Weekly Football Press Conference: New Mexico State
Oct 25, 2016 | Football
A&M hosts New Mexico State on Saturday (6:30 p.m., ESPNU).
A summary of Coach Sumlin's press conference is posted below along with press conference videos for Coach Chavis, Coach Mazzone and players.
KEVIN SUMLIN PRESS CONFERENCE SUMMARY
Claude George and how he's played during year.
I would say Claude has been up and down all year. Productive when in there. If were more consistent would have played lot more. Has made huge plays for us. Also been responsible for some serious issues. He knows that. Consistency has been his issue throughout this year. No doubt he's extremely productive for number of snaps he was in there. Played more snaps than people think. If you learn anything this year about us defensively, just because you start the game doesn't mean you play most amount of snaps. If he were more consistent he would play more. Hit or miss with him. Does some great things and does some things that don't really show up anywhere else but in video and can cost you. Part of the deal. Said lot of times, Justin Evans really the exception to the rule about JUCO players. Just about time they figure it out they're going out the door, the two-year guys. Very fortunate with our tackles. Gennesy and Eluemunor we could redshirt and utilize them as 3-year players. Claude making transition, don't get me wrong, he's a good player. Made transition from hand on ground defensive end to now. Great pass rusher. When we blitz him he's made lot of great plays because instinctively that was his position in junior college.
After watching Keith Ford vs Alabama, what do you think the offense was lacking without him out there.
Don't think we were lacking anything without him. Were running ball really well. This was more of a Keith Ford-type of game. At beginning of year I said we'd need all the backs. All provide change of pace for difference defenses. That was more of a Keith Ford-style of football game and I think you saw that. His experience in those situations showed. Way he runs showed. Physical, tough guy in that situation, a different back than Trayveon. Not to say Trayveon wasn't effective the two weeks prior.
With the success of Trevor Knight as graduate transfer, do you see that number increasing and is that good for football.
When we first did it it wasn't that big a deal. Everyone is looking at Trevor. I've also had two guys graduate from here go on to other schools and played. Jameill Showers in his situation people thought he would be starter but Johnny beat him out. Graduated, got Aggie ring and left. So did Matt Joeckel. Graduated and wanted to go law school and went to TCU. I've seen both sides of it. To me my thought process is if young man comes to your university and does everything you ask him to do, has been great teammate and graduated from your university which is the number one thing he came there for, and for whatever reason (wants to leave), why not give him chance to go somewhere else to live out his dream. If someone wants to be part of that and they need a quarterback for a year, an older guy, (why not). I think in Matt's situation, he was from Fort Worth. Twin brother had left to go to NFL. Graduated as an Aggie. Wanted to finish up closer to home by his girlfriend and everything else, that was great. Jameill's situation, to leave here in good standing, get beat out by arguably the best player in country, what are you going to tell him? Hang around here and hope for best? That's hard to do. Think his family appreciated that. Gave Jameill a chance to showcase his talents and chance to hang around with Cowboys for a bit. That's what we're here for. Our situation with Trevor is a good one. Gave him another chance to play at this level, maybe another shot at playing professionally. Filled a void for us. Don't know there's lot of bad things about it. Things have to happen. Way things are in SEC with discipline policy with transfers, looking at what you did at prior university from a disciplinary standpoint, that kind of solves the problems in our league. Second part is guy has graduated. Got 1 more year and wants to play somewhere, and someone's willing to take him, I don't see anything wrong with that.
Do you ask Shane Tripucka if he shoots like his uncle?
I make fun of it. Used to listen to it all the time, particularly growing up in Indianapolis at time. Notre Dame basketball and Digger Phelps was big deal. Give him a hard time. He's doing great job for us. Can't say enough about our special teams and Jeff Banks. Every year we come into this thing with bunch of questions about kickers, punters, snappers. We just get to point in year where we expect them to be good. People are worried at start of year because no one ever heard of them and then we keep them around and all these guys do...by the way we had another guy win an NFL game the other day. Jeff Banks does great job with these guys. Shane has proven himself. Last week we did some directional punting. Couple punts inside 20 again. Josh Reynolds makes heck of play at 1. Although his average maybe hasn't been as high as guys who've been here last few years, if you look at his accuracy and limiting returns and his pinning people down inside 20 he's been very, very good.
Trevor on Saturday said he's seen 1-loss teams get to where they want to go. Does it ease your mind a guy like Trevor can communicate that to team.
Be honest with you we talked about that yesterday. We're not talking about that. Got to worry about this week. Don't have any control over what happens after that. Our guys understand that. Right after that game everyone still wants to talk about where we are in national picture and what can happen here and there. Guess what, 6 weeks ago that wasn't a conversation, now all of sudden it is? We don't forget that. We have to beat New Mexico State this week. That's what this week is about. Then we'll figure out next week.
New Mexico State QB Tyler Rogers' skill set.
They're gonna throw it around a bunch. Doug Martin has been around, been a head coach for while. Going to sling it around all over place. Got a guy that can do that. Gonna spread us out. Zone read and really more of the same. RPO stuff. Take shots down field. Will test us deep. They've got nothing to lose. Go back and watch tape, can remember in middle of (one of our) games and looking at Kentucky score keep flashing up there (62-42). They were putting points up and moving it down the field. Heck of game. This is another SEC opponent. No stranger to that. Definitely a team that is going to try and expose you and get big plays off deep throws and all kind of things down field. Defensively the linebackers are really the core of their unit. Run real well. Good tacklers. Played lot of different styles of football in last 4 or 5 weeks. From SEC teams to teams in their league have seen lot different types of offenses. But they won't be shy throwing football around.
On Mack Wilson's hit on Speedy, have you talked to SEC office.
Yep.
What did they say.
Might want to talk to them about that. (We asked) Why wasn't that looked at. I had conversation with Steve Shaw Sunday morning about that.
Knowing you faced an elite defensive front, where are you with your offensive line's performance.
Think Alabama has had an effect on everyone. Week before, Tennessee rushed for 36 yards. We want to be better. We are young interiorly. Coach Turner has done great job with this offensive line. Up until that game our line was leading league in rushing. That front against us, no doubt they were better. That game is that game. They played as hard as they could play. What you'll see Bama continue to do with that front is no different. Draft day, whenever that is, you'll see bunch of those names get called. Do we want to be better? Yes. Can we be better? We will be better, because these guys will be playing for us for next 3 or 4 years. We talked to those guys after game. McCoy, Prater, Sutherland, those guys are freshman, redshirt freshman and sophomores. Eye-opening experience for them. Said hey, you've got another year to get bigger, stronger and learn from that experience. Done good job this year for guys really going into season people were worried about. Young. Good news is those guys will be back. Coach Turner doing great job with them. That's what we're about here, getting better this week, addressing those issues. I wasn't trying to be smart back there, but we've got things we have to continue to fix. That's way we've approached season every week. Personnel wise, things we've done - i'll say this too - think Jim Turner has done great job with line but also think Noel Mazzone has done great job maybe masking some of the things that came about Saturday, with protections, with different things we've done to help guys. What you saw with Alabama was five guys that got some matchup issues, created some things and when we got behind having to drop back really struggled with that. People ask why are we doing this, or playcalling, or what's going on, we had 2 issues we knew going into game and known for while. Been able to do some things from protection and through play calls. They had great plan. Whenever you're able to defend with your defensive line with basically 4 or 5 or maybe 6, makes it really, really difficult in passing game without being able to do some other things. When you play team like that you have to be efficient in what you do. Can't make mistakes we did. We've made some mistakes like that in earlier in year. Because of where we were, we were able to get away with them and win the game. Can't do that against Alabama.
JOHN CHAVIS PRESS CONFERENCE
NOEL MAZZONE PRESS CONFERENCE
TREVOR KNIGHT PRESS CONFERENCE
CLAUDE GEORGE, JUSTIN EVANS & CONNOR LANFEAR PRESS CONFERENCE
