Photo by: Texas A&M Athletics
Football Weekly Press Conference: Ole Miss
Oct 20, 2015 | Football
Kevin Sumlin, coordinators and select players met with members of the media on Tuesday at the weekly football press conference inside the Kyle Field Media Center.
A summary of Coach Sumlin's comments are posted below, along with video. Audio is available through the additional links section on the page.
What you saw from offensive line after watching tape. Some good, some bad. Everyone has had problems running the ball on Alabama. Tra Carson's per-carry average was not that bad. We didn't give it to him a lot. The game dictated that. We got behind with turnovers and putting points on the board for the other team. We didn't have enough rushes but we also were behind a few scores. Determined to be efficient in run game. We weren't that. Number of rushes cut down a lot because of what the game dictated to try and get back into it. Are we there yet? No. Are we working at it? Yes. Give credit where credit is due but we certainly need to improve in that area.
Using the term snakebit for the running back position. No. We redshirted Kendall (Bussey). I couldn't be happier with Tra Carson's effort. Been awesome this year. Leader. Taken a lot of shots. Don't say that for the whole position because of how Tra has put things on his back and handled the whole deal. Brandon Williams moving to corner, and a couple other factors. That term is more about James White. Just trying to get him back and healthy.
Quarterback position after watching film. No doubt that we need to play better at the positon. Those guys will be the first to tell you that. Probably one of them we could have had a better route out of the situation. But we put ourselves in that situation too. Look from the beginning of the game, in all the plays that we were running, everything we threw, basically we made really 2 competitive plays on the perimeter with our receivers. One with Ricky Seals-Jones on the hashes late in the game, and one with Josh Reynolds. The rest of them? There was a deep ball with Christian (Kirk), the ball gets away. Ricky gets a ball knocked out on the sideline. After the blocked punt we had a chance, and we get one ripped out on the sideline. We throw a touchdown, it gets ripped out of Speedy's hands. Every competitive situation that we have with those balls, we have to do a better job at receiver to handle those, and we've got to have better ball security with our quarterbacks. Because it creates a situation where they are just trying to make a play at that point. The last one? Uncharacteristic of Kyle. There was nothing up until that point to lead you to believe that something like that was going to happen. We've looked at the video. Got to get things corrected. Got to play better at that positon. And those 50-50 balls, we've got to make plays on those and not have them be incompletions or drive-enders. We're not going to score every time, especially in a game like that against that defense. Flipping the field and playing good defense and playing the field position game is okay. Our guys pressed a little bit too, trying to make things happen. That's a terrible time for it but it's a learning experience. One that I think these two guys will learn from.
Brandon Williams as true two-way player. We've used him some. Continue to use him some. Been playing pretty good at corner. Those are decisions that we made. That's where we are. That's a decision we made early. Playing pretty good in the secondary now. There's a chemistry. Gets Nick Harvey in a rotation and not have him having to be that guy all the time. Nick will be a great player here but he doesn't have to be an every-down corner right now. Comes into game playing very well. Brandon has given us that. De'Vante Harris has been solid. Nick has shored that up. We need him. That's payed dividends for us defensively for what we do.
Otaro Alaka. Otaro is out for the season. Been a tough time for him. Dislocated an elbow during fall camp. Had a severe illness in his family, with his dad, right after that. Was a difficult time for him mentally. Came back and had a torn labrum. Decision was made to have him have surgery. He'll fall under the time frame where we'll apply for a medical redshirt. Think he'll get this year back. Time for him to get back together mentally and physically. Will have the opportunity to get him back for spring football. Will need him next year.
Linebacker corps and the adjustments they made on Saturday. #7 (Richard Moore) went out there and made a couple of tackles. Richard Moore came in and I thought did a pretty good job. Gave us some juice. Everyone is a little bit nervous, I was nervous. Obviously Richard wasn't. Played with emotion. Flew around, made some mistakes, but made his presence known. Made a few solo tackles running some guys down from behind. Was far from overwhelmed by the atmosphere. Excited to play. Good for him. That gives us another guy that can help us with Shaan (Washington) and AJ (Hilliard) and the young linebackers that we have. Saw Claude George make a few plays too. He's getting better. Guy can run. More than anything else, Coach Chavis, what he's done is given us the best opportunity with players on the field and playing guys at certain times. Those guys are coming along. Interesting thing is the guys I just mentioned hardly any played last year. Getting better. With exception of Shaan Washington, AJ is only guy who played in part of a game a year ago.
Ole Miss offense. Chad Kelly is a big strong guy. Great arm. Live arm. Perimeter guys are fabulous. Exceptional talent on the outside. Had a couple of 70-point games early. No doubt he has quality receivers across the board. Arguably one of the best receivers in the country that he's throwing to, along with 3, 4 or 5 other guys, a few we tried to recruit actually. One of the great tight ends in this league, like what we faced at Arkansas. Got good players on the perimeter. Running back is a live wire back there. Can find holes, can skip around a little bit. Great return guy too. Offensively they have weapons and a quarterback that can get them all over the field in many different ways. Been putting up lots of points and you can see why on tape.
Tempo of your offense. It's funny. Got here, they said well you're going too fast. Now we've slowed down and everyone is like we're going too slow. It's what you want to be. We had 70 plays Saturday, Alabama had 70 plays. Alabama was going no huddle and tempo. That's where it is. Think you're at the point where we are kind of in between. Tempo does you a lot of good when you are making first downs. If you're not, can have another situation like we had last year at Alabama. You're off the field in 19 seconds. All goes hand in hand. What you're seeing out of us is a little different style of what we're doing. Tempo changes during the game. We'll go as fast as anyone at certain times and we'll slow it down a little bit. From an average play standpoint, we're still up there, even with people trying to hold the ball like against Arkansas. That's all part of it. When you're changing personnel, your tempo is going to change. It's a decision we've made and our decision was based on this. You can always slow down. Most teams can't speed up when they need to. We have the ability to do that. We also want to get it right. We're right there where we need to be play-wise. We have enough plays. To me it hasn't been a factor. Big factor Saturday was turnovers. Put 24 points on the other team's scoreboard, three touchdowns and a field goal. That's the issue. We've been real good in that area. Two weeks prior we were plus-2 and plus-2. Then we come back and give away four and get one, and give up 24 points. Offensively it's about efficiency. Tempo is part of that.
Going on road, first time a true road game. Here's what's going to be important. We will have been there three times in four years. We're used to going over there. Don't know how that schedule worked but that's the way it worked. Every time it's been cold and rainy, just like it will be Saturday. Will be nothing new to us.
A summary of Coach Sumlin's comments are posted below, along with video. Audio is available through the additional links section on the page.
KEVIN SUMLIN PRESS CONFERENCE SUMMARY
What you saw from offensive line after watching tape. Some good, some bad. Everyone has had problems running the ball on Alabama. Tra Carson's per-carry average was not that bad. We didn't give it to him a lot. The game dictated that. We got behind with turnovers and putting points on the board for the other team. We didn't have enough rushes but we also were behind a few scores. Determined to be efficient in run game. We weren't that. Number of rushes cut down a lot because of what the game dictated to try and get back into it. Are we there yet? No. Are we working at it? Yes. Give credit where credit is due but we certainly need to improve in that area.
Using the term snakebit for the running back position. No. We redshirted Kendall (Bussey). I couldn't be happier with Tra Carson's effort. Been awesome this year. Leader. Taken a lot of shots. Don't say that for the whole position because of how Tra has put things on his back and handled the whole deal. Brandon Williams moving to corner, and a couple other factors. That term is more about James White. Just trying to get him back and healthy.
Quarterback position after watching film. No doubt that we need to play better at the positon. Those guys will be the first to tell you that. Probably one of them we could have had a better route out of the situation. But we put ourselves in that situation too. Look from the beginning of the game, in all the plays that we were running, everything we threw, basically we made really 2 competitive plays on the perimeter with our receivers. One with Ricky Seals-Jones on the hashes late in the game, and one with Josh Reynolds. The rest of them? There was a deep ball with Christian (Kirk), the ball gets away. Ricky gets a ball knocked out on the sideline. After the blocked punt we had a chance, and we get one ripped out on the sideline. We throw a touchdown, it gets ripped out of Speedy's hands. Every competitive situation that we have with those balls, we have to do a better job at receiver to handle those, and we've got to have better ball security with our quarterbacks. Because it creates a situation where they are just trying to make a play at that point. The last one? Uncharacteristic of Kyle. There was nothing up until that point to lead you to believe that something like that was going to happen. We've looked at the video. Got to get things corrected. Got to play better at that positon. And those 50-50 balls, we've got to make plays on those and not have them be incompletions or drive-enders. We're not going to score every time, especially in a game like that against that defense. Flipping the field and playing good defense and playing the field position game is okay. Our guys pressed a little bit too, trying to make things happen. That's a terrible time for it but it's a learning experience. One that I think these two guys will learn from.
Brandon Williams as true two-way player. We've used him some. Continue to use him some. Been playing pretty good at corner. Those are decisions that we made. That's where we are. That's a decision we made early. Playing pretty good in the secondary now. There's a chemistry. Gets Nick Harvey in a rotation and not have him having to be that guy all the time. Nick will be a great player here but he doesn't have to be an every-down corner right now. Comes into game playing very well. Brandon has given us that. De'Vante Harris has been solid. Nick has shored that up. We need him. That's payed dividends for us defensively for what we do.
Otaro Alaka. Otaro is out for the season. Been a tough time for him. Dislocated an elbow during fall camp. Had a severe illness in his family, with his dad, right after that. Was a difficult time for him mentally. Came back and had a torn labrum. Decision was made to have him have surgery. He'll fall under the time frame where we'll apply for a medical redshirt. Think he'll get this year back. Time for him to get back together mentally and physically. Will have the opportunity to get him back for spring football. Will need him next year.
Linebacker corps and the adjustments they made on Saturday. #7 (Richard Moore) went out there and made a couple of tackles. Richard Moore came in and I thought did a pretty good job. Gave us some juice. Everyone is a little bit nervous, I was nervous. Obviously Richard wasn't. Played with emotion. Flew around, made some mistakes, but made his presence known. Made a few solo tackles running some guys down from behind. Was far from overwhelmed by the atmosphere. Excited to play. Good for him. That gives us another guy that can help us with Shaan (Washington) and AJ (Hilliard) and the young linebackers that we have. Saw Claude George make a few plays too. He's getting better. Guy can run. More than anything else, Coach Chavis, what he's done is given us the best opportunity with players on the field and playing guys at certain times. Those guys are coming along. Interesting thing is the guys I just mentioned hardly any played last year. Getting better. With exception of Shaan Washington, AJ is only guy who played in part of a game a year ago.
Ole Miss offense. Chad Kelly is a big strong guy. Great arm. Live arm. Perimeter guys are fabulous. Exceptional talent on the outside. Had a couple of 70-point games early. No doubt he has quality receivers across the board. Arguably one of the best receivers in the country that he's throwing to, along with 3, 4 or 5 other guys, a few we tried to recruit actually. One of the great tight ends in this league, like what we faced at Arkansas. Got good players on the perimeter. Running back is a live wire back there. Can find holes, can skip around a little bit. Great return guy too. Offensively they have weapons and a quarterback that can get them all over the field in many different ways. Been putting up lots of points and you can see why on tape.
Tempo of your offense. It's funny. Got here, they said well you're going too fast. Now we've slowed down and everyone is like we're going too slow. It's what you want to be. We had 70 plays Saturday, Alabama had 70 plays. Alabama was going no huddle and tempo. That's where it is. Think you're at the point where we are kind of in between. Tempo does you a lot of good when you are making first downs. If you're not, can have another situation like we had last year at Alabama. You're off the field in 19 seconds. All goes hand in hand. What you're seeing out of us is a little different style of what we're doing. Tempo changes during the game. We'll go as fast as anyone at certain times and we'll slow it down a little bit. From an average play standpoint, we're still up there, even with people trying to hold the ball like against Arkansas. That's all part of it. When you're changing personnel, your tempo is going to change. It's a decision we've made and our decision was based on this. You can always slow down. Most teams can't speed up when they need to. We have the ability to do that. We also want to get it right. We're right there where we need to be play-wise. We have enough plays. To me it hasn't been a factor. Big factor Saturday was turnovers. Put 24 points on the other team's scoreboard, three touchdowns and a field goal. That's the issue. We've been real good in that area. Two weeks prior we were plus-2 and plus-2. Then we come back and give away four and get one, and give up 24 points. Offensively it's about efficiency. Tempo is part of that.
Going on road, first time a true road game. Here's what's going to be important. We will have been there three times in four years. We're used to going over there. Don't know how that schedule worked but that's the way it worked. Every time it's been cold and rainy, just like it will be Saturday. Will be nothing new to us.
Players Mentioned
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