It's that time of year: spring football. Vanderbilt was the first SEC team to open up spring drills last week; on Monday, Texas A&M begins spring football. Here's a glimpse at what to look for from the Aggies:
2015 record: 8-5 (4-4 SEC)
Final AP rank: N/A
2016 Way-too-early rank: N/A
2016 FPI rank: 14
Spring game date: Saturday, April 9
Key losses: QB Kyle Allen, QB Kyler Murray, C Mike Matthews, RT Germain Ifedi, RB Tra Carson, DT Julien Obioha, DT Alonzo Williams, CB De’Vante Harris, K Taylor Bertolet, P Drew Kaser.
Key newcomers: QB Trevor Knight, RB Keith Ford, CB Priest Willis.
Key questions:
1. What now at quarterback?
The Aggies had a rough winter at the sport’s most important position but they must now turn the page. Jake Hubenak, who started the Aggies’ Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl loss to Louisville, and Trevor Knight, a graduate transfer from Oklahoma, are the top two contenders to start in 2016. The Aggies’ other new quarterback acquisition, four-star recruit Nick Starkel, won’t be on campus until the summer.
While the competition should be spirited between Knight and Hubenak, don’t expect as many eyeballs affixed on the inner workings of the dynamic between the two because they have quite different backgrounds from their competing predecessors, Kyle Allen and Kyler Murray, who both transferred out of the program in December.
While Allen and Murray were both highly-rated recruits who played as true freshmen, Hubenak and Knight took humbling paths to College Station, Texas. Hubenak was a walk-on at Oklahoma State who went to Blinn College before arriving at Texas A&M. Knight, who found Sugar Bowl glory in 2013 vs. Alabama, eventually lost his starting job following the 2014 season and watched Baker Mayfield take Oklahoma to the College Football Playoff in 2015, after which Knight transferred to Aggieland.
The interesting dynamic here: For the first time, head coach Kevin Sumlin will have a senior (Knight) and a junior (Hubenak) competing for the starting QB job. In his first four years at Texas A&M, the starting quarterback has usually been a freshman or sophomore.
2. How will the new coaching hires impact the Aggies?
Sumlin made two offensive staff changes, bringing on former UCLA offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone to replace Jake Spavital and hiring former Texas A&M and Miami Dolphins offensive line coach Jim Turner to replace Dave Christensen. He also made a change on defense, filling the void left by defensive tackles coach Mark Hagen (now at Indiana) by bringing on Mississippi State’s David Turner for the same role.
What Mazzone does with the Aggies’ offense will be the most compelling thing to watch in spring. Since Sumlin’s arrival, the Aggies have based their offense largely on Air Raid principles that Sumlin found great success with at Houston and in the first two seasons at Texas A&M. Mazzone and Sumlin have history, having coached together at Minnesota in the mid-1990s under Jim Wacker and attending the famed “one-back clinics” in the early 2000s together.
Mazzone’s offense isn’t drastically different from what Sumlin’s teams have run in the past, but look for an added emphasis on the running game, a faster tempo and simplicity in the offensive playbook.
Jim Turner’s return to Aggieland was widely lauded locally, as he recruited the linemen who were part of the Aggies’ 2012 and 2013 starting units that were so dominant and saw several linemen (Luke Joeckel, Jake Matthews, Cedric Ogbuehi, Jarvis Harrison) become NFL draft picks. He coached at Texas A&M under Mike Sherman from 2008 to 2011.
David Turner adds some more SEC experience to veteran defensive coordinator John Chavis' staff -- and comes from a program where he had success coaching the defensive line (Mississippi State). The Aggies have a mostly veteran group up front and the combination of Turner and defensive ends coach Terry Price give the line two quality coaches to learn from.
3. Can the offensive line move back in a positive direction?
The position group that was the Aggies’ strength in their first two seasons in the SEC -- offensive line -- gradually regressed over the last two seasons and became something of a weak link offensively. As a result, Sumlin made two coaching changes at the position in as many years and he’s hoping that Jim Turner can help restore the group to the status it once had, as one of the best offensive lines in the country.
Turner’s track record as it relates to the Aggies suggests it’s possible and he does have talent to work with. While losing a pair of three-year starters in Matthews and Ifedi and returning only two starters from the 2015 team, the Aggies have done at least a decent job recruiting to the position in the 2014 and 2015 recruiting cycles and bring in a full class of linemen in the 2016 class.
There’s experience on the left side of the line in senior tackle Avery Gennesy and sophomore guard Keaton Sutherland, who started on a part-time basis last season, and sophomore Koda Martin is likely to step in at right tackle and has star potential. Replacing Matthews will be perhaps the toughest task, as he was as consistent as they come the last three years; look for Erik McCoy, a 2015 signee, to be a potential option there.
