On Monday, after Florida’s fifth fall practice, Gators head coach Jon Sumrall met with the media.
JON SUMRALL
Sumrall began with an injury update. Running back Kelvin Jimenez is out for the foreseeable future with a contact injury. Tight end Evan Chieca is out for at least a week, but it’s not anything significant or major, it’s more precautionary. Defensive tackle Kendall Guervil, who has been recovering from a knee injury he suffered in high school, has a knee issue. Then there are some players dealing with soft tissue injuries. He named Kamran James, Duke Clark, KD Hall, Marquez Daniel, Jayden Jordan, and CJ Bronaugh.
The practice schedule: “Yesterday was an off day. We’re back at it today. We’ll go again tomorrow. Wednesday will be a walkthrough nonpractice day. Thursday will be a physical day again and then Friday a run through Saturday scrimmage. Sunday off.”
On how they are managing Dallas Wilson during fall practice: “In our ramp-up plan for Dallas we had a yardage for Wednesday’s practice. We wanted a yardage for Thursday’s practice we wanted and then a deload day for Friday’s practice. He still went about 4,000 yards on Friday. He practiced. We cut back a lot of the individual reps and scaled back on certain things to make sure he still got a high number of team reps.”
Sumrall on the three different types of practice: “We really have three different speeds of practice. One is tag. That’s when you’re in t-shirts. One is thud. Thud could be helmets and shoulder pads or full gear. And then you have live, which is tackle to the ground. The three T’s; tag, thud, and tackle.
Sumrall responding to a question of if they want to break the players down and then build them back up: “The standard is really, really high and it never waivers. I’m not necessarily into breaking a player down. I am into making things hard. Like, this is a challenging game and tough teams win. And so I think you have to embrace a level of toughness and grit it takes to be successful. I don’t have a desire to really break anything down, but I do want our guys to be challenged to the point that they’re mentally tough and they can overcome adversity because there’s going to be adversity. And so we create adverse situations every day in practice. But I’m never really prescribed like, ‘let’s break them down.’ Now, I do prescribe to the theory of like, let’s push them to the edge. Like, let’s make it right there. Let’s put our toe right on that line of how hard can we make this. But I don’t want guys to break down because I want them to all be available. And so, I don’t, I mean, we coach them really really hard all the time. You know, the guys are and if they’re not coachable or don’t want to get coached, then I don’t want them to come here because it’s not going to be a good fit. But, I’m not I don’t really prescribe to like breaking anybody down. Yeah. I just, I don’t know. I want to build I want to always build them up, but sometimes you build them up by it being hard as I mean, that’s like just the truth. Sometimes it’s got to be really really freaking hard to build them up, but I don’t want to ever break them down because they’re broke down. They’re not any good.”
Quarterbacks Aaron Philo and Tremell Jones Jr. are pushing each other and while competing for a job: “As a head coach, every year I’ve been a head coach, there’s been like a quarterback competition. Every year I’ve been a head coach, we’ve been in a there’s been a quarterback competition. I constantly take it head on with them. I’m a firm believer where there’s a lack of communication, negativity fills that void always. It’s why I come in and walk in and give you guys an injury report, because I want to tell you what we got going on, then move on and not deal with it. and you guys have to go to create a message board, chat room, whatever where it’s like what happened with the injuries. So, those guys, I’ve met with both of them individually. I’ve met with both of them together. They’re awesome for each other. Both of them want to be the starting quarterback. If either one of them did not, then we have a real problem. Like, if either one of them was like, “Yeah, I don’t want to be the starter.” Then we have a really big issue. Okay. You know, I’ve been in situations where it goes better or it doesn’t go as good based upon how the guys treat each other. My first year’s head coach, I had a beautiful situation where we had a a guy that was on our team. Gunner Watson was a returning player, was kind of our starter. We brought Jared Dye in at the time who was at the time he was the career-leading passer in college football. He had thrown for 10,000 yards and like 86 touchdowns and he came in to be our backup and it worked out really well because Gunner played good at times and then he got hurt and Jared came in and played pretty good and then one of them wouldn’t play good and one time one of them came over to me was like coach give him his shot I’m not playing real good right now and the other guy went in and won the game and then we start the other guy that he played bad and then put the other guy in we go win the game and so it’s like man I want both of them to want to win.”
“They’re both in a great spot. They compete with each other well. They lift with each other on the same rack. They encourage each other. They challenge each other. They compete with each other. Nobody rises because you push another guy down. And so, you know, the old adage, iron sharpens irons, one man sharpens another.
On the timeline for naming a starting quarterback: “No, we may not name one. You guys may go into the game and I mean, you may you’ll probably do your due diligence and find out who’s taking reps with the ones, but the week of first game, but I may not come out and have some big formal announcement of who who QB1 is. We’re just probably not doing that. We’re going to figure out how to win a game each week. That’s our goal.
On the offensive line: “The competition’s been good. Still a lot of movement in nature in regards to, like Bryce Lovett might play some guard and some tackle. So and then you might see one guy going with the ones in a rack and with the twos. So they’re still not maybe settled to where it’s like a cohesive group. I would say, I’m not trying to project what’s going to happen game one or game two, but I would say you’re probably going to see us try to play several guys to see who they are. And hopefully and whoever rolls out first is going to be who we’ve felt has earned to go out first. But we’re going to we we need to get several guys reps to to create competitive depth. It’s been good. I mean, there’s growth there. Are are we at a place where I’m just really scomfortable yet? No. But are we much improved? Yeah. You know, I think so often times it’s no different than like anything in life when you when you work really hard the you don’t always see the growth like immediately. It takes a little time. Their growth is coming. It’s it’s been there. There’s times where I’m like, “All right, that looks really good.” And there’s still times that you you can realize we got to clean some things up. But there’s been significant growth in that room.”
Sumrall on the offensive tackles: “When you see them flash at all of them at their best, they’re more than good enough. But being more than good enough, you know, half the time on the O line is not very good. So, they all have done really good things. You know, Emeka Ugorji had a great spring and has been really solid. Eagan’s [Boyer] super athletic and plays with great hand speed and the run game’s ultra physical. You know, Caden’s [Jones] got a lot of time on task, has played some here and been experienced in nature. Bryce [Lovett], I there’s multiple guys. There’s [TJ] Dice is playing in there. There’s a lot of guys. Fletcher Westphal is back. I mean, there’s a good number of guys that are options. It’s who will play consistent winning football and all of them are capable. And you see it at times where you’re like, okay, that guy that looked good. But you can’t, you know, you can’t be good some of the time. You got to be good all the time.
On Fletcher Westphal: “Yeah, he’s got good length athletic for a big man. Really was coming off of wrist procedure in the offseason, so wasn’t able to really be fully involved in the weight room stuff. So, like the shrink stuff really kind of kicked in the summer for him when we came back from our little spring break in May from the team being done with spring semester school. He was able to really attack the weight room. Been some good signs of life there from him. You can tell shaking the rust off at times, too. but he has an ideal body type. I mean, you look at him, he’s a long guy. He’s a big guy. He can move well. He’s a smart guy. like he’s he seems to care and so there’s some upside to what he can do and he’s played a little bit. You know, it’s not like he haven’t played at all. But he’s been out a long enough time that it just, you know, takes a little time to kind of get back into the groove, but he’s doing a good job.
On what he wants to see in Saturday’s scrimmage: “I just want to see us play clean, competitive football on both sides. You know, as a head coach, you don’t ever want one side to dominate. You’d like to see some back and forth.”
On LJ McCray: “Just knowing him since January we challenged him right out of the gate. He’s got great length like the body type. You look at just the frame and very impressive individual. He has committed himself to the weight room and to the his nutrition plan and he’s living I think just better away from the building in regards to sleeping and recovery and certain things it takes to grow and develop. And, I mean I think you power clean 365 this summer at that height to to to to be able to catch a 365 power clean and move the bar because the clean you’re it’s not just to catch too. You’re having to move the bar as a long guy from you know shin to up top. And so to create that bar speed he’s created some explosion and twitch in his body that he didn’t have. And he’s he’s a leaner stronger version of himself. And he’s got confidence, too. Like, you know, the weight room, it’s amazing how much more confident you can become as a player when you’ve committed to making yourself better in the weight room because he walks around with a little different edge about him right now.
On Kanye Clark: “He’s really twitchy, great short air quickness, has a knack for leverage and instincts on the football. Really good in coverage. Kind of a hard guy to block at times. He’s not the biggest guy, but sometimes those guys can slip blocks easy. He can create negative plays at times because of his elusiveness. A fun player to watch. He’s got a little spark plug mentality like the way he plays. He gives you a little juice, a little bit of an edge, a little bit of a chip on his shoulder. I look forward to watching him grow. He’s having a good camp so far.”
Video courtesy GatorVision | Caden Alvis contributed to this report | Transcript courtesy YouTube
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