Texas A&M head coach Kevin Sumlin has been consistent in announcing a starting quarterback around the same time in previous seasons, but with under two weeks to go until kickoff against UCLA, the Aggies’ starting signal-caller has yet to be named.
Sumlin said after Saturday’s practice the change in preseason schedule has played a part in the delay.
“Somebody will run out there against UCLA,” Sumlin said. “We’ll figure it out, I think we have a pretty good idea of where we’re out right now. When the time’s right we’ll do that.”
The Aggies have also yet to release a two-deep depth chart, but Sumlin said that it too will be announced soon as the team completes its fourth scrimmage Sunday night.
“Right now, we’ve got a pretty good feel for that. I want to give these guys another real open scrimmage [Sunday] to really get everybody off the field, get into Kyle Field,” Sumlin said. “Last Sunday we went 126 plays, so that was a big one, which is a lot.”
After going 60 plays in a condensed scrimmage this past Thursday and 70 the Thursday before, Sumlin gave an idea of how the final evaluation session would be scripted.
“I would anticipate [Sunday] night being somewhere in between, it won’t be 120 something, but it won’t be 60,” Sumlin said. “It’ll give us a last real evaluation of guys for what they’ve learned from installation and how they’re playing, then next week start to move onto really the 65-70 guys that are going to be travelling.”
Heading into the fourth scrimmage, however, Sumlin said he and his staff know where the majority of their players stand.
“We really have a good idea right now who those guys are going to be, who those back-ups are and what the plan is to rotate them and live with,” Sumlin said.
The key moving forward will be getting the back-ups inclined to play decent amounts of plays in hopes of not wearing down key players as much.
“Instead of just Armani [Watts] playing 70 plays a game. If he can get back to 50 and we get some snaps out of that second group and have confidence in putting them in,” Sumlin said. “You take your best guy out, you put a young guy in there and you’re always nervous, but you’ve got to do that because game 8, 9, 10, he’s played 5,000 plays if he’s playing 50 snaps a game. If he’s at game 10 and he’s playing 70, it just adds up.”
A&M kicks off its season against UCLA on Sept. 3 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.