Jon Sumrall previews first full week of Florida football camp

Florida football head coach Jon Sumrall provided an injury update and fielded questions heading into the first full week of fall camp.

Sumrall discussed the ongoing quarterback competition between Aaron Philo and Tramell Jones Jr., the development and competition along the offensive line, Dallas Wilson’s workload and the upcoming first scrimmage of camp. He also touched on several individual players who have stood out early, including LJ McCray, and reflected on his relationship with former Florida coach Steve Spurrier.

Here’s everything Sumrall had to say.

Opening statement

I’d like to start. I didn’t acknowledge this last week when I addressed you guys, but Mark Long, thoughts and prayers with him as he’s on his road to recovery. Grateful for what he does covering

our program, as well as all y’all.

Injury-wise, I’ll cover that first so we can get that out of the way and everybody’s going to have a question or two. So I’ll just go ahead and nail it, and we don’t have to worry about it anymore. Kelvin Jimenez is out for the foreseeable future. Contact injury that was sustained in practice on Saturday, so he’ll be out for a while.

And then we had (Evan) Chieca is down for a minute. Don’t know how long. It’s not long-term, but he’ll be down for at least a week from real activity. He’ll probably return, I’d say, roughly a week from now to do some things. He’s having a really good training camp. Not anything significant or major. More precautionary in nature in regard to how we’re treating him. So going to be smart tough, not dumb tough.

Kendall Guveril had a little bit of the knee that he had before he got here. That was done last year, not here when he’s been here. Just don’t really know the full extent of that yet, so he’s currently out.

And then some other soft-tissue guys, like normal training-camp boo-boos, with Kam James, Kiaden Hall, Jaylen Jordan, Duke Clark, Marquez Daniel, and CJ Bronaugh. Those are other guys that have kind of been limited in some nature. Some guys are close to returning.

Those are all — those last set of guys and Chieca — are guys that I don’t foresee them being out for any game action, barring something that doesn’t go right. But they’re guys that right now have some sort of limitation at practice. Some could be back in a couple of days, some could be back in a week or two, but don’t see any of them being out for a game week as of right now. So nothing substantial, just normal wear and tear from training camp.

Like the competitiveness. We pushed through four hard days in a row. Yesterday was an off day. We’re back at it today. We’ll go again tomorrow. Wednesday will be a walkthrough, non-practice day. Thursday will be a physical day again, and then Friday I’ll run through. Saturday scrimmage, Sunday off. That’s the layout for the week.

Again, the intent of our guys has been good. There’s been a lot of improvement. Certain guys are elevating. It’s been fun to see some guys take steps forward. We still need more out of certain guys as well. But like where we’re at in a lot of ways. Still a long way to go with that.

What’s the difference in terms of guys knowing where to be and what to do compared to the spring?

Yeah, I think anytime you restart nowadays, spring practice one of spring, half your team’s new regardless of coaching change or not, it feels like. And then by now, you have 15 spring practices, including the spring game in there, and the summer OTAs and the POPs they do that are player-led, and then we go back to one or two OTAs right before where they go on a break at the end of summer. So there’s been so many reps that have been banked that by now the operation, the flow of practice, everything’s a lot smoother.

I mean, you’re always learning, but we also change some things. Like today’s practice, you guys weren’t out there to see this, but at the end of practice we did all the team stuff on Field 2, which is the defensive field, the shorter of the two grass fields, because it was a red-zone period. We don’t need to throw the ball 75 yards. Everything’s plus-20 and in. So we moved some practice things around.

Today was an hour-and-33-minute practice after the stretch, so we stayed outside the whole day. When we’re going really long, we may use the indoor and some of the flow of practice may change. But when we’re shorter today, hour and 33 minutes after the stretch, we want it outside the whole time because we need to make sure we’re at least building our bodies up to some of the heat. But it’s been a lot smoother.

Was Dallas Wilson being limited in wide receiver drills Friday part of the plan to remain cautious with him?

That’s a great question. I’m glad you caught that, and I can address it. So 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 certain things he did to make sure he still got the right number of team reps. And then Saturday he was full go. Didn’t miss anything.

Dallas is a unique case because return to play for him, I want to see him play on Saturdays against other people. He’s obviously a known player in some regards, but does not have a lot of time on task. So while we all know how talented he is, there’s still a ton of development left with Dallas as a player to be a polished route runner and be refined in certain things.

He is athletic, he’s got great ball skills, he’s ultra-competitive, but he still has to become more of a refined player. And so that balance of making sure we stagger his workload, but now that we’re into the flow of training camp that we’re in, we don’t have another stretch where we just had where it’s four straight days of real challenging work. It’s really a couple of days on, a day off, three days in a row, a day off.

And so he’ll, for the most part, be cleared to do everything. He’s already cleared to do everything. But the workload management component we’ll do with him, we’ll have days where it’s less yardage for him.

Is the plan to go full pads tomorrow, and what do you want to see from the physicality?

We’ll be in full gear tomorrow. It’ll be physical. 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. Tomorrow will still be a thud practice in nature. And then you have live, which is tackle to the ground. The three T’s: tag, thud, tackle.

We will not tackle tomorrow, but we will be in full gear to get our lower-body acclimatization to wearing the pants, as we play the game wearing pants. And so we’ll wear some pants at times, but we’ll do that tomorrow. We’ll do that Thursday. Friday will be a helmets-and-spiders day, and then Saturday we’ll put the gear on, and we’ll tackle to the ground a lot situationally.

Do you put things on the line in practice to create pressure and competition?

Yeah. As of right now, it’s all ones versus ones, twos versus twos, threes versus threes. Now, you can be the ones one rack of plays and with the threes another. We’re moving different guys around with different groupings, but the way we structure it, it’s always ones-v-ones, twos-v-twos, threes-v-threes for practice purposes.

And then, yeah, we do, to your point, in special teams situations. We do one-shot drills, is what we call them, which you’ve got one shot to get it right. And we’ll put a guy in that scenario. And then the first four or five days of training camp, you’re competing all the time, but it’s hard to really always keep score of a winner or a loser when it’s like, okay, we’re not tackling.

So when we go to live stuff a little bit more, there’s even more clear winners and losers. But yeah, there’s some things we do that are clearly scored. Clearly there’s something on the line every rep, but the competitive nature doesn’t change. I mean, it’s always competitive.

What’s your philosophy on mentally challenging players and breaking them down to build them back up?

Our job is to always be demanding. The standard is really, really high and never wavers. I’m not necessarily into breaking a player down. I am into making things hard. 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’ve never really prescribed, like, ‘Let’s break them down.’ Now, I do prescribe to the theory of, ‘Let’s push them to the edge.’ 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. We coach them really, really hard all the time. 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 don’t really subscribe to breaking anybody down.

I want to always build them up. Sometimes you build them up by being hard as (expletive). I mean, that’s 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 if they’re broke down, they’re not any good.

How common is it for quarterbacks competing for a starting job to push and support each other?

As a head coach, every year I’ve been a head coach, there’s been a quarterback competition. I’ve never been in a— It’s a vacuum cleaner going off. But yeah, it’s better than a cell phone. Not going to throw the podium and have a public outcry of my rage of emotions.

But no, every year I’ve been a head coach, 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. That’s why I come in and walk in and give you guys an injury report, because I want to tell you what we’ve got going on and move on and not deal with it. And you guys don’t have to go create a message board, chat room, whatever, where it’s like, ‘What’s happening with 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.

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 as head coach, I had a beautiful situation where we had a guy that was on our team, Gunnar Watson, was a returning player, was kind of our starter. We brought Jared Doege in. 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 Gunnar played good at times, and then he got hurt and Jared came in and played pretty good. Then one of them wouldn’t play good, and one time one of them came over to me and 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’d start the other guy, he’d play bad and then put the other guy in and we’d go win the game.

I want both of them to want to win the job. I showed our team this video. I don’t know if you guys saw this, but Tim Tebow spoke in an interview about his wanting to be the guy here in ’06 when Chris Leak was the starter. But he’s like, ‘I didn’t want to see Chris fail. I wanted Chris to do well and I just wanted to do better.’ You want to compete with the other guy and outperform him, but you don’t want to elevate yourself — and you really don’t elevate as an individual— because somebody else isn’t doing well. That means somebody else didn’t do well.

So what I want is both of them to do really well and one guy to get to start because he was just a tad better during training camp and spring. That’d be beautiful. I don’t want one guy to do okay and the other guy to be terrible. And then it’s like, we had one guy just did okay and one guy did terrible, and we’re going to start the guy who was just okay.

They’re both competitive in nature. They both want to be the guy. If they didn’t, we’d have a problem. 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.

But nobody rises because you push another guy down. And so the old adage, ‘Iron sharpens iron, man sharpens another.’ I’m a firm believer that great people- if you’re a really high achiever, you know what motivates you? Other people also being successful. If you’re a loser or if you’re a fixed mindset or you’re a soft person, man, you’re intimidated by other people’s success.

So I want our quarterback room, I want all of them to be motivated by somebody else’s success, not intimidated. And somebody will go out and take the ball game one. And I expect the guy who does to still be humble about his approach and work his tail off. And the guy that doesn’t, I expect him to know, ‘Hey, I’m a play away from being put in the game,’ and prepare like a starter because you never know when your opportunity’s coming.

I think those guys are doing a really good job, and I’m excited about the direction we’re headed there in regards to how they’re handling it.

Now, are we ready to name a starter today? No. We may not name one. You guys may go into the game and, I mean, you’ll probably do your due diligence and find out who’s taking reps with the ones. But the week of the first game, I may not come out and have some big formal announcement of 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.

Are you going to release depth charts this season?

Yeah, I mean, we have a depth chart every day. Maybe. I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it. I was worried about how we practiced today. I don’t have a problem with it being released publicly. Scott (Burns) can handle all that. I don’t care about what’s publicly released, depth chart.

I mean, if you want who practiced first with the ones each day, I’ll tell you. I’d have to go back and look at my script because we roll them in and out so much right now. But yeah, we’ll have a depth chart at some point. You’ve got to have a depth chart. You don’t go into the game and just, ‘I hope that I think we’re going to play this guy today.’

Could releasing a depth chart create a competitive disadvantage?

Yeah, I don’t know. I’ve released them in the past. Usually game one, to be honest, the last several years for me when we play non-conference games to start, they’re not like NFL preseason games because they count to your permanent record. But at the same time, in the past, you can look at the teams I’ve had; Game 1s, we play more people than we’ll play all year in Game 1 and 2, regardless of what the matchup is.

We played Northwestern last year, game one, which is a Big Ten school when I was at Tulane, and we played a ton of people in game one because I’m trying to figure out who our team is. I’ve got a decent idea at practice, but you don’t really know who you’ve got and who you are until you go play against somebody else. I think I know, but we’re going to play a ton of people.

And when we release the depth chart, I think we probably will, there will be a lot of ORs. But I don’t know yet. Some of them, there may not be any, where there will be, ‘Hey, you’re the starter.’

How is the competition along the offensive line progressing?

The competition has been good. Still a lot of movement in nature in regards to Bryce Lovett might play some guard and some tackle. 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’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 whoever rolls out first is going to be who we felt has earned to go out first. But we need to get several guys reps to create competitive depth.

It’s been good. There’s growth there. Are we at a place where I’m just really comfortable yet? No. But are we much improved? Yeah. I think so. Oftentimes, it’s no different than anything in life: when you work really hard, you don’t always see the growth immediately. It takes a little time. The growth is coming. It’s been there. There’s times where I’m like, ‘All right, that looks really good.’ And there’s still times that you can realize we’ve got to clean some things up. But there’s been significant growth in that room.

How many players did you have on your team last year?

116, I think, is what we had at Tulane. Yeah, 116. I think I had 116. Yeah, I think I had 116, 118. We were under 120, but we were over 110 for sure.

Will the eventual 105-player roster limit change how you structure practices?

I’ve already, the last couple of years, been studying more of some NFL models. We’re still above 105 because of the DSA tags that are still on our rosters. All the COVID-year guys are gone, but the DSA tags are still out. And so, yeah, we’re going to try to, for as long as there are DSA tags, operate.

Designated student-athlete. It’s the guys that got the exemption from counting on the 105 because of when they started college and all that sort of thing. But yeah, we were at about the same roster size last year. I do think in about two years you’re going to feel the 105 become reality.

We’re not at 105 scholarships yet. Some people maybe are. We’re not. We’ll get there. We’re not at 105 scholarships yet. We’re over 85, but we’re not at 105.

How difficult will managing a 105-player roster be with five-for-five eligibility?

Yeah, that’s a great question. So as we recruited this ’27 class, we were pretty committed to a lot of guys by June and them to us. And then the five-for-five has really become more concrete after we put the ’27 class together. And they haven’t said that the five-for-five guys that want to return are getting a roster exemption tag to go above 105.

So that is challenging because it’s retroactive. Like, okay, well now these five or six guys may have another year, but how does that affect if we have to be 105 and they don’t get a tag to allow them to operate like they don’t have to subscribe to being a part of the 105?

So there are some challenges within that. Once you get into the flow of it, it’s easier because it’s what you’ve got built into your plans. But early on, there’s some challenges to it.

How do Dave (Caldewell) and the front office help you manage roster issues like that?

The beautiful thing about having Dave and Nick (Pol) and the whole front office is there’s a lot of stuff that they get to go do some tedious work on and then bring to me, and then it’s like, ‘Hey, Coach, here are our options A, B, C, D.’ And then I get to help select that option. I’m like, ‘I like option A better,’ and we do that.

But I don’t have to be here till 2 a.m. trying to count to 105, and we get to just worry about what we have to worry about. They help a great deal with roster management, and I’m very grateful because I don’t know, in the world we live in now, how you can do it at this level without a legitimate operation as a front office. Those guys do a fantastic job of supporting how we function.

What do you think of your options at left and right tackle, and what do those players need to do to separate themselves?

Consistency. When you see them flash, all of them at their best, they’re more than good enough. But being more than good enough half the time on the line is not very good.

So they all have done really good things. Emeka (Ugorji) had a great spring and has been really solid. Eagan (Boyer) is super athletic and plays with great hat speed and, in the run game, is ultra-physical. Caden (Jones) has got a lot of time on task, has played some here and been experienced in nature. Bryce, I mean, there’s multiple guys. There’s (TJ) Dice playing in there. There’s a lot of guys. Fletcher Westphal’s back, and 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 the times where you’re like, ‘Okay, that guy, that looked good.’ But you can’t be good some of the time. We’ve got to be good all the time.

Where is Fletcher Westphal after missing so much time, and what can he contribute?

He’s got good length, athletic for a big man. Was coming off a wrist procedure in the offseason, so he wasn’t able to really be fully involved in the weight room stuff. So the strength stuff really kind of kicked in this 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 he’s 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. He seems to care. And so there’s some upside to what he can do. And he’s played a little bit. It’s not like he hasn’t played at all. But he’s been out a long enough time that it just takes a little time to kind of get back into the groove. But he’s doing a good job.

What are you looking to see with full pads Tuesday and the first scrimmage Saturday?

I guess I just want to see us play clean, competitive football on both sides. As a head coach, you don’t ever want one side to dominate. You’d like to see some back and forth.

But really, as you ramp up and you’re in training camp now, we’re getting closer to the season. It’s not spring practice where you’re running plays. You’re now trying to sequence plays, and you’re trying to get guys to understand situational football and how to maybe work through the flow of the game and some things in regards to down and distance on defense or offense.

I want to see guys compete. You only get so many opportunities to go lay it on the line and compete. And really, there’s a score where you’re trying to win the game. At the end of the day, man, we’ve got to find out who will compete. When we go to the stadium, and it’s real, who will lay it on the line?

What have you seen from LJ McCray’s physical development?

For me, and I know enough about his recruitment here, but just knowing him since January, we challenged him right out of the gate. He’s got great length. The body type, you look at just the frame, very impressive individual. He has committed himself to the weight room and to 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.

I think he power-cleaned 365 this summer. At that height, to be able to catch a 365 power clean and move the bar, because the clean, it’s not just the catch, too. You’re having to move the bar as a long guy from 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.

He’s a leaner, stronger version of himself. And he’s got confidence, too. 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. He plays like he’s believing what he can become. And so it’s exciting to see it come to life for him. The lights have come on for sure, and excited to see him.

Does McCray’s athleticism give you positional flexibility?

Yeah. He’s playing to the field mainly. He could always go to the boundary if you had to, and he’s capable of doing a lot of different things. But the important thing for him is the weight room stuff. He’s always been able to kind of get on an edge playing a five-technique, be loose and create some issues in the pass-rush game.

Where I think he’s improved is he’s striking blocks better now. He’s stronger. He’s playing with his hands. He’s playing with a little bit more knockback. He’s playing with a little bit more physicality.

But yeah, he’s versatile. If he had to, he could be a guy that could go to the boundary and play Jack if he ever had to. He’s got that type of athleticism and that body type.

Have you seen Florida’s throwback uniforms?

I have. Yeah, I’ve seen them. Tribute to Coach Spurrier and the 1966 Heisman year. Seen them, excited about them. Look forward to them. Long way off from us actually wearing them, but I do think they’re cool. Cool tribute and such a cool look.

What has Kanye Clark done to get himself into the mix?

Yeah, he’s really twitchy. Great short-area 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.

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. Look forward to watching him grow. He’s having a good camp so far. Really heady football player that I’m excited to see what he can do. We’ve got to continue to develop the depth at that spot, but I like what he’s doing.

What could the STAR position look like depending on who is in the game?

We’re going to be able to play a lot of different body types out there. If we need to, we can play him. We could play Bryce. We could play D.J. Coleman. We could play Alfonzo Allen. There’s several guys that we may start to, as we go through more camp, get them reps down there to create depth layers of your roster that may not just be guys that are planted there, but they’re a safety that could go there.

I think you’ll see J'Vari Flowers maybe get in the mix there some as well. And then when we need to, we could always flip a Jayden Woods to the field or an Aaron Chiles to the field or whoever to the field. And so the defense is the defense, but we can change who the body is out there.

And I just named such a wide variety of people, right? You went from Kanye to Jayden Woods. I think you have to build to match the style of play. And so if you’re going to play a 12-personnel team that wants to just maul you all day, well, we better get big. If you’re going to play a team that wants to live in 10 and play with speed and space, you better get fast.

And so I think for us, it’s about how do we, to the field in particular, match up to put ourselves in a position to have a guy on the field that gives us an opportunity to have success.

What opportunities does the STAR position provide for a playmaker?

I think each guy has a different skill set. And based upon who’s in the game at that spot, it changes maybe how you play it a little. You’d love to have plenty of depth where you’ve got guys that are just like, they’re all six-foot and they’re all 200 and they’re all fast. They can cover man and blitz, too. That’s great, but they’re not just all walking around everywhere.

And so we’re constantly looking how to maybe add to our roster as we move forward down the road with guys that can play at a high level at that spot. But I think, to the job-description component, no different than on offense where certain receivers have route trees they’re better running or skill sets they have that are maybe better than another guy. And so whoever lines up there, it’s based upon what they do well and maybe how we’re trying to attack the opponent or how they’re trying to attack us.

How much has Steve Spurrier been an inspiration and someone you can lean on during your first six months at Florida?

Yeah, he’s been awesome. Him and Jerri, his wife’s been great to my wife. They’re unbelievable people. Caring, compassionate. Obviously won at the highest level here.

I think I’ve probably had the most fun just hearing him tell stories. When I’m able to catch him before, like when we do some recruiting dinners and Spurrier, he’ll come hang out for the first hour or so of the dinner, and to be able to stand at the bar at Spurrier’s and hear him tell stories from different games and how he can remember every play. He’s got this brilliant collection of memories that it’s fun. Colorful personality. Nothing like him. He is Florida football.

So been great to us. We had our staff New Year’s party a week ago Saturday before we kicked the season off, and Coach and Jerri were there. They’re a part of this thing with us. And could not be more grateful for how open they’ve been to me and my wife about, ‘Hey, if you need anything, let us know.’ And then really just how honest and authentic they’ve been with us has been really, really cool.

Do you have a favorite story from Spurrier?

It’s hard to pick one, man. It’s like, what’s the last one? With him, that’s kind of like the favorite one.

Has Spurrier given Buster Faulkner plays to use?

Yeah, I mean, hey, look, there’s no shortage of Coach Spurrier’s got plenty of good plays. And some of them we still use to this day. There’s a lot of them that you can go back. You go to those napkins that are at Spurrier’s in the restroom. Yeah, some of those might be seen today.

Can you be starstruck around a legend like Steve Spurrier?

Yeah. I think I’m a football junkie, and I haven’t hidden from it. Like, 1993, I was in the south end zone at Legion Field and Coach Spurrier’s head coach of Florida; they’re playing Alabama. And so, yeah, to me, I’ve grown up watching this conference and this school and the people that have been a part of the history of this program.

And so to be in the same role as a guy like Coach Spurrier, I don’t know about starstruck, but just almost like, pinch yourself. Like, is this real? Like, wow. Because you work so hard to grow as a professional in your career and to get to a spot where you’re like, okay, I’m getting to do the same job day in and day out that he did, and he did it at a ridiculously high level.

So yeah, I’m always blown away that I get the privilege to walk the same walk that somebody like him did.

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This article originally appeared on Gators Wire: Jon Sumrall previews first full week of Florida football camp