WATCH: John Chavis makes spring media debut

Note: The final part of Chavis' interview cut off due to technical difficulties and can instead be viewed through this link. We apologize for the inconvenience.

On whether the ongoing lawsuit is a distraction...

“No, there’s nothing I can say that is going to help the matter. I’ve got a great law team handling it and they’ll get it worked out. My focus is on coaching football and that’s what I want to talk about is coaching football. Like I said, there’s nothing I can say that will change anything that will happen there. I’m comfortable with the law firm handling it.”

On what about A&M appealed to him...

"What wouldn’t be appealing. I mean, we’re talking about a university, look what’s going on — look at what’s going on with the facilities. It’s a university that’s wanting to invest, not just wanting, but has invested in its program. If you look at that stadium it’s a place where you can recruit, there’s no doubt about that; there’s a wealth of talent in Texas, so why wouldn’t you want to be a part of this program?

"To be quite honest with you we’re building championships, and I want to be a part of a championship program. There’s no question you can win them here at Texas A&M that’s what we’re looking forward to.”

On the spring so far...

“Really good, the players are working their rear ends off and they’re a great group of young men and they’re certainly hungry within the effort right now. They did an awesome job lifting weights and running, and now they’re out here first day of pads on. To be quite honest I was impressed with what they got done today. It was a challenge, and it was a tough practice. I think we were better at the end of practice then at the beginning.”

On how the Aggie defense stacks up in his eyes...

“It’s hard to measure that after three days, but there is SEC talent — there’s no question about that, it showed. We have to help them get better, that’s what coaching is all about. You can take young talent and make it better and I’m excited about coaching a young football team. When you start looking at where we are, it’s exciting. We’re young; there’s not a tremendous amount of experience there, and I’m fine with that because we’ve got some talent and as coaches we’ve got to develop that talent every day and get them ready.”

On settling in with A&M's staff...

“They’re fine men. They’re excellent coaches. I enjoy sitting in the room with them. We’ve bonded, and I always talk about it with players — practically, with coaches, you spend more time with these guys than your family at home in a lot of situations, and you want to be with good people. Coach (Sumlin) has a great staff here and I’ve been impressed with all of you who have helped this football team help us be better. It’s an exciting room to be in. I’m enjoying that room.”

“We’re going to do what we believe in defensively, there’s no doubt about that. It changes in terms of practice, but not much. I think this practice against this offense will be even better-prepared when we place them against other teams that are high-tempo. It’s one of the best offenses, they’ve done a great job offensively. It’s a challenge every day, every place, forces us to get better.”

On his diagnosis of the defense's struggles prior to his arrival...

“For lack of a better starting place, a lot of it is a lack of confidence. We’ve got talent, there’s no question about that. First thing we need to do is get our guys confident they’re good enough to win the SEC. Once they feel that way and I feel we’re on the road to being there, they’re going to be able to compete. Sure, they have some struggles — that was last year, we’re not going to talk about that. We’ve got some core principles we believe in and we’re going to apply those and we feel it’s going to get us to the situation.

"We’ve got a lot of work to do, don’t kick yourself, the talent is here and we’re going to put the work in. We’re going to help this unit be better only because they want it, they already showed it, and I’ve been impressed.“

On retaining the entire staff of defensive assistants...

“A lot of it has to do with what these guys have done in the past and not only the improvement they made in the bowl game but they’re good people. They’ve done a great job coaching, we feel like we can help things. After you’re around someone, it’s difficult not to have that attachment and say these guys deserve to be here, too. I’m excited about them being here, and it’s a privilege for me to be here at Texas A&M. We’ve got to get some work done but we’re looking forward to it.”

On the keys to a good defense...

“We want be good at defensive end and it didn’t take us long to figure it out. We’ve got some pretty good talent. You’ve got to be able to play man-to-man; we would like to be good at every position, but if we could be really good at defensive end and really good at corner then we could be a good defense, there’s no question about that.”

On coaching from the sideline or the box...

“I’ve done both and it depends where we are communication-wise and where we are on the sideline, but obviously when calling a game it’s better from the box. It’s a more friendly environment to sit there and go over what happened in the last series and go over what they’ve done in the last season; it’s tougher to do that on the sidelines.

"I think you can be more prepared in the box, but it gets back to dealing with our players on the sideline and feeling good about the guys that will be down there —and I do. I think we’ve got two guys that, if all three of them end up on the sideline, we’ll be fine in terms of dealing with the guys that can adjust to communication. There’s a 99 percent chance I’ll be in the box.”

On his reaction to the A&M culture...

“Well let me tell you, I had some thoughts before — there’s a lot of good fans in the SEC and I’m not going to get into a deal about comparing fans to another — but there’s no doubt, I haven’t seen a more classier group of fans before I ever came here, than I did in Aggieland. You’re not able to do the things and have great facilities without the fans.”

On the decision to come to Aggieland...

“The most are with those kids, but there comes a time, you have to make a decision and do what’s best for you. I’ve coached the game for 38 years or so and I haven’t made decisions always on what was best for me. But this was a great opportunity that I couldn’t turn down. It’s a great situation, it’s one where I hope I can finish my career. If I could get eight to 10 good years here and it could go that long, that would be great.”