There’s a delicate way to say this, a disarming thought process that softens the blow and prevents all meaning from being misconstrued.
Or there’s the right way to say it: Johnny Manziel was the best and worst thing that ever happened to Kevin Sumlin’s coaching career.
“I just laugh when I hear people says we’re not going to be the same team without (Manziel),” says Aggies All-American offensive tackle Cedric Ogbuehi. “Did we all of a sudden lose our coach?”
There, everyone, is the rub. Did Manziel make Sumlin — or did Sumlin make Manziel?
“I’m not where I am in this game without Kevin Sumlin,” Case Keenum says.
Keenum isn’t the only former player to praise Sumlin, he’s just the most recent quarterback (pre-Johnny Circus) who flourished in Sumlin’s innovative offense a few years ago and set NCAA records at Houston. And he certainly won’t be the last.
That’s what got lost in the two-year carnival that was Manziel and Texas A&M. For all the good Manziel did, the most offense-friendly show in college football centered on him and left Sumlin as the outsider in the clown car. When in reality, Sumlin was and — key point — still is, Ringmaster.
Sumlin was the reason for Manziel’s success. Sumlin was the coach who had him prepared every week, who eliminated distractions, who found a way to take a talented yet insufferably enigmatic player and get two seasons of program-building out of him.
Want to know why Kenny Hill or Kyle Allen — or both — will be successful directing the Aggies’ offense this fall? Because Sumlin did it with Manziel.
He did it with Keenum before him and Sam Bradford at Oklahoma before him.
Sumlin has done it so well for so long, the idea of a coaching staff getting a freshman ready to play the most important position on the field against the best conference in the game somehow went fabulously overlooked for the last two seasons.
So much so, that the narrative of Manziel lifting a program from the ashes — one Texas A&M Board of Regents member had the audacity to say Kyle Field should be renamed after Manziel — took on a life of its own.
Sumlin didn’t do what no other coach had done in more than a decade at Texas A&M, Manziel did. Sumlin didn’t earn that new $5 million a year salary, he rode the mercurial tail (or is that, tale?) of Manziel.
“You realize what it takes to get any quarterback ready to play, be it a freshman or a senior?” Oklahoma defensive coordinator Mike Stoops said last summer. “You really have to give Kevin credit for what he did with (Manziel). Johnny is crazy talented, but there are so many stories of crazy talented guys that never reach the field.”
But if you’re not in those daily meetings; if you’re not desperately trying to keep a player focused despite his constant self-inflicted distractions; you may as well be in that clown car watching the whirl of uncertainty.
Case in point: in Manziel’s most memorable game at Texas A&M, his one unthinkable touchdown pass in an upset of Alabama off a busted play is the throw that defined him and the Aggies the last two years. But what happened late in the fourth quarter when A&M needed points is what should define Sumlin and his offense and its ability to dictate games.
Leading 23-17 with nine minutes to play, and trying to hold off Alabama, Sumlin and then-offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury decided to be aggressive instead of trying to run clock. Two throws — both designed routes to put receivers in winnable plays against man coverage — were called.
One combination route went for 42 yards to Ryan Swope; another went for 24 yards and a touchdown to Malcome Kennedy. One 2-play, 66-yard touchdown drive built on the back of a coach’s core philosophy.
“Those were specific routes where we had the advantage — and we knew it,” one Texas A&M staffer told me. “Johnny put the ball where it had to be, and both of those guys won individual battles, separated (from coverage) and got the ball. Just how it was planned.”
Just how it will all be planned when Hill and the Aggies open the season next Thursday at South Carolina. There will be no uncertainty, there will be no hesitation.
There will be a plan and there will be a Ringmaster in the center of it.
With no clown car in sight.