Exclusive: Importance of confidence according to Kevin Sumlin

Billy Liucci: You’ve been involved in a lot of these games in your coaching career. I don’t know if the guys in the A&M locker room have been involved in many, if any, even the seniors. What does it mean for a group like this, this early in the development, this early into you trying to teach them how things need to be, to go on the road and win a game when you’re down 10 with about seven minutes left and everything else seems to have gone wrong up to that point?

Kevin Sumlin: “Well that’s one way to put it! (Laughter.) We’ve been through it as coaches a bunch of different times when things looked like they were over. I think there are two groups it affects. It affects the young guys by starting a mindset of ‘we can do this’, because they haven’t been through it and haven’t seen it. Then you have the group like Sean Porter who grabbed me on the field when we were done sawing ‘em off and was so excited and says that it was the greatest win of his career. I kind of looked at him like, ‘What are you talking about?’ to win a game in that fashion hadn’t really happened since he has been here, and he’s played in a lot of football games here.

"The confidence level of our players and each other becomes a big deal there to say that no matter what the situation or the score, we’re going to keep playing and executing, we won’t give up, we play not to lose but to win and that we have confidence in each other. If we get a stop on defense, we get confidence if we get the ball back to the offense to score. There are a whole bunch of things that you would say couldn’t happen, but our guys execute and we made plays. It takes a team effort to dig a hole like that, from turnovers, to bad third down defense, to a missed extra point and all those types of things.

"But, it also takes a team effort to win a game and come out of a hole like that. We got some good kickoff returns, we made plays and it takes a team to get you out of something like that. That’s how you get your confidence level back up.”

BL: It’s funny because the thing a media guy sitting here wants to ask is, “What does it say about Johnny Manziel to bounce back, or Ryan Swope with the early fumble, or…” But to do that right now, I would have to list about 10 or 15 guys.

Sumlin: “We gave up some big plays and had some missed tackles. On defense, we couldn’t get off the field on third down. When a team completes a ball out there, everybody just assumes it’s only the corner out there with him. There are some other things that should have been happening, guys going the wrong way and things like that. It’s a team effort. We fumble a punt on our own four yard line … just a whole bunch of things that created a situation for the team to have to come back and regain field position, let the defense stop people and make plays besides Toney Hurd’s interception, besides the fourth down stop, the plays before that that gave us the chance to get the ball back.

"The thing that people aren’t talking about is probably the biggest play, the third down stop. We had three timeouts left, but with it being so close we had an official's timeout that helped us by stopping the clock and letting us get organized. That allowed us to keep our three timeouts. They came back after they wound the clock, ran the play and not a lot of time was run off.”

BL: Was that Johnny Manziel’s best throw of the night, or maybe of his career to date? It just seemed like that was one of those plays that was just so instinctive.

Sumlin: “He’s made some good throws. He made some pretty good throws during the night, too. He made some bad ones, but he is getting better at that. The throw to Mike Evans was pretty good, too. I mean, it was a great play by Mike, but he made some good throws up and down the field during the last part of the game to win it. He had some guys who made some pretty big plays to help him, too.”

BL: What did Ole Miss do defensively? Was it just a matter of them being so much smaller and maybe faster than a lot of other defenses you have seen this year, or was it schematics?

Sumlin: “I don’t know, we moved the ball. We only punted once, so I don’t know if what they did was that effective. We turned it over six times. If you told me that we were only going to punt once in the game … We would like to score every time we have the ball and that might happen some days, but it won’t if you turn it over six times. But, to go back and say we punted one time, I don’t know how effective that scheme would be. It created some turnovers and confused us a little bit, ball security was an issue, but it hadn’t been up until that game.”

BL: The ground game, quietly against Arkansas averaged 6.8 yards per carry, and then this week to come out and run for about 300 yards after the sacks were subtracted … What has been the biggest key to that surge in the ground game the past couple of weeks?

Sumlin: “We’re seeing different defenses now. When you have a young quarterback, people load the box to make the young guy throw it. Now we’ve got spies, and the other thing is that while our line might be made of veterans, we are seeing a myriad of fronts because of our passing game and because of our quarterback’s ability to threaten the perimeter. You look at the last play, the play to Swope, and they brought everybody, but still had a spy, so it wasn’t really zero coverage.

"Instead of them bringing the extra guy which would create a sack, he was still back there hovering as a spy waiting for the scramble. That way, it helped us in protection if that makes sense. We’re creating some situations for us that we’re learning from because we’re seeing some different defenses as coaches that we haven’t seen because of Johnny’s scrambling ability. We’re seeing some different fronts because of his scrambling ability, and we’ve got to be able to take advantage of them in the running game.”

BL: Has this been one of the more unique seasons in terms of week-to-week trying to figure out what the opposing defense will do?

Sumlin: “Yeah, it’s fun, particularly with the guys we have. We have tried to incorporate everybody from Nehemiah Hicks to some of the young guys, getting touches for everyone. We have enough players and guys that we try to keep fresh, but obviously we have to be careful with what we give our quarterback because people start forgetting and somewhere Sunday night or Monday afternoon, we end up looking at each other and saying, ‘The guy is just a freshman, let’s make sure we don’t give him too much.’”

Sumlin: “I think they’re ranked too low. I’m not surprised and I told you before the season that this is a team that is looking to run the table and get to a BCS game, and can do it. They’re a quality football team that lost to Houston, Southern Mississippi, Mississippi State and TCU last year. They won the WAC and are all back. The coaching staff is back, the quarterback is back and a number of guys who have played are back. Quinton Patton, the receiver, is fabulous. People won’t get to see him do it against us, but they’ve done it to everybody.

"They’ve gone on the road to Virginia and Illinois and have won. Illinois’ defense is pretty good and they just boat-raced them. They’re not going to be intimidated by us, and they shouldn’t be. This is a team that has their sights set on something. Understand that they are as good of a team as anybody and have played together in hostile environments and have walked out victorious. It’s a big game. It’s a top-25 football team. All you have to do is watch the video and you can see that.

"The other thing is that in their games, they’re the only team that has averaged more than 40 points, and they’ve played all FBS teams. They’ve played these guys on the road and are putting 50 on them, so we’ve got to be ready to go. This is a really good football team. Sonny does a good job, has done a great job and will continue to do so. He’s assembled a team that can compete with anyone in the country.”

BL: How important is depth? We talked a few weeks ago about how it was so nice to be able to roll a bunch of different guys in and out against SMU, and now you look at it. How great is it that you have been able to play those guys?

Sumlin: “We’ve been playing those guys and rotating them around, Marcel Yates is doing a great job with that. The rotation and moving pieces, all of those guys being able to play different positions have really helped us. I think from here on out as you hit the midway point, that’s going to be important the rest of the year.”