Kevin Sumlin’s Texas A&M is underachieving, but really not by much

Godfrey: To best capture the zeitgeist at Texas A&M, we should start with Sunday’s commitment from a four-star offensive lineman. It was another solid recruiting get for head coach Kevin Sumlin, yet Aggie social media greeted Sumlin’s standard “YESSIR” celebration wryly.

That’s because A&M had just scored 10 points against a bad Auburn defense at home during the Aggies’ third loss in four weeks. In year four of a coach’s tenure, recruiting wins don’t excite fans after a loss.

Bud: A&M has signed 55 four- and five-star recruits in the last four cycles. Can you guess the other four teams to do so? (Hint: They have all had a lot more success in recent years.)

Godfrey: [actually guessing] Alabama, Florida State, LSU and Ohio State?

Bud: Swap out Notre Dame for FSU and you got it. But still, that’s 75 percent, which is better than A&M’s winning percentage since joining the SEC. :fire emoji: :fire emoji:

Godfrey: Everyone divides the Sumlin era by Johnny Manziel. At first glance, the pre- and post-Johnny thing doesn’t look that bad: 10-6 in the SEC with Manziel, 6-8 in the SEC post-Manziel. Even if A&M loses its last two SEC games vs. Vandy and LSU, that’d suggest Johnny was worth about two SEC wins a year, which seems about right.

In Sumlin’s first year, the Aggies won three road games against ranked opponents, upset Bama, went 6-2 in conference, beat the brakes off No. 11 Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl and won 11 games.

Since, they’re 5-9 vs. ranked teams, and their division record is trending south. They’re 0-for vs. LSU since joining the league, they’ve lost three straight to Bama, two straight to Ole Miss and two of their last three to Auburn.

Bud: Kevin Sumlin is one of seven coaches who make $5 million.

Godfrey: This was going to happen: One or two of the seven really well-compensated SEC West coaches were going to finish in the basement of their division, and fans were going to lose their minds, justifiably so or not. We’ve talked about Auburn already, and maybe that was something different because the Tigers were the media’s preseason pick to the win the conference. But this was going to happen.

Bud: So, with some schools, there are some identifiable issues holding them back. Ole Miss, Mississippi State and Arkansas are simply in states that don’t produce enough talent to win national titles. That means they have to go out of state to satisfy their needs, and that is tough with competition from surrounding SEC schools. Paying Bret Bielema an extra million doesn’t solve the high school talent issue in Arkansas.

But that’s not a problem at A&M. A&M is the definition of all-in, it has tons of surrounding talent and it signs that talent. Which leads me to believe this might be a coaching or player development issue.

Texas A&M’s passing game has regressed from the Manziel days, and its rushing attack has been unable to pick up the slack. I question whether a team can be an SEC champion running the air raid, both because of the quality of pass rushers in the league and the lack of physicality in practice. The Aggies also miss having Mike Sherman pick their offensive lineman. He was not a good coach, but he was a master of identifying future offensive line studs.

Is it an attitude thing? A culture thing? There are a lot of whispers about entitlement and locker room factions.

But beyond that, Alabama, LSU and Auburn all recruit better. What is success at A&M? How far from reasonably successful in the win column is Sumlin already? And is that something A&M fans would accept? Or is A&M not unique, and all SEC West fans have expectations that are way out of whack?

Are we going to do this every year?

Godfrey: The only one of those questions I can definitively answer is the last one. Yes. The expectations in the SEC West are disproportionate to reality, because the reality is that every season, someone is going to get paid at least $4 million to finish in last place.

In A&M’s case, its debut season in the SEC did it no favors creating a reasonable expectation. (Maybe that’s why the Aggies feel so at home in the division after only four seasons.)

I’ll stump for the John Chavis hire at defensive coordinator and give the same stock answer I used on talk radio about Will Muschamp at Auburn. It takes more than one year to resuscitate a defense in this league, especially one as bad as last year’s Aggies.

Also, Kyler Murray is a freshman. Was the quarterback position handled with aplomb by Sumlin and Jake Spavital and company this year? Not at all. Did indecision and poor planning likely create public speculation and rumor and possible locker room strife? Yes. But Murray is a highly touted potential All-American ... and also a freshman.

My point is that there’s a whole lot of potential good still in front of A&M, and I’m talking the immediate future. A month ago they were 5-0, and their worst case scenario still ends in a bowl.

Bud: I don’t know where to go from this. Boring as it may be, Alabama is still the SEC West overlord?

Godfrey: Would you agree that by all reasonable measurements Sumlin is running a successful program?

Bud: Not everyone can have a winning SEC record, but some of this is eye test. They look soft to me, and they are not competitive in far too many of these losses. Their SEC wins are over three bottom feeders by an average of single digits, and their losses are by an average of three scores. It is hard for me to shake the feeling that they should be better, though not by a ton.

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