Texas A&M football head coach Kevin Sumlin was a featured guest speaker Monday night as he wrapped up the final stop on the Coach’s Night 2014 Tour in the Bethancourt Ballroom at the Memorial Student Center.
Giving a speech in front of more than 1,000 members of the Brazos County A&M Club, Sumlin discussed the state of the football team and put to rest many of the questions surrounding the offensive and defensive lines.
Sumlin said there were several starters from the 2013 team that have improved greatly and would return for this fall.
While he didn’t put an answer to the question about who the starting quarterback would be, Sumlin said that whoever it was, the offense would be quarterbacked well.
“Offensively, the question has been who’s going to be quarterback,” Sumlin said. “I think the biggest question is how is our offense going to be quarterbacked. We return a very good offensive line. We got four of our five starters back and we have moved some guys around a bit.”
Sumlin then addressed the next elephant in the room — the state of the defense. Even though the team lost several key players, Sumlin said he still has a lot of trust in the defensive line.
“Looking at our depth chart now, believe it or not, we will have more depth at our front four then we’ve had since I’ve been here,” Sumlin said. “When we rotated our five guys at Duke last year, I looked up and out of the front seven guys, seven of them were freshman. That’s good and bad. It is good today, but it was bad then. I like our depth, I like our rotation and I like who we have in there.”
Sumlin also spoke about the secondary part of the defense. The cornerbacks have returned, but that improving safety play is imperative.
“We challenge this from the older guys that have played [at safety] for us, but they’ve got to play better,” Sumlin said. “Fortunately, we recruited some guys that can come in here and challenge them. Competition is a coaches best friend.”
After Sumlin gave his speech, he welcomed some questions from the audience. A question arose concerning leadership qualities among members of the team. Sumlin said there are a lot of young players on the team, but that there are still plenty of experienced players to give guidance.
“As a young guy, you’re just trying to figure out what to do,” Sumlin said. “Over time with experience, you move into the ‘how to do it,’ but only until you’ve moved to that, can you help somebody next to you. That’s where leadership comes from.”