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FRANKLIN AMERICAN MORTGAGE MUSIC CITY BOWL: TEXAS A&M VS LOUISVILLEDecember 29, 2015Bobby PetrinoKevin SumlinNashville, Tennessee COACH SUMLIN: Great to be here. Just got through with the luncheon. I know that our guys, our team, our travel party, the administration, has had a fabulous time here in Nashville. The city has been wonderful hosts. Franklin American Mortgage has done nothing but provide us with first-class events. Our guys are really, really appreciative of it, practice overing at Vanderbilt. Want to thank them, too, being able to utilize their facility and stadium and locker rooms, practice facility, it's been great for us, too. Everything has been very, very convenient from that standpoint. We are excited to be here. Facing a very, very quality opponent in Louisville and well coached team that's been red hot down the stretch here. Has lost some very, very close games to quality opponents. We recognize what Coach Petrino has done, not just this year, but over the course of his career and this is another fine football team that as you watch the video, they have gotten better every week and have come through and played some really, really quality opponents right down the wire and won seven out of their last nine. So this was a team that obviously comes into this game hot, and a team that we need to be ready to roll early in the game because they are explosive in all three phases. COACH PETRINO: I'd like to thank Franklin American Mortgage for everything they have done for us at the Bowl site. Like Kevin said, it's been a first-class set up, first-class organization, from where we practice to the weight room that we use, the meeting rooms, and the events that they have had for our players. I think it's been a great experience for our players. This is a fun game for me, because I met Kevin a long time ago, he was coaching at Washington State and I was coaching at Idaho. We would hang out a little bit together and have some fun. Ever since that time, I followed his career and get his film from every season, see what I can steal from him. So it's fun to be able to coach against each other. One of the things that really jumps out at you when you put their video on is how fast they are and how talented they are and how well-coached they are. But I've been really happy with our preparations. Some of the years are harder than others, but this year has been great, and our preparation, our guys have had great attitudes. They have worked hard. A bunch of young guys that like each other and like football, so there hasn't been any issues with being on time and practicing and doing things they are supposed to do. We try to balance our preparation and Bowl experience. We are excited to be here in Nashville with our fans that will come down from Louisville and our fans that will join us here today and tomorrow. So with that, just open up for questions. Q. (No mic.) COACH SUMLIN: He is a guy that came to Texas A&M, late after we had some highly-recruited guys. He understood where he was. He understood the challenges ahead of him, and I think because of his even keel, his level-headedness, he's gone through some things a little different than some of the other players, and now with his time and his turn, because of how he's handled things before that, I think he's been able to handle things a little bit better. And, let's face it, the guy's been around a little bit. He's been at another university, a junior college, an older guy that's traveled around a little bit. He's used to adversity and I think he's handled it well so far. Q. (No mic.). COACH SUMLIN: No, he's not. He's suspended from this game, yes. Q. (No mic.) COACH SUMLIN: We'll deal with that later. I hope we don't have any more before tomorrow. Q. (No mic.) COACH PETRINO: We go back a long way with Kevin and his philosophy ands all of us have some patterns on what we like to do schematically and what we believe in, and then you try to mix them up on what players strengths are, and one of the great challenges we have is they are very, very talented at the receiver position. Running back position. It's really going to be more about how do we defend that and how do we defend the schemes that Kevin likes over the years than just one person. Q. (No mic.) COACH PETRINO: What we did is we took the first part of the Bowl preparation and went back and did an installation to try to really coach the young guys and re-teach our young players that are on the team. So you just install and you go right back to it like you would if they didn't know anything. And then once we got that over with, then we moved on to your preparation for the game and you kind of put that aside saying that this is going to show up and help us when we get to spring ball. So our preparation for this game has been like a normal week and how you go about your business for a normal week. COACH SUMLIN: Sounds like we are very similar in approach. Early part of Bowl preparation, concentrated on the younger players, the players who didn't play as much, maybe some of the red-shirt, second, third string guys and went through installation, again, offensively, defensively, even special teams, the same drills that you do during fall camp, getting guys back used to what we do as a Texas A&M. I say it all the time: Those guys that are red-shirted are used to being -- Vanderbilt or Auburn or somebody else during the year and they get away from running your offense, running your defense, your special teams philosophy. So we get back into game preparation week for a little bit more and really flip those roles back. And the travel squad guys get back to a really game-week mode mentality, and just like we talk about, my wife gives me a hard time because I don't know what day it is, to me, today is Friday. We operate that way in a game week and play games on Saturday, so that is for me tomorrow. You guys can say whatever day it is, but we've got practice here in a little bit and we'll have our regular Friday routine. Q. What jumps out? COACH SUMLIN: The first thing that jumps out is the guys up front are big and physical and they run well. As a defense, they play extremely hard. Very, very well-coached. I think you watch how they get to the ball, not as a single person, but as a group. Todd has always been a really, really fine football coach and you see that on tape. Those guys are playing hard. And when you have a defense or any side of the ball that is well-coached but also gives great effort, I think you see the result of that statistically from their defense. Again, that's a great challenge for us because of the multiplicity of what they do, particularly if they can get new third down situations. So that's going to be really a key for us in this game to be able to manage third down situations and be able to handle some of the exotic things that happen. But they are talented players that integrate scheme and are well-coached and play hard. That's where you get the type of numbers that you get. COACH PETRINO: Yeah, I think we still have a ways to go. When you look at Clemson and Florida State, and the speed that they possess, I do feel like being a fast football team is not just your 40 time. Being a fast football team is really understanding what our schemes are and what you're supposed to do, and then having a great understanding of the other side of the football. So there's no hesitation, and you play full speed and you play fast. Being a young team that we had this year, there were times when we weren't playing fast. We were hesitating and we weren't sure. But I do think that the last five games of the year, that we got better at that. And we improved, and maybe at times we cut back a little bit so our guys could play faster. Although we do want to go out there and recruit good 40 times. We want to go out there and recruit guys that are really fast on track. But it's up to us as coaches to allow them to play fast by doing a great job of teaching.. Q. (No mic.) COACH PETRINO: I hope so. I hope so. Although that's a pretty good senior crew. Q. (No mic.) COACH SUMLIN: When you start talking about fast, I think he fits into what Coach was just talking about, guys that have an opportunity to change the game. And you just take a look at the last ballgame that was played, it was really a tale of two halves, and one half where a guy basically took over the game and ran away from a bunch of people on the field. So you have both sides, and I thought that from a team speed standpoint, and that's probably the challenge that we have, when you get outside of your conference, that you're able to look at different teams and say, all right, we played these guys, see where they are here. The interesting thing about Bowl games, I think, are you really don't have any real judge for that, and being able to get up to game speed, adjust to speed in this game is going to be very, very important, because we haven't played since Thanksgiving week, No. 1 and No. 2, you're playing the opponent that really, we've got -- we have really one opponent in Auburn and that was a long, long time ago for all of us to judge that against. Yeah, it's easy to see what Coach is talking about, because this is a fast football team that we are playing against, and our challenge is going to be to get to game speed in a hurry and kick them. Q. (No mic.) COACH PETRINO: No offense, I hope he doesn't. (Laughter). Q. (No mic.) COACH SUMLIN: No, he's been fabulous, nothing short. I think I might get in trouble for it, but I've been public with it. I think it was a mistake. For him to not even be invited to have a chance to set a national record, for a guy who has been consistent over whether you're going to talk about a career or whether a single season, he was more than deserving of not only being there but winning the award. He's been fabulous for us and a combination of penalty, distance, net punting, but being able to knock the ball down, not only inside the 20 but inside the 12-yard line which is something that he works very, very hard at. So he's a complete punter. He's a next-level guy and like I said, no offense, he's had a great career. I'd just like to keep it that way. I don't really want him to play a lot tomorrow night, but if he has to, we've got a good one. Q. (No mic.) COACH SUMLIN: Philosophically whenever you have a coaching change, obviously you're doing that to get better. And as players start to understand, the philosophy, and coaches start to understand the players a little bit more instead of just trying to make things work, you tend to get a little bit better. So everybody being around each other over the course of the year, I think really helped, and you know, you make changes for a reason, and the reason is to get better, otherwise, you don't make those changes. We've gotten better on defense and I think we are going to continue to get better over time. Any time, just like I said a week ago, if the results that you have, in hindsight, it's always going to be 20/20. If they were both still here, then you don't have that conversation; they are not. You are always going to go back and re-evaluate how you do things and you've heard me say beforehand: The good things we're going to evaluate and try to stay ahead of the curve. Things that didn't work out, we're going to look at what we need to do to fix it. At no time, did we recruit guys that we want to leave the program. Yeah, we'll evaluate where that is. We've already looked at that and we'll see where we're going from him. I think when you're inside the situation, I don't think our guys see any turmoil. I think what they see is we've had Bowl practices. We've concentrated on the guys that are here, and there really has not been a distraction inside the program because those guys are practicing and we have been traveling. There's really been nobody on campus but us. For our guys, it's been a chance to become closer as a team and in particular, get home to your families for Christmas and get to Nashville. For us, I haven't seen much in practice or in a meeting. Q. (No mic.) COACH PETRINO: You don't know. What you do is you just prepare on a weekly basis, and it challenges your beliefs, there's no question about that. And it challenges attitudes in the locker room. Losing is hard. It's hard on everybody. But that's why I think that I have so much respect for our team and for our players that we never experience bad attitudes. Our guys continue to work hard, continue to like going to practice and being in the meeting rooms. And we were able to turn it around. Obviously it's not something that we ever want to do again. We did not enjoy the experience at all. But we fought through it and they are all -- what I tell them is, it's all going to happen to them sometime in their life where things are going to go good for a few weeks or three weeks or a month, and hopefully this experience helps them understand what you have to do to get by it. Q. (No mic.) COACH SUMLIN: To be honest with you, I don't think Jake is thinking past tomorrow night with everything that's happened. That's a question you can probably ask him after the game. We've been consistent in our approach since -- whether it was here or Houston. This is a reward for our seniors and a way to really reward our older players for what they have accomplished over the course of their career. It's important for them. For a lot of them, it's the last football game they will ever play. For those guys, it takes -- there's a certain amount of passion that they are going to bring and we expect them to bring. But until you're there, at that point in your career, it's hard to explain. But for our young guys, it's a chance to really start the year off the right way. And so, yeah, that whole message is never going to change in how we approach Bowl games and I think our guys have a pretty good understanding of that. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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