Kevin Sumlin enjoys seeing his former assistant coaches excelling elsewhere as leaders of their own program.
That doesn’t make squaring off against friends any easier, however.
Texas A&M’s a five-touchdown favorite Saturday against Nevada, a squad from the Mountain West Conference coached by Brian Polian, a former special teams and tight ends assistant for the Aggies and son of former NFL executive Bill Polian.
Polian pushes tempo with the Wolfpack, much like Sumlin’s offensive philosophy.
“He texted me the other night and said ‘I’ll huddle if you’ll huddle,” Sumlin laughed during Tuesday’s preview presser. “I said, ‘we’ll huddle on kickoffs and punts.’ There wasn’t much a response after that.”
Polian is in his third season at Nevada and reached a bowl game last season.
“I’ve only been a head coach eight years and to have that many guys who are head coaches at different programs is something we take pride in,” Sumlin said. “I think that helps attract quality people to your program. You create an atmosphere that’s conducive to winning. That’s something I got from working with bob Stoops for a number of years. We’ve got guys here now that know that’s going to continue to happen.
“The challenge is replace talent with talent. The more you’re in this business, you start playing guys that are your friends. That’s never easy. This game wasn’t scheduled when Brian was here, I’m sure (laughs).”
Other highlights from Sumlin’s Tuesday press conference previewing Saturday’s home bout with Nevada:
On Speedy Noil’s return from injury:
“Out of the 28 practices in fall camp, I bet he practiced six of them. He’s been nursing an injury. I think you saw a better version of him last week (Ball State) as he’s starting to get better. Getting healthier. He’s coming along health-wise. There was a reason why the preseason SEC first-team kick returner wasn’t back there on the first play of the year.”
On potentially resting starters after first half vs. Nevada:
“That’s a pretty general question. I think I want to see what everyone wants to see. I want to see them play well. You got to respect your opponent every week. You can’t ever, ever just expect … I think people get caught up in that. It’s disrespectful for people to expect (your guys to play for a half). I expect our 1s to play well.”
On Nevada’s offense:
“They’re a down hill running team. They’re going to get in different formations. Tight end, one-back, two-back, quarterback run game … a lot of the things we’re going to see down the road in the SEC from a run-game standpoint. They’ve got a quarterback that’s mobile and can run.”
On confidence level in the offense through two games:
“What is my confidence level? I’m pretty confident … Are you not confident? I had confidence in our offense going into Game 1. What we’re doing is trying to set a standard on both sides. We were almost perfect on third down in the first half offensively and perfect on third down defensively.
On play of backup defensive ends:
“Right now, we’ve got a pretty good rotation of five defensive ends. Myles (Garrett) and Daeshon (Hall) have gotten a lot of credit. I’ve been really, really please with Jarrett Johnson’s activity.”
After watching two game films, where’s improvement needed:
“We need to be more consistent as a football team. What I’m interested to see is improvement from our guys from a consistency standpoint. We’re holding our 2s to the same standard as our 1s play with … we got to get better there. We’ve got to continue to take care of the ball. We want to eliminate big plays and keep developing as a team.”
