Aggies look back on Bama, ahead to SMU

Kevin Sumlin

On Cedric Ogbuehi's move to right tackle...

Sumlin: "The biggest complement you can give to the offensive line is that you haven't noticed them. I don't mean that in a derogatory sense. He's a natural tackle. He played guard last year because we tried to get our five best guys on the field. He's athletic, he's long, he's 300 pounds ... he's a good player. It took him some time in the spring just to know that he was in space and didn't have help on either side, but he's a strong guy, smart guy, athletic guy and played real well against really good competition last week. I look for him to continue to be better."

On the feeling on the team after the game...

Sumlin: "We probably do things different than most teams, we give the guys Sunday off. ... It allows me to analyze the pluses and minuses. They get to spend Sunday with family, in church, if they live close they go home. Yesterday we had a chance to watch the video positionally and as a team. My message was, 'After we're done with that, we're not talking about it anymore.' That was the message win or lose. We've got nine more games. That's been my approach wherever I've been, whether they're big games — to you — or what.

"It doesn't matter whether you're mad or you're ecstatic, the next week you've got to move  on. And that's what we've done."

On the Mustang coaching staff and style of offense and hiring Hal Mumme...

Sumlin: "You've seen June move more toward that. People try to throw all passing teams into one bucket. June and Hal Mumme, to be together, that tells you what they think of each other. Kind of the godfathers of this whole situation. I consider June a friend, having played in Conference USA in meaningful games. They won a couple West deals, 10, 11, something like that. We won a couple. We actually came to Conference USA at the same time.

"He's been a winner and was one of the first guys that took a non-BCS team to a BCS bowl game. He's been around the NFL game at the highest level. Hal has really impacted a number of coaches that I have hired, including myself. I have a lot of respect for both men and what they've accomplished and how they've altered the history of college football. We're probably a little different, everybody's got their twist on things. But the blend of those two guys is a little bit different.

"Seven, eight, nine, 10 years ago I'd've said I didn't see that coming. Hearing that he hired Hal, 'Wow.' Right now I think they lead the country in completions per game or total completions. They have two receivers in the top three in the country in catches per game. That doesn't surprise me. We'll have to defend the whole field. They have a quarterback who, coming out, was one of the best in the nation. He's still very talented. He's getting used to the system.

"We're getting a team that's had a week off again. I don't know how this thing works, team gets off the week before they play us. We'll see some new stuff. We're playing at home, not complaining about that. It'll be a challenge for our defense because we'll see some new stuff and we'll have to defend the field sideline-to-sideline and vertically because they'll try to space us out."

On his first encounter with the style of offense and what made him a believer...

Sumlin: "Mike Price hired me as a GA at Washington State and Joe Tiller was the offensive coordinator. It was a little bit different style of play. During that time, there was an internal cult of crazy coaches who didn't line up in the I-formation and run into each other. We had them at different places across the country, different locations, a guy named Noel Mazzone who people maybe know now as the OC at UCLA, he was actually the quarterback coach at Minnesota when I got there.

"We'd have different meetings. Those guys were there, Mike Leach was there, Noel was there ... it's where Dana (Holgorsen), Sonny Dykes, there were a number of guys invited to these meetings where we sat and we shared and talked about these different principles with different coaches. At these invitation deals, it was once a year, we'd have guys with all these crazy ideas and we'd watch games at night and see these plays. It's blended a bit, some guys don't get away from who they are and others move into different facets.

"If you watch Washington State or UCLA you might see a lot of things that are being done here. There are other guys who sneak in who've been involved, Kevin Wilson, Rich Rodriguez. You try to figure out what fits with you. Some sorts of spread offenses are run-based and some are pass-primarily. We try to be somewhere in the middle. There's different parts of offensive philosophy that guys share. Obviously there's parts that nobody ever talks about. It's what you believe in and some people understand, some people don't.

"I've said from day one, there's a million ways to skin a cat but you don't necessarily need to know everything about it. You need to know what to do when it's not going right and how to fix those things. You can't dabble in three or four different things, you've got to know what you're doing in one specific period and be able to make adjustments when those things break down."

On Mike Evans showing the rest of the world what he already knew...

Sumlin: "I think that's an accurate statement. Was I surprised? No. Neither was Mike. I don't think anybody on our team was surprised. They didn't know how many yards he had, they knew he had a lot. He was hurt last year, in six or seven games he had a really, really nagging hamstring. The touchdown against Ole Miss, he had to come out of the game. He was dragging that leg to the endzone and had to come out of the game. Then he comes back and makes the play on third down. That's the kind of guy he is. Different stage, same circumstances — he doesn't surprise me at all.

"As fine a receiver as he is, I keep saying that if you watch the video he's a great example because, without the ball, he plays just as hard. That's what keeps the pressure on the secondary, he doesn't take plays off. He's going to take plays off, he comes to the sideline. Run or pass, he's playing hard."

On Johnny's magical pass play...

Sumlin: "When he's running around like that, I'm used to that now. When he threw it over the middle of the field, I had a problem with that (smile). That's the only time this year that' happened. He came over to the sideline — we had an injury timeout during that play — so he comes over and everybody's all excited. If you watch the video, what people don't know is Pope got pushed out of bounds, completely out of bounds off the screen, and he comes flying back over the field and leaps to catch the ball.

"I said, 'Hey, look. Don't ... don't do that.' (Johnny) said, 'It would've been as good as a punt.' Whether he was telling the truth or not at that point, at least he was thinking. It was a late down and we were crossing to the red zone. I said, 'Our last chance to tackle the guy (in the event of an interception) and you're down there on the ground.' We talked about it a bit yesterday. But there are some things with him that are different than a lot of other guys. As far as being careless or reckless with the ball, that was the only example, based on how he played.

"The fade, we need to be better. That ball's thrown to the end zone and the communication between the back shoulder and the corner needs to be better. The other one, that's a play-making play. That ball was tipped. There was probably a little early contact there. That play wasn't a ball thrown into a whole bunch of coverage, it was a tipped ball on a guy that was beat. It was a competitive play.

"As far as being reckless with the ball, that (the throw to Pope) was definitely reckless, but there weren't a whole lot of those in that game."

On the development of the style of offense...

Sumlin: "Coach Detmer had a lot to do with it. I think you've got a couple different things that happened. You've got Hal's tree, which has a lot of guys spun off of that. You've got a spread system that really kind of started, if you go back and ask Mike Price and the west coast guys, with Jack Elway and the high school system in California. Over time, what you've gotten is guys that are looking at different people because it wasn't tradition. Guys that have gotten together and blended different things.

"But there's no doubt that, as far as notoriety at the collegiate level goes, Hal was the guy who started doing different things. The Run N' Shoot was the beginning of it all and what Houston was able to do on the national stage with a Heisman Trophy winner. But they're all different. You think because you're back there and there's one back or no backs, it's all the same. It's not.

"People have been educated over the last few years to say it's different. But your route tree is who you are. It's evolved. You had a couple people doing different things and people got somewhere and did a different thing. You've got other spread attacks out there that are primarily a run-first attack, at Ohio State, Arizona, I think BYU. During the heyday of BYU the route tree that BYU used is basically the same route tree that Hal Mumme used. There were guys coming out of that."

On embracing the new offensive wave...

Sumlin: "I actually moved from defense to offense at Washington State because of Mike Price. When I was a linebacker at Purdue, Joe Tiller was the defensive coordinator. People don't realize that because he was an offensive guy when I got to Washington State. Mike came into the office and they sat me down and said, 'Hey, listen, we want you to move to offense and become the head junior varsity coach.' Which was a big deal at the time. We had a guy named Drew Bledsoe who was pretty good.

"They brought me in the room and said, 'If you learn this offense, we're doing something a little bit different...' Mike came in to the one-back, empty motion (situation), late 80s, early 90s before anyone understood it, and said, 'If you want to coach in the college ranks, if you learn the principles of this offense you'll always have a job.' That, at least to this point, has always turned out to be correct. I moved over and Joe actually hired me full time."

On Daeshon Hall and the pass rush...

Sumlin: "Where we are right now, we need to get our program to a point where a guy like Daeshon gets to redshirt this year. We're not there. He has got a lot of talent, length, quickness, but physically he's not mature. The ability for him to add an extra 15-20 pounds, to grow into his body, to develop physically, we just don't have that luxury right now. He goes out there and he runs around and, here's a tell-tale sign, I look over there and he's got one shoulder pad sticking up and it's ripped off. He comes over and says, 'Coach, they're holding.'

"I say, 'Yeah, they're holding! Everybody does at this level.' Getting stronger and getting everybody's hands off you, that's different in high school. Being an impact player in the first two games, that was different for him and all the young guys on Saturday. He's going to get better because we have to play him. Five, six weeks from now he'll be better than he is now. For a guy who just rushed the passer and played basketball, Saturday was a learning experience for him. You could see in his eyes there were a lot of things he'd never seen before going on out there."

On the outlook going forward...

Sumlin: "We've settled down into repping and practicing the guys who are going to play. We repped a lot of guys the first two, three weeks who weren't experienced and needed to catch up with some guys who hadn't played. You look at where we were, to replace four of the front seven coming into the year and have three of the other seven either miss at least one game, we're actually repping a whole bunch of guys from a depth standpoint.

"What you miss is the communication, being able to line up and make adjustments. It's one thing for a coach to make adjustments, but it takes some sort of experience and wherewithall to utilize that in a game. We've got pieces and guys who can play, but now we can settle down and say, 'Here's the true order of how things are going to go' now that we've got Jenks back and know what the rotation's going to be. The continuity of me, particularly with the young guys, just learning this position instead of the pressure we put on those linebackers and D-linemen to learn different positions because we had to get through those games, we had to get them in the right position to practice from a continuity standpoint and get leadership from the guys that hadn't played in a communication faction."

Clarence McKinney

On what he takes away from the offensive performance...

McKinney: "It never changes for us from week-to-week. We want to win on third down, move the ball by getting first downs and protect the ball. We didn't protect the ball; that was an issue."

On Ricky Seals-Jones...

McKinney: "As far as I know, he's ready to go. He was ready to go last week, but he didn't practice as much as you would have liked to be in a game like that."

On the quarterback's role in the offense...

McKinney: "It's a combination. We give our quarterback the opportunity to get us in the right play. As a staff we talk about what the defense is doing to us and we try to match it. We want to have a counter."

On the receivers...

McKinney: "I thought all those guys played well, with or without the ball. Mike had a few catches with a lot of yards, but when you watch the film and see the things he did without the ball, I thought he played well, as well as Derel, Sabian and Malcome. With the ball they were great, without it they played just as good."

On the play-call on the 95-yard touchdown...

McKinney: "Mike was the third option. But in Johnny's mind, Mike's always the first option (laughter). I don't think anybody had a problem with it."

On what was running through his mind on Johnny's play...

McKinney: "That's just Johnny being Johnny. We've seen it the last couple years. He was actually throwing it to Mike. You see Mike posted up and boxing the guys out. Then Pope comes out of nowhere and outjumps them all. It was as good as a punt if it were intercepted. Luckily, we came down with it."

On Evans' progress...

McKinney: "He's really starting to learn the position. From a talent standpoint, the talent is there. It's just learning the little things. He's getting better each week."

On the interception in the end zone...

McKinney: "We just thought it was the right play, it was the right decision by Johnny. We got a bad route. In that situation, if you don't have a chance to catch the ball, you want to make sure the defender doesn't have a chance to catch it as well. It was definitely one of those things you can't do in the red zone. We were five of six and that was the one time we got into the red zone and came away empty."

Mark Snyder

On Daeshon Hall's week-to-week development...

Snyder: "That's going to be Daeshon's role, third and long. We had to throw him in there Saturday, that's not really his forte, against a really good left tackle. He got used to big-time SEC football, unfortunately."

On the experience the young guys are getting and the early mistakes...

Snyder: "A little bit of both, mental mistakes and physical mistakes. They're a pretty good offense. Like Coach Sumlin just said, the things that need to get fixed need to get fixed. The good news is they're all fixable. We're back into our comfort zone, playing another spread team. But we've got to clean it up for sure, because we're going to see it again."

On what happened on Saturday and what they gained...

Snyder: "Guys playing together. Alabama did a great job of scheming us a little bit, we had a young linebacker making his first start and they come out unbalanced. We were not prepared for that and had to make that adjustment. De'Vante getting in there for the first time had really bad eyes. They had a flea-flicker, something you've never seen a Nick Saban team do. That's good coaching. And we've got another senior quarterback coming at us off a bye week. We've got our hands full."

On recovering from getting beat down physically...

Snyder: "I think Coach Sumlin did a great job with that. There's no doubt we were rattled. Yesterday Coach Sumlin handled that. We went out to practice and got back to working for a spread team."

On the young D-tackles...

Snyder: "It's just the learning curve. There's some growing pains with it. I can't get into a bunch of Xs and Os, but they're trying their best. They're trying to be crafty veterans and they're not. There was one play where Hardreck was in there and they ran a play and he made a good move, but it wasn't a good move in that situation. Those are the learning situations, correctable. Those kind of lessons are what we're talking about. It can be fixed. We'll see it again.

On playing Justin Manning...

Snyder: "We'll see. Right now, the plan is no. We're preparing him if we need him, but right now no."

On the defense's start through three games...

Snyder: "We go against a senior quarterback from Rice, then an option team, then the No. 1 team in the country with a couple of really good tackles. It comes down to how the schedule is laid out for us, but do I need to see that improve as we go forward? Yes."

On the team's pass-rushing ability...

Snyder: "Daeshon is a really good pass-rusher. The Taylor twins give you some juice if you get in third and long. But that was our problem, we couldn't get in third and long. They only had six third downs the whole game. We've got to get in situations where we can use what we're recruiting."

On teaching moments and the positives...

Snyder: "There was a lot of great teaching yesterday. The thing is, our kids care. There were a lot of hurt kids in that locker room. They played their tails off. There were some bright spots — we started fast and got the crowd into it, got a goal-line stand. Early in the season you've got to have a goal-line stand because it's going to come up again down the road. I thought they played extremely hard."

On how much of the defense is installed...

Snyder: "It's in. Especially with these guys back, it's in. It's a matter of (running it)."

On Deshazor Everett...

Snyder: "I thought Deshazor showed flashes. He was at safety on Saturday on a few of those runs. We'll see what the matchups are. It was hard to put him in there on Saturday because we had him on (Amari Cooper). We'll have to make that decision as it goes."

Ben Malena

On Mike Evans' game...

Malena: "Mike Evans' hard work pays off. He's probably one of the most hard-working guys on this team and he deserved to have a big day like he did."

On the emotion of the game and the drop-off to SMU...

Malena: "I don't think it'll be difficult at all for us as a team. Championship teams play at a consistent level and have similar emotion on a week-to-week basis. We do understand last week was a big game and it'll be challenging to have that same kind of enthusiasm because of the circumstances, but our play on the field isn't going to change."

On Johnny's scramble and toss to Edward Pope...

Malena: "When plays like that happen, that probably happens once a game with Johnny. It's not surprising to us, like, 'There he goes again.' I was actually on the sideline."

On Manziel's counters...

Malena: "Different teams have different schemes and we look to take advantage of different teams' tendencies and the way they play. We felt we had an advantage with quarterback runs and getting an extra blocker out on defense. We were pretty successful at that."

On SMU's defense...

Malena: "They play very well. One thing they do have is all 11 guys, watching their film, run to the ball. They force turnovers, they have really good linebacker play and they come downhill."

On whether there were any letdowns last year...

Malena: "I can't give you a particular game last year because we don't look back to last year, but I will say the Ole Miss game last year was a very important game for us. It was a huge conference win on the road. We made some mistakes as a team, lot of turnovers, and fought with a lot of passion to come back and win that game. That game was real key to us. It was real good to have it as a program, to have a game like that, because you do need some games where you fight through adversity.

"Last week's game too, down 35-14 and Alabama had the ball ... I think just showing our will to fight and how we handled adversity is real good."

On the defense allowing 49 when the offense scores 42...

Malena: "It's a team sport. You can't blame one team, offense did this, defense did that. It's a team sport. At the end of the day, all that counts is wins and losses. It doesn't matter who had a big day. Playing the No. 1 team in the country, that's a good team. We left some things out there."

On taking it one game at a time...

Malena: "It'll be easier. It's easier because we do have a loss and we understand how important it is to take it one game at a time. It's a one-game season every week. This week we have SMU. We accept the challenge from those guys. They're going to come in ready to knock us off. We'll prepare the same as we do every week."

On Malcome Kennedy's success...

Malena: "I'm really excited for Malcome Kennedy. He's a guy, we came in the same recruiting class, he had some injuries and things that kept him off the field and now he's getting an opportunity to go out and show who he is. He had three touchdowns last week. He goes out there, one of the hardest-working guys on the team, never complains, he's just a class act."

On the offense's uniqueness...

Malena: "In this offense we just have an answer for everything the defense does. Coach McKinney, Coach Spav, those guys do a great job of putting us in positions to succeed. We have to prepare and find out ways to beat that defense and our offense enables us to have multiple ways to answer whatever the defense gives us."

On whether they feel they have to score a ton to win...

Malena: "No. But that is the mindset of our offense — score every time we get the ball, whether it's three points or six in a touchdown. The first two weeks we really focused on getting the third-down completion up and red zone scoring. We went six-for-seven last week in the red zone. Wish we went seven-for-seven. We don't feel like we need to score 60 points to win the game but we do want to score every time we touch the ball."

Toney Hurd

On what the defense needs to fix...

Hurd: "First and foremost, as a defense we came out and we played a solid game. We have to fit our gaps a little better. I was on the back end for the play-action pass. We just have to continue to work and get better at our craft."

On whether the suspensions hurt in the game...

Hurd: "As far as communication goes I feel we communicated well. We just have to have better eyes and fit our gaps better. That was the first game with the starting 11, so from this point I feel we can only get better."

On the performance...

Hurd: "For that being our first time out as a unit, I feel like we communicated well. For the most part, 10 guys were doing their job and it was just one guy with a mistake. All 11 guys have to be on the same page, especially when you're playing a veteran team like Alabama."

On the defense's confidence level after Saturday...

Hurd: "Each and every week, young guys are stepping up and showing that they can be leaders, slowly. Our confidence isn't at an all-time high, but we're (getting there)."

On the offense bailing them out...

Hurd: "Our offense is one of the best in the country, but as a defensive player you can't depend on the offense. As a defense you should go out there and pitch shutouts. We're getting closer to our goal, but it'll take time. As I said, that was our first time with the starting 11 out there. I feel like we're getting better and we'll be hungry in the coming games."

On the lack of a pass rush and its effect on the secondary...

Hurd: "I feel like our guys up front were getting somewhat of a pass rush. We were playing a great offensive line, that was the No. 1 team in the country. No excuses though."

On dealing with Mike Evans in practice...

Hurd: "He didn't surprise me at all. Ever since he's been here, he's been a hard-working guy. He's a big guy, big in stature, but he works very hard at his craft. It helps us as a secondary to go against that every day in practice."

On practicing against Manziel...

Hurd: "I feel like when Johnny Manziel goes out and plays with that offense, it's high power. Johnny Football is just being Johnny Football and going out and having fun doing what he loves to do. I'm proud of our offense."

On Mack Brown responding to his tweet...

Hurd: "I wouldn't say surprised. I'm pretty sure it opened a few eyes. But I was speaking from my heart. I speak what's on my mind. Everybody has an opinion. If Coach Brown is honestly worried about what I'm tweeting, he can do that (smirk). But I feel like I should be able to tweet what's on my heart and on my mind."