Jon Sumrall met with reporters Monday as the Florida Gators shifted their focus from fall camp to their season opener against the FAU Owls.
Sumrall discussed the emotions surrounding his debut as Florida’s head coach, the challenge FAU presents and the importance of creating a strong home-field advantage inside the Swamp. He also addressed the team’s first depth chart, the development of several freshmen and the leadership that emerged during camp.
The Gators’ coach also shared his thoughts on Florida’s coordinators, the changing college football calendar, his game-day music and the team’s injury situation entering Week 1.
Here’s everything Sumrall had to say.
Opening statement
Game week. Exciting. Obviously. Do all this work all year to play football games and look
forward to watching our guys go compete and put their hard work to use.
Got a really good opponent in FAU. Played them last year when I was at Tulane. Explosive. Offensively, I think the 15th- or 16th-most production returning in college football.
You look at the quarterback. He’s played a lot of football. Really experienced, a big guy with a good arm. He can make all the throws, and he runs a little bit better than you think.
Receiving corps, they’ve got some really good players. This number eight sticks out from last year to me. He’s a guy they target a lot and makes a lot of plays. But they’ve got other good players around him.
They’ve added good pieces through the transfer portal at tight end. The running back room they have is good. The O-line is solid. They do a nice job operating within their scheme.
Then defensively, that number one, I remember him being a game-wrecker last year on the D-line when we played them. I felt like he was a problem, and they’re really well coached across the board.
They’re good in special teams. I think that’s probably something that doesn’t get talked about enough. They were top 40 in every special teams category that we evaluate last year, so that’s an area where we have to be dialed in and well prepared.
But excited to watch our guys go play. We need, man, we need an unbelievable home-field advantage. When I went through the process of taking this job, I remember playing here in 2004 and how electric the venue is. We need it to be that way every time we play at home.
We play this Saturday night. There shouldn’t be an empty seat, and we need Gator Nation to turn out and support our guys. If we want an elite-level program, which I think we all want, it takes everybody. It takes the fans, it takes the coaches, it takes the players, it takes everybody.
We need Saturday night to feel like we want to be a top-20, top-10 team, a playoff team. That’s our goal and our vision, and it needs to feel like that every time we play in that stadium. I look forward to hopefully seeing that crowd Saturday night embrace our football team. Our guys have already put in a lot of work.
Monday through Friday, I tell people this all the time around our building: those are my days. Saturday is the players’ day, and I can’t wait to watch them go play Saturday night.
What is your excitement level for your debut as Florida’s head coach in The Swamp?
I’ll be amped. But the day is not about me. Never will be. Like I said, coaches’ days to me are Sunday through Friday. We coach the hell out of our players all the time.
If you’re not fortunate enough to be at practice, today on the offensive field, I mean, they were coaching everything. The defensive field, everything. Special teams, I lost my mind in the special teams period at one point because I saw something I didn’t like.
Our guys are getting coached every play, every day, Sunday through Friday. Saturday, I want it to be about the players. Yeah, I’ll get critiqued when things don’t go well. I’m fine there, and we’ll get credit when they go good, whatever.
But Saturday, game day, at that point you’ve coached them. They don’t rise to the occasion. I think they fall to the level of their training. I want them to be so trained that Saturday night they can go cut it loose and play the game the right way.
For me personally, I will be excited. I’m excited every time we play. I don’t care if we’re playing in a parking lot. I’m excited. I don’t care who the opponent is. I’m excited. It’s an opportunity you get. I told our team this morning, you get 12 regular-season games.
I had another — I’m not going to say who — colleague this summer say, “I don’t know. You can’t get your team up for all 12 games.” I’m like, “Well, maybe you can’t, but if you can’t get up for all 12 games, you’ve got a problem.”
To me, you work so daggum hard. I’ll be really excited about the opportunity to watch our team go play and all the work that’s been put in. Go cut it loose.
What does it mean to return to The Swamp as Florida’s head coach 22 years after playing there?
Yeah, I’m getting older.
It’s funny, I talked to my head college coach from my last two years on Saturday afternoon. Rich Brooks was the head coach at Oregon from 1977 to ’94. The field at Oregon is named after Coach Brooks. It’s Autzen Stadium, but it’s Rich Brooks Field.
Coach Brooks was my college head coach in ’03 and for my last two years as a player. Every time we talk, I kid around with him. In 2004, he almost got fired because he was starting guys like me, right?
But I called him just to tell him thank you. I said, “Coach, it’s crazy to think that 22 years ago I was playing in this stadium as a below-average linebacker in this league, and now I’m getting to coach as a head coach in this stadium, in this venue, at this program.”
I just wanted him to know, without you, I wouldn’t be here. There are a lot of people who have helped me get to where I am. I haven’t gotten here on my own. Now, don’t discredit it. I’ve worked really, really hard to be here.
But there are so many people who have invested in me, either as a young person coming up in this game or as a coach. There are a ton of people who have helped me get to this point. I’ll think about a lot of those people this week because I do every year in Game 1. I think about all the people who have helped me become the football person I am.
What did mock game week accomplish, and what needs to be cleaned up before Saturday?
Yeah, mock game week is as much about everybody understanding the battle rhythms, as I like to call it. The rhythm and the routine of how you get ready for a Saturday game.
Today is Monday practice. Our guys experienced last Monday what that looked like. Tomorrow is Tuesday practice. They understand what it looks like and the flow of meetings and the operation of how we install.
I wanted last week to run through as many of the scenarios that come up during a game week as possible to eliminate the clutter or the mishaps. We’re going to make mistakes Saturday night. I can promise you. I’ve never been part of a Game 1 where there weren’t plenty of them.
I showed our team all the Week 0 games. I showed 20 plays this morning. There was one game where there were 12 guys on the field for a field-goal block three times in the same game on Saturday.
I’m not going to act like we’re perfect, but I’m going to dang sure try to make sure we get 11 guys on the field. We’re going to work our tails off. We do all those things to try to make sure we get the processes done right, the pregame warmup done right and a lot of those things so that guys don’t have to think.
One of the things I thought was really cool was that last Friday we had Justin Gaethje talk to the team, the UFC fighter and lightweight champion of the world in UFC right now. One of the answers he gave about his preparation was that he wanted to be so prepared that when you’re in the ring, when you’re in the Octagon, you don’t think. You just do.
“I don’t have to think about what I’m doing. I’m so trained, I just do it because it’s what I do.”
I wanted our guys last week to go through those rhythms. This week, they’re not thinking, “What time is the special teams meeting?” or “What time is this?” or “What time is that?” or “How does the practice flow?” They understand.
That way, hopefully, Saturday we’ve taken some of the extra thought out of what goes into playing the game. They can go cut it loose, play and have fun with it.
How do you handle depth-chart conversations so players are not blindsided?
We’re really, really direct. I don’t hide things from our players. I’m really honest. My wife would tell you that’s one of my greatest strengths and maybe one of my greatest weaknesses. I’m going to tell you the truth.
If you like the truth, you’re going to love being around me. If you don’t like the truth, you’re going to hate being around me. Everybody on our depth chart, wherever they are, knows why. There are no surprises. We take things head-on.
I think the players deserve that. They put in too much time and too much work not to have real conversations with them. You get what you earn in this game. You want to play more? Practice great. When you get your opportunities in games, if you want to play more after that, play well in the game and you’ll get to play more.
What have Lacota Dippre and Florida’s tight ends done to earn their roles?
Yeah, Lacota has been really, really steady all training camp. He’s been really consistent his entire time here.
I’m fired up about what he’s done just from a consistency standpoint, day in and day out. The way he shows up is very impressive. Behind him, I think Heze has made as much improvement for a freshman as anybody on our team since January.
In January, I would have told you there was a low-percentage chance Heze Kent was going to be ready to compete and play this year. Then, through the summer, I’m like, “Okay, this guy’s got a shot.” During training camp, he just got better.
The other two, Amir and Luke, they both have done some good things in their own right, unique to how they play the position and the game. Then the other one is (Evan) Chieca. He’s back moving around at practice. I’m not sure about his availability for Saturday yet. It’s not off the table, but it’s not a green light yet. But he’s there.
Which freshmen have made the biggest strides entering the season?
Yeah, I think K.J. Ford had a really good spring. I think sometimes, as a freshman, you can hit a wall. He hit a little bit of a wall maybe early in training camp and then responded during the last week of training camp, which I was pleased with.
There are a lot of guys who have helped themselves. We are going to play players we trust, so there are not going to be a ton of them playing right out of the gate. There are a few. K.J., I think, will play Saturday night. I want to play as many freshmen as are ready to play.
I think you’ll see some of them who maybe aren’t on that two-deep elevate as the year goes on, and then others will have big special teams roles. CJ Bronaugh is one. CJ was out during the spring. When he’s been available, he’s flashed as a player who I think has a high ceiling and really good potential.
He was probably just a little bit behind because he was out all spring. If he had been available all spring, I think he probably would be closer to prime-time action in regard to where the depth chart sits.
How have you evolved as a head coach since your first game week at Troy?
There are some routines that have stayed the same, and there are some things I think you constantly adapt and evolve. I’m more comfortable than Year 1. In Year 1, there were probably some things coming that I wasn’t fully prepared for mentally. Now, I think I see what’s coming a lot further out.
But the routines are pretty similar. A lot of the things we do are very clockwork, if you will. Personally, I’ve shared this with y’all before, but I’m very regimented. My schedule does not deviate. Every Monday is the same. Every Tuesday is the same. Every Wednesday is the same. I think that way you understand how to be prepared by game time.
But there are some things that have evolved and changed in how we do things, just to be smarter with maybe a couple of practice-model things we do.
Have you learned to trust your assistants more as a head coach?
Yeah, there’s a lot to that. My first year as a head coach at Troy, I thought I had to have my hand in everything all the time. I was probably a miserable guy to work for. Now, I think I’ve done a better job. We’re at practice, and I can look at the call sheet on offense, defense or in the kicking game, and I know what we’ve got going on.
I’ll interject with the coordinator here and there. I’ll ask him, “Hey, what’s our thought process there?” But now I let them do their thing a little bit more and probably take their feedback better.
We had kind of a cool experience, I guess it’s been two weeks ago now. Training camp is a blur. We had a head coaches meeting with all the head coaches in the athletic department and had a chance to hear from Billy Donovan. It was a really cool experience for me because I think he’s an unbelievable coach.
He said something that really resonated with me in that meeting a couple of weeks ago. He said, “As the head coach, you have to make the final decision always, but you’re never smarter than the room. Take the feedback from the room and then make a really good, educated decision to move forward.”
For me, if I’m smarter than the entire room, then we’ve got a really bad staff. I want to have great people in the room who challenge me and help me think outside the box a little bit or maybe bring up ideas, whether it’s Buster, Brad or an analyst. I don’t care who it is.
Then, yeah, I have to make the decision about exactly how we’re going to do something moving forward. It was such spot-on advice at that time because it was a couple of weeks ago. I’m like, “What a great reminder.' As we get ready to enter the season, take the feedback of the room. Yeah, you’ve got to make the final decision, but listen to the room.
How will the experience of Brad White and Buster Faulkner benefit the team this season?
Well, you want people you trust, and I trust both of those guys because they’ve got great experience and they’re both really qualified in the way they carry themselves; they’re good men and they’re good at what they do.
Going back to what I just said, they’re not ego guys or prideful. They want to trust the people in their rooms, so they’re going to take the feedback. We’ve got a solid staff from top to bottom. If you’re Buster, you can look around the room and there are a lot of quality people to lean on in that entire room. It’s the same thing for Brad.
For me as a head coach, I have guys who are really well equipped to do a great job in their roles and great people around them to support them. I know and trust that those guys who are coordinating will listen to the feedback their rooms give them.
How helpful is the familiarity of facing an opponent you played last season?
Yeah, there’s some familiarity, which is helpful. It’s not like we’re playing a team where we have no awareness of anything about them. I would have been okay if we had scheduled a less talented team for Game 1. These guys are well coached, man.
I think Zach does a phenomenal job. Kittley is a really good football coach, and he’s got a great staff. There are some challenges. They were the fastest offense in college football last year. They went for it on fourth down more than anybody in college football last year.
I think, in Game 1, if I’m not mistaken, they went for it nine times in the first game against Maryland last year. Nine. The first drive of the game last year when we played them at Tulane was at our place. You blinked, and they were inside the red zone. You’re like, “What happened? How did they get here so fast?” They’re really good.
There’s some familiarity that maybe helps, but I don’t think you can simulate some of the things they do in practice, no matter how hard you try. Their tempo is so fast. Whatever the fastest is, they’re faster because they were No. 1 in the country.
There are some nice things about at least knowing some things about them. They know some things about us, too.
Why do you support Commissioner Greg Sankey’s stance on adding players after the deadline?
Well, yeah. I’m a head coach in the SEC, so I’m going to abide by what the SEC wants me to abide by. That’s my stance on what Commissioner Sankey did. Number two, our add/drop date for academics here has passed.
While our guys get paid and there’s all this other stuff now, you still have to be enrolled in classes. It’s too late to get enrolled in classes here. It would be against the rules because they wouldn’t be the student part of student-athlete here. We can’t get them into classes.
I’m always about, “How do you make your team better?” I referenced it, I think, on Finebaum or maybe with y’all, but I added Jake Retzlaff to my roster at Tulane last year, I think, July 27. I’m all for having a good player whenever I can get a good player. But there are some barriers to us adding a good player.
One of them is that I’m going to follow the rules of what our commissioner said. We also can’t get a guy into classes right now. I think if you were an NFL player, you’re an NFL player. If you’re a college player, you’re a college player.
Our roster was set a while ago to move forward, and there was no loophole to add a player. Now, if it’s legal and approved and all that, that’s a different deal. But our league has said they’re against it. If our league is against it, I’m going to follow the rules and the leadership of our conference and our university.
Will you have any nerves or butterflies Saturday?
I’ll just be excited. I don’t get nervous. If I see a rattlesnake, I might get nervous. But I’m fired up to let our guys go cut it loose and play. I still get amped, but I’m not biting my fingernails or anything.
How do you manage expectations surrounding Florida entering the season?
My expectation is to try to go 1-0 this week. That’s my thought process every week. It’s, “How do you win that week?” At the end of the week, Saturday night or Sunday morning, I hope we’re 1-0. Whatever happens this week, we’ll review it, we’ll flush it and then we’ll do the same thing the next week.
I think it’s great for fans and maybe the media to go, “Well, this would be a good year.” I don’t have time to do that. A good year to me is when you win every game you play. Win them all, and it’s a good year. Win a championship, and that’s a great year.
I think you can limit what you accomplish when you start to go, “Well, this would be good enough.” I think you start to put maybe some undue pressure on yourself when you’re like, “Well, this is what the benchmark needs to be.” I think when you have really high standards — “standards” is a word I use a lot — things usually work out for you.
But the expectation at Florida is championships in every sport, not just football. That’s part of what drew me here. We’ve got a lot of work to do to be a championship-caliber program day in and day out. We’re working hard at it, but I just want to do whatever we can this week to go 1-0.
I know there are certain scoreboard outcomes that people would love to say define success. Success to me is 1-0 every week. If we go 1-0 every week, I think everybody would be really damn happy.
What did Ben Hanks do to earn a starting role, and what is the secondary’s biggest challenge this week?
Ben has done a great job going back to the whole time I’ve been here. He’s worked really hard. He’s got good length and can run. He plays the ball in the air well. He’s got good ball skills. He’s a guy who works incredibly hard.
I was in the weight room this morning at 6 a.m. with Rusty, and he was in there doing mobility when meetings weren’t until 7. He was on his own. He’s a guy who is invested in his craft. I’m excited to see him play a more prominent role.
He played a little bit last year. I think he played in four games, but he’ll play a bigger role. For that entire secondary, the vertical shots, the tempo, getting lined up, communicating and eye discipline are important. Like I said, they’ll throw the ball all over the place and throw it down the field a lot. They’re going to take shots, and you’ve got to stay on top in coverage.
When you get an opportunity to make a play on the ball, you’ve got to make a play. When they catch the ball, get them on the ground and let’s move to the next play. We have to try to limit the explosive plays because that’s one thing they do at a really high level. They create explosives.
What has Buster Faulkner done as expected, and how has he pleasantly surprised you?
What he’s done that I hoped he would do is constantly evolve. He’s looking at what fits our people and how to tailor the system to the player. That’s what I already knew.
I think Buster has done a really good job, going back to the earlier question about the difference between me in Year 1 and Year 4 or 5. Buster has brought some good big-picture ideas to me, program-wise, that we’ve been able to implement. A lot of them were in the summer program or spring, about certain walkthrough patterns they had done or that he liked doing. I think that fits how he wants to do it.
The thing he’s done that I’m really grateful for is that he’s upfront and honest and speaks about what he thinks is going to help us. He’s not a yes-man. He and I will go back and forth, and I like that. I don’t like for somebody, when I say something, to just go, “Yes, sir,” and move on.
I want him to go, “Have you thought about it like this?” Then I go, “Oh, you know what? I hadn’t. That’s a good idea. Let’s talk about that.” I’ve appreciated the dialogue he and I have had about how to do everything we can to put our team in a position to be successful.
What was your reaction to the proposed calendar changes and reduction in preseason practices?
We’ve become an all-year training model. It used to be that, in the summers, if you brought out a football, that was an NCAA violation. Now we get two hours a week of football time. That’s different.
Our player movement hasn’t just looked more like the NFL. We’ve gone past the NFL, where it’s year to year for every player. In the NFL, you have contracts that are four or five years. Ours are like everything is a one-year deal. The model has evolved.
COVID created some of that because we were all in the middle of spring practice in 2020. COVID shut everything down that March. When we got back in the summer, when all the guys came back to campus, they allowed us to do more football with the guys ahead of training camp.
Now we get to training camp, and by the time we do Install 1, I’m like, “I feel like this is the ninth time we’ve gone through Install 1.” I think it makes sense. The best ability any of us have in life is availability.
The old-school training camp model that I participated in 20-something years ago, where you practiced three times a day, may have made you tough. I don’t know that it made you healthy for Game 1. I remember my first collegiate start; I think it was 2002 or ’03 against Louisville. I remember thinking, “Golly, I’m tired today,” because I had just been chewed up during training camp.
I think now we’re making decisions about our practice models, the flow of the year and the calendar that are about player health, welfare and safety. This is still a tough, physical game. You have to do things in a certain manner to be prepared to play it the right way. But you need to be smart tough, not dumb tough.
With the 21 practice opportunities, I’ve already thought through it. I’ve had enough foresight that this was coming that, for the last year, I’ve put some things to paper about what I think this looks like for us. With Week 0 in the future becoming Week 1, really, and everybody having two byes throughout the year, training camp will now be one week shorter.
There are a lot of things I’ve already thought about. Even though I am focused on this week, I also think about next year, the next year and the next year. If you wait until it’s right in front of you, you’re behind. I’ve spent some time thinking about what that looks like.
Is the mock game week schedule designed to help players enter Saturday healthier and fresher?
Yeah, I do think our training camp schedule is helpful for them. The work is the work. You’re going to practice, you’re going to wear full gear on certain days, and you’ve got to bang. But you’ve also got to know how to go up and down a little bit with how you’re pushing them.
The mock game week is a little bit about getting them back, but it’s also about getting them ready for the week. There’s comfortability with the format. They have an expectation of what it looks like.
Do you have a go-to song or artist on game day?
I’ve got a few artists. I like AC/DC, and then I love — this is probably not most people’s pump-up music — Chris Stapleton. I listen to Chris Stapleton probably every day of my life, even on game day.
Which players have emerged as leaders entering Week 1?
Myles Graham has been really, really steady as a leader.
Brendan Bett, I’m probably as proud of him as anybody because he had a choice a year ago after the South Florida game. It could have gone a couple of different ways. He’s really elevated and responded to maybe a mistake with, I think, a mature approach. He’s been a positive, elder-statesman leader in that room.
Jayden Woods is a tremendous leader. Aaron Chiles is a good leader. Bryce Thornton, D.J. Coleman and the whole receiving corps. I was telling somebody the other day, for us to have Dallas Wilson, VB3, Eric Singleton and Micah Mays in that room, and Bailey Stockton, TJ Abrams and more, and to have a receiver room like that where nobody is a jerk is unheard of.
Usually, you have a receiver room like that and somebody is going to be a jerk to deal with. I like coaching all those guys every day. They’re fun to be around. They always have a smile on their face. They’re ultimate team guys.
Harrison Moore has stepped up as a leader. TJ Shanahan, Lacota Dippre, Philo and Tramell — there are a lot of guys.I think you guys have been able to see that Philo and Tramell are both really comfortable in their own skin. They’ve shown a lot of leadership by how they handled the process of the quarterback competition, whatever it was. It gets named a competition, but guys are competing all the time for playing time, right? They handled that process really well. They led by how they carried out that process.
There’s a long list of guys on our team who I think have elevated their leadership.
How has Khaleil Jackson responded to his opportunity to return and earn a role?
This place means a lot to Khaleil. He’s a legacy player here. His family has a great history in this program. He’s a really hardworking guy.
Coming off the lower-body extremity injuries he had most recently, I think one thing that has helped him a ton is that he committed to getting his body as lean as possible. When you get heavier, your knees, ankles and all the joints below your waist are going to take more of a toll.
He’s leaned up. He’s gotten lighter, which has allowed him to make himself more available. He hasn’t missed a practice all training camp. I do think he’s going to have a role in how we’re going to play the game. I’m excited to see him have an opportunity to put all his hard work out there.
He’s been a really positive impact in how he carries himself day in and day out.
Injury update
We’re pretty healthy. I’ve been opening with the training report or the injury report just so you guys know I’m being transparent with you.
Chieca is questionable. He’s practicing. He’s running around, but it’s a matter of how far we want to push him. Extending Kelvin (Jimenez), as I hit on, he is out for the year. Kendall Guervil is back practicing.
The injury report is pretty positive in regard to having pretty much everybody ready to go.
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This article originally appeared on Gators Wire: Jon Sumrall previews Florida's season opener against FAU
