Jackie Sherrill talks Aggies/Bruins, A&M's defense, 12th Man Kickoff Team

Key quotes from Jackie Sherrill interview

"Well there's a lot of positives going into the UCLA game for the Aggies, and there's no question you get to line up with some guys that are proven. I don't know who has two better ends in the country than A&M has, defensively. Then when you add the inside, you have five guys that really can play. So defensively, I think A&M will be really improved, although they improved last year. Then when you look on offense, you know you have some outstanding receivers and Trevor Knight with out a doubt has shown in some big games that he can play.

The question mark is that you have two young offensive lineman and can the five guys up front really jump out there. Now because of TV, everybody is having to open up with an opponent that's pretty good. Right off the bat you're going to find out how good the offensive line is. I don't know if we have a running back, but hopefully one will emerge, one that jumps out at you like some of the running backs that have played at Texas A&M. The question makes are who is going to be the punter and who is going to be the kicker? When you look at the two guys you lost, very rarely is any punter or any kicker drafted in pro ball. You know how good the punter and the kicker was for three years and they performed really well, so I think that's the biggest question mark on the football team. Who is the punter and who is the kicker?"

"Well if (you're facing a possible first round defensive lineman and you have an unproven middle of your offensive line) and he's in the middle, you don't have a choice. When you look at defensive schemes, if you have two defensive ends which put pressure on the quarterbacks and contain and you have an inside person, meaning a nose guard or defensive tackle, and then you have two safeties and you really need one line backer, it doesn't matter where you line the rest up because that's the strength of any defense.

You look at any defense and you're going to see ... look back at the history of A&M and all their great defensive teams. You go back to Jacob Green or you go back to the linebackers or the safeties. When A&M or anybody in the country has great defensive people they have a combination of the people I just mentioned. SMU had a great player named Jerry Ball. Jerry Ball wanted to come to Texas A&M and all of a sudden one of the coaches in Beaumont said he had some questionable issues, so I told one of our coaches to go find somebody else. Well when I looked at the film before we played SMU, and I saw Jerry Ball making every play from sideline to sideline for sixty minutes, I told the coach that I'll make that decision from here on out."

"Well you have to go at the top, you have to start with Kevin (when talking about who is responsible for the positive turnaround in the team from the end of last season). Kevin has some strong conditions, you don't hear him talk a lot. I think his demeanor, he just stays on course, and there's no question that he's been able (to turn things around). With the problems that happened last year, you're able to go out and get Mazzone? That speaks volumes that the people around the country, the coaches, they respect Kevin Sumlin.

You have to start with Kevin. You start there and then go to some of the other coaches. When you have an outstanding defensive coach, you end up with maturity on the coaching staff. There are so many things that happen with the young men today. Social media tears a lot of young men up, you're not mature enough to read something negative and not let that bother you. What I do like about Trevor Knight is that there's a lot of negative things (said about him) and Trevor Knight has never quivered. He's been able to bounce right through it. When the media puts on you that you're going to win the Heisman and you're the best thing since sliced bread and it doesn't happen, most people, not just young men, can't handle that and it really dissolves their ability to perform."

"(I expect to see) much improvement (in John Chavis' second year). I'm kind of excited to see A&M's defense play because of what I said earlier. There are ingredients there for defensive players. That's one thing, you can't play without players. I mean everybody gets really enamored about coaches, but if you don't have the players on the field ... you're not going to the Kentucky Derby with a mule."

"Well you know, I wasn't smart enough to realize what the 12th Man Kickoff Team meant to the students and to the former students at Texas A&M. You go back to 1922 with King Gill, that's where it all started at Dixie Classic which is now the Cotton Bowl. You've had all those years that somebody from the student body would help the football team. Somebody asked if I was a genius or was I lucky? Very simply, I was lucky. I had no idea how important (the 12th Man was to A&M. But it made us better as a football team because it gave us some players in practice that were full speed players and guys that made our football players better. All of a sudden you see how much the players respected those guys because they knew going through practice what happened to them everyday and that they were still coming back out. Again, it's really A&M, that's the story. Can this happen anywhere else? No, I tried it at Mississippi State and I couldn't get it to happen. The underlying story is A&M, not any individual player. It didn't take away from players that were great players like Johnny Holland or Ray Childress or any of the players we had and their success in life."