Former Auburn HC Pat Dye shares thoughts on A&M/Auburn matchup
Key quotes from Pat Dye interview
“I woke up this morning around one o’clock and Rewind was on the SEC Network and low and behold I started watching and it was the game when Texas A&M beat Auburn in the Cotton Bowl in 1985. I turned the dang thing off. I couldn’t stand to look at it.”
“Hell you know I coached Jackie Sherrill. He was a senior in my first year on the staff at Alabama. Coach Bryant hired me in 1965 and I had never coached a day in my life. I told him when I interviewed that I didn’t know if I could coach because I didn’t know anything about coaching. All I knew about coaching was stuff that I learned form playing. He told me that he would hire me on to watch the linebackers and go recruit in Georgia. So I watched the linebackers at Alabama with Coach Bryant for nine years and recruited Georgia and Alabama, too.”
“My first impression of Jackie Sherrill was that he was highly intelligent. He was a good football player, he wasn’t as good as he thought he was, but he was a good football player.”
“After the matchup against Texas A&M in 1985, I felt as if we didn’t play as well as we could have. That team really was an underachieving football team, one that I got to live with. We should have beat Alabama also, and if we had beat Alabama we would have won the conference championship in ’85. We weren’t as good defensively as we should have been and going into the game with A&M I had let both the offensive and defensive coordinators go before the season was over. I told them that I was going to make a change during bowl practice week. I just knew we weren’t playing the way that I wanted us to play. We did make a change and we should have won the conference championship again in ’86. Georgia came over and beat us and then we won the conference championship in ’87, ’88, and ’89. Football goes in cycles. I was also in the middle of making the transition from going to the wishbone to a multiple offense. I had made the decision to go to a multiple offense and run the football and make the play action passes because defenses in the SEC were too good to be one-dimensional. Even with Bo Jackson, there was so much speed within the conference on defense that you had a hard time getting big plays and we went to multiple offense. The next year we led the conference in offense running that I-formation and rushed for over 200 yards a gams and threw for over 200 yards a game. I don’t know the exact numbers but I know that we led the conference in offense. We stayed that way the remainder of my career. I have great respect for the institution of A&M. I have never met a Texas A&M graduate that I didn’t like. There are a lot of similarities between Auburn and Texas A&M. The one advantage that A&M has over Auburn is the ROTC program. I was in the ROTC program at Georgia and got commissioned. It made a tremendous impact on my life and I think the ROTC program at Texas A&M brings a discipline to your life that you wouldn’t have otherwise. They are both great schools and they are both great football teams that both need wins.”
“I really like Auburn’s football team and we really should have beat Clemson. Coach Malzahn has a team and offensively they are a long way from where they have been in the past. We actually outgained Clemson in the second half of that game. The first half was a disaster, but I don’t think Clemson is as good as they were last year. They didn’t play very good against us or against Troy. It is still early in the season and we aren’t sure still how good of a football team that we have. That is the reason that this is a very critical football game for both schools. The one thing that sticks out is that we haven’t beat Texas A&M in Auburn and A&M hasn’t beat us in College Station. You would think that just opposite would be the case because Texas A&M has a tremendous home field advantage and so does Auburn. I will say that Auburn fans absolutely love coming to College Station and they like to think that they are treated the same way in College Station as we treat visitors in Auburn as well. The right kinds of kids choose to come to Auburn just like the right kinds of kids choose to come to Texas A&M. I am not talking about players, I am talking about students. They both are similar, A&M just has a much bigger school than we do.”
“Texas A&M has great talent at the skill positions and the key to that talent being able to do what they do is the quarterback. He has been able to get the football to them in the first two games and they have made things happen. If you get it in their hands they will make big plays. Auburn is going to have to contain the quarterback because he is a good runner. They will have to get pressure on him with the defensive front and hopefully they will be able to hold up in the secondary and not give up the big plays.”
“I think that Myles Garrett and Carl Lawson are two of the best defensive ends in the country right now. Alabama has a pretty good one in Tim Williams. They are all hard to block and I’m sure that A&M will have a plan to stop Carl Lawson and I’m sure Auburn will have a plan to stop Myles. You cannot forget about Hall on the other side, too. That makes it a little harder but they can slide their protection and do things about it but it is hard to contain two. Carolina found that out when they played Denver with Ware and Von Miller.”
“I will be on the field before the game. John David Crow was a great friend of mine, and Coach Stallings is still a great friend of mine. Like I said, I have a great deal of respect for Texas A&M and it would be one of my favorite schools if we weren’t playing each other this weekend.”