ball. I think you have to be careful there. If it becomes a consistent problem, then we’ve got a problem. I went back and looked at all of them and we’re not in position to tackle. We’re reaching. We’re not coming to balance. Again, I think those things can be corrected.”
On Damontre Moore…
“Our big thing to Damontre was, he’s been a slot player and he produced as a slot player. It’s time to grow up, put your hand in the dirt, stop the run and put pressure on the quarterback. And you’ve got to go play for 60-to-80 plays or whatever is required and you know what, he did that. I’m very, very proud of him. He’s a baby, there’s no doubt about it. There’s a maturation process that has to continue to happen. I see a more businesslike approach out of him from the first day of we got here for spring ball to now. There’s a little bit more of a businesslike approach.”
OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR KLIFF KINGSBURY
On early drive execution…
“It’s been big. The big deal was 11 negative plays. Snap the ball 70-something times, 11 of those times we moved backwards, whether it was penalties or just missed assignments. That can’t happen in the style of offense we want to play.”
On Johnny Manziel…
“I knew he would play hard and he fought the whole game. It’s a tough situation, obviously, playing against that defense and I thought he battled. We just have to keep getting better each week. I’ve got to coach him up and get him going.”
On distributing the ball to the three running backs…
“We think all of them can give us something different – in the running game and the pass game. We want to give them all touches and get the ball to them as much as we can.”
On playing a tough defense in Florida…
“I think the thing that stood out was that physically, I thought our guys stood up to them and played hard. The effort was outstanding – blocking on the perimeter, blocking up front, the running backs running the ball physically – I thought that really jumped out.”
JUNIOR OFFENSIVE LINMAN LUKE JOECKEL
On what he thought of the team’s performance against Florida...
“Obviously, we had a pretty good first half. The second half was rough. We weren’t very good on first-and-second downs. When you get to third-and-long situations, it’s pretty hard on the offensive line and it’s very hard on the offense to capitalize. We weren’t too good on third downs either so we definitely have to learn from that and get better next week on first-and-second downs.”
On the halftime atmosphere…
“We were ready to go. At the beginning of the game we were ready to go. The coaches bring confidence to this team and we were ready to go at the beginning of the game. We were still ready to go in the second half. It’s not like we just sat there and relaxed or anything. We still wanted to play hard and wanted to win. Things just didn’t go our way.”
On Manziel…
“I think he did well. He’s a very confident guy. He’s a very tough guy. He took some hits out there but he got right back up. He’s always trying to make plays. You can’t hate him for always trying to make plays and do that for us this year. I have total trust in him. I know he’ll make plays for us. ”
SOPHOMORE OFFENSIVE LINEMAN CEDRIC OGBUEHI
On his first season opener game…
“It’s a big boost. I feel confident in my play on Saturday. I feel like from then-on it’s going to be a good season.”
On having a game under his belt…
“I always say games are easier than practice. After that first game, from now on it’s just smooth. At practice you can tell that young guys, old guys, it’s easier for them now. It’s a big difference.”
On blocking for a quick quarterback…
“With Johnny, it’s different. You can’t just block and stop. You’ve got to block until the whistle. Last year with Tannehill, you knew he was probably going to take about three steps and then throw it. With Johnny he’s fast, he’s electric. He’s going to play with his legs, so you have to keep blocking until the whistle.”
SENIOR LINEBACKER JONATHAN STEWART
On having 17 tackles…
“It’s only one game. You’re only as good as your next performance. I think I had 17 tackles this week and if I don’t perform like that again next week, then this week doesn’t mean anything. It’s something that you can look back upon after the season, but as the season goes on, it’s on to the next game whether you win or lose.”
On whether he was surprised about the defensive line’s success…
“The questions were all from the media. From a defensive standpoint, we were all confident in what the D-Line could do. We saw them do it all in two-a-days when the media wouldn’t be out there. We were confident. We expected them to come out and perform the way that they did. To get as many sacks as they did – that might have been surprising – but the way that they played, that didn’t surprise me at all.”
On the defense spending 20 minutes on the field in the second half…
“Playing 20 minutes wasn’t that tough, just because of the type of offense Florida ran. It wasn’t up-tempo, get-to-the-ball, try to run a play every 15 seconds, or anything like that. That’s a big part of why the time of possession was 20-to-10 in the second half. Sometimes they’d run a play with five seconds left. That was a big discrepancy in the time of possession. Overall as a defense, we weren’t out there getting tired or gassed. There weren’t guys getting worn down just because we were out there on the field for 20 minutes. We worked hard in the offseason to get in shape, and in two-a-days to get in shape and we were able to go long. It wasn’t a hundred degrees out there. It wasn’t blistering hot out there. It was a nice, cool, breezy Saturday. With the temperature and everything around that, we weren’t tired at all. We were ready to play.”
On the defense not creating turnovers against Florida…
“We’ve just got to focus on that. When the first guy has him wrapped up, the second guy has to come in and try to get the ball out. When you have the opportunity to get a sack, secure the tackle and then try to get the ball out. It’s just little things. It’s just one game. We have some things we have to work on. We have a lot of season left. This is a new week. We never know what could happen. We could come out this week and create four-or-five turnovers. That’s going to be our goal this week. That is an issue – turnovers and penalties – but it’s something that we can fix.”
On penalties…
“From Coach Sumlin, it’s a focus. Last year, we looked at it and if we would have been in the SEC last season, we would have been the 13th-ranked team in penalties. Penalties are an issue. It’s something we have to fix. I want to say we had nine penalties, and we always had penalties at crucial times, so we’ve just got to stay focused at all times. We can’t have those little mental lapses where we create penalties and we allow teams to keep their drives. We have to make teams earn everything. We can’t give them anything. The margin of victory is too close. When you mess up little things, and you keep giving teams chances, eventually they’re going to do what they need to do.”
SENIOR RECIEVER UZOMA NWACHUKWU
On Johnny Manziel…
“I think you guys have got to realize that that was his first time running out on Kyle Field. It was his first time playing in a college football game. He had a great game. That speaks volumes. He did all of that well with all of that pressure on him. He did a great job controlling the game and not throwing any interceptions at all and not forcing anything. He did a great job overall in my book.”
On not finishing the game after a first-half lead…
“It’s really frustrating, especially for the seniors and guys who have been here for a while that played in a lot of those games and couldn’t finish them out. There’s a lot of frustration built up and we’ve got to make sure doesn’t happen again. We’re focused in practice and we’re correcting little things that we can correct.”
On being able to watch film from an actual game…
“It’s great. Instead of just at practice where you don’t have referees and game situations, you can put yourself in that situation and see exactly how another defense reacts to it and exactly how the tempo is going to be. I think having a game under our belt is going to be good for us.”
SENIOR DEFENSIVE BACK STEVEN TERRELL
On the defense…
“Overall we played OK. I feel like we could have done a lot better. We missed a lot of tackles, especially in the back end. I thought the D-Line played a great game. When they play a game like that, it’s on us on the back end to do our part. I don’t feel like we did as well as we should have. It was just game one, so we’ve got to do a lot better this week. Going up against a spread offense like SMU is going to be more on the secondary this week. It’s going to be a big focus for us. I’ve always said I didn’t feel like it would be a problem for us, the D-Line. I knew we had a veteran group up there and a lot of hard workers up there. I wasn’t worried about them at all. They came to play and they did a pretty good job for us.”
On having already played a game…
“I think it helps a lot. All of my coaches have always told me that you see the most improvement from game one to game two. We had a lot of young guys up there, so getting those first-game jitters out of your way, and first-game mistakes out of the way, I think we’ll just go up from here.”
On not being able to close the game in the second half…
“It was more of just little mistakes. A lot of people focus on the second half. I really don’t think that was a problem. I think it was just not capitalizing on plays we should have made and penalties once again were a big problem for us. Those are all things we’ve addressed and are trying to get fixed for this week.”
JUNIOR DEFNSIVE END DAMONTRE MOORE
On the team’s performance on Saturday…
“We were pretty pleased. When we went back and watched film, obviously we were upset that we lost and that we didn’t get the win, but we saw that we did a lot of good things. We were really worried about the transition from a 3-4 game to a 4-3 and I think that we handled it very well and turned a lot of heads. There were a lot of good things and there were also some mistakes but we’re working on trying to get those mistakes fixed.”
On his maturity this year as opposed to last season…
“I think it has been a tremendous improvement. I have a whole year under my belt. The focus level calls for me to bring a tremendous increase because of the new conference and playing new opponents – bigger and faster. I’m just trying to help my team to the best of my ability. My focus level went up tremendously and my maturity comes with time and it’s been a whole other year, so of course that is going to improve.”
On keeping the strength and energy up throughout the season…
“Early in the season, it’s fresh legs and everybody is excited. You haven’t played for nine months so of course you’re is going to have juices flowing and be really energized. In the strength program there has been significant training. Coach Jackson has done a lot more stuff to build up our endurance by pushing sleds and hip work. I feel like the conditioning program has helped us a lot and continues to help us to work and to keep outlasting our opponents and to make it as far as the end of the season without as many injuries. Coach Sumlin said the other day in the meeting, and it kind of shocked me, that I played 61 plays. If you would have asked me that during the summer I would have said maybe half that. A lot more people played a lot more than they normally do. As a whole defense we weren’t really tired, we were just making little mistakes that we made, so I think that the conditioning program has helped us a lot.”
Texas A&M will take on the SMU Mustangs Saturday afternoon at 2:30pm at Ford Stadium in Dallas. The game will be televised by FSN. The Aggies are currently 13 point favorites in their first road game of the year.
The Aggies are 10-0-1 against the Mustangs since their last loss in series back in 1984.The one blemish is a 21-21 tie at the Alamodome in San Antonio in 1994. That tie was the only blemish on the Aggies' season that year as they finished with a 10-0-1 record.
