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TERRY DOUGLASS: Sherman, Aggies aim to ‘get over it’
COMMENTARY
Believe it or not, Mike Sherman’s experience in his first season at Texas A&M might have been even more excruciating than the 4-8 record would indicate.
Opening the season with an 18-14 home loss to Arkansas State was one thing, but getting rolled by a combined score of 156-58 in the last three games of the season by Oklahoma, Baylor and Texas punctuated a disastrous debut for Sherman. Once known for their “Wrecking Crew” defense, the Aggies gave up an average of 37.4 points per game.
“Expectations at A&M are extremely high and that’s why I wanted to go there,” Sherman said. “With the transition last year, the disappointment was strong. I’ll never forget it.”
Sherman, a former A&M assistant who coached the NFL’s Green Bay Packers to a 59-43 record and three division titles from 2000-2005, admits he got so low after the season that he needed some outside motivation. Not long after the Aggies were routed 49-9 to close the regular season, he was quietly reflecting on the year in his study when his 9-year-old daughter came in and climbed up onto his lap.
“You’re expecting your little daughter to say those three words you want to hear, which is, ‘I love you,’” Sherman said. “She says, ‘Daddy, get over it,’ and she got up off my seat and went back and watched television.
“It was a long weekend, but out of the mouths of babes, you get great advice.”
And that’s where Sherman is now: in the “moving on” phase. Recruiting went well enough — Rivals.com ranked A&M’s 2009 class No. 22 nationally — and Sherman said he believes in his coaching staff and loves his players and the way they’ve embraced the rebuilding project in the midst of one of college football’s biggest meat-grinders, a.k.a., the Big 12 Conference’s South Division.
“How we handle this challenge remains to be seen,” Sherman said. “It’s a very difficult road we’re on right now, but we’ll be better this year than we were a year ago, I promise you that.
“Hopefully, once in a while, you get a break here and there (and) who knows what might happen?”
Although every coach hopes to be the exception, difficult transitions are typically the rule in college football, especially when the core schemes undergo a major overhaul. No one knows that better than Nebraska fans, who saw their 35-year bowl streak snapped in 2004 when former coach Bill Callahan installed the West Coast offense in a program full of players recruited to execute an option-based attack.
Sherman could surely empathize.
“Right or wrong, we come in with our coaches or how we do things and are pretty demanding about doing it a certain way,” Sherman said. “It’s awful tough on a group of seniors maybe that you didn’t recruit, so we had some transitional issues.”
A&M sophomore free safety Trent Hunter doesn’t mince words when describing what happened last season when he apparently felt some of the Aggie upperclassmen didn’t care to be on the same page as Sherman’s coaching staff.
“I guess that was almost like a cop-out, (saying), ‘Oh, it’s a new system. We can’t buy into it. It’s a new head coach,’” Hunter said. “At the same time, you’ve got to play with the guys who are beside you, not the guys who are giving you the playbook.
“So if we had a problem (last year), I don’t think it was the new coaches, I think it was that some guys didn’t really have that ‘want to’ to buy in.”
Junior quarterback Jerrod Johnson also heaped much of the blame for A&M’s dreary 2008 season upon the players’ shoulders.
“I feel we haven’t performed the way we should,” Johnson said. “I think we have great coaches, our administration did a good job getting those guys in and our fans support us.
“We have everything you could ever want at a university, but (losing) just it happens. I can’t really explain why it has happened, but it’s our job to get it back where it needs to be.”
For his part, Sherman places no blame on A&M’s departed seniors.
“I think transition is hard in college football when a new coach comes in and you have a senior class that realizes this is their last go-round,” Sherman said. “There are going to be some issues there, so I think that was a struggle that we had at different times.
“And put no discredit on them. I think it’s tough. It was tough on them. It was tough on me.”
One area Sherman said he was very critical of the Aggies for last season was their competition level in practices. Thanks to an influx of youth and energy from a 45-member freshman class — including walk-ons — Sherman has seen improvements in that area for a program that hasn’t finished a season ranked among the top 25 since 1999.
“I feel like the level of play on a daily basis of how they compete against one another will eventually compete against people in the Big 12 has been elevated,” Sherman said. “What remains to be seen is how it plays out in the Big 12. At this point, I’m pleased with what they’ve done so far. We still have a lot of work to do.”
Terry Douglass is sports editor for The Independent.
Opening the season with an 18-14 home loss to Arkansas State was one thing, but getting rolled by a combined score of 156-58 in the last three games of the season by Oklahoma, Baylor and Texas punctuated a disastrous debut for Sherman. Once known for their “Wrecking Crew” defense, the Aggies gave up an average of 37.4 points per game.
“Expectations at A&M are extremely high and that’s why I wanted to go there,” Sherman said. “With the transition last year, the disappointment was strong. I’ll never forget it.”
Sherman, a former A&M assistant who coached the NFL’s Green Bay Packers to a 59-43 record and three division titles from 2000-2005, admits he got so low after the season that he needed some outside motivation. Not long after the Aggies were routed 49-9 to close the regular season, he was quietly reflecting on the year in his study when his 9-year-old daughter came in and climbed up onto his lap.
“It was a long weekend, but out of the mouths of babes, you get great advice.”
And that’s where Sherman is now: in the “moving on” phase. Recruiting went well enough — Rivals.com ranked A&M’s 2009 class No. 22 nationally — and Sherman said he believes in his coaching staff and loves his players and the way they’ve embraced the rebuilding project in the midst of one of college football’s biggest meat-grinders, a.k.a., the Big 12 Conference’s South Division.
“How we handle this challenge remains to be seen,” Sherman said. “It’s a very difficult road we’re on right now, but we’ll be better this year than we were a year ago, I promise you that.
“Hopefully, once in a while, you get a break here and there (and) who knows what might happen?”
Although every coach hopes to be the exception, difficult transitions are typically the rule in college football, especially when the core schemes undergo a major overhaul. No one knows that better than Nebraska fans, who saw their 35-year bowl streak snapped in 2004 when former coach Bill Callahan installed the West Coast offense in a program full of players recruited to execute an option-based attack.
Sherman could surely empathize.
“Right or wrong, we come in with our coaches or how we do things and are pretty demanding about doing it a certain way,” Sherman said. “It’s awful tough on a group of seniors maybe that you didn’t recruit, so we had some transitional issues.”
A&M sophomore free safety Trent Hunter doesn’t mince words when describing what happened last season when he apparently felt some of the Aggie upperclassmen didn’t care to be on the same page as Sherman’s coaching staff.
“I guess that was almost like a cop-out, (saying), ‘Oh, it’s a new system. We can’t buy into it. It’s a new head coach,’” Hunter said. “At the same time, you’ve got to play with the guys who are beside you, not the guys who are giving you the playbook.
“So if we had a problem (last year), I don’t think it was the new coaches, I think it was that some guys didn’t really have that ‘want to’ to buy in.”
Junior quarterback Jerrod Johnson also heaped much of the blame for A&M’s dreary 2008 season upon the players’ shoulders.
“I feel we haven’t performed the way we should,” Johnson said. “I think we have great coaches, our administration did a good job getting those guys in and our fans support us.
“We have everything you could ever want at a university, but (losing) just it happens. I can’t really explain why it has happened, but it’s our job to get it back where it needs to be.”
For his part, Sherman places no blame on A&M’s departed seniors.
“I think transition is hard in college football when a new coach comes in and you have a senior class that realizes this is their last go-round,” Sherman said. “There are going to be some issues there, so I think that was a struggle that we had at different times.
“And put no discredit on them. I think it’s tough. It was tough on them. It was tough on me.”
One area Sherman said he was very critical of the Aggies for last season was their competition level in practices. Thanks to an influx of youth and energy from a 45-member freshman class — including walk-ons — Sherman has seen improvements in that area for a program that hasn’t finished a season ranked among the top 25 since 1999.
“I feel like the level of play on a daily basis of how they compete against one another will eventually compete against people in the Big 12 has been elevated,” Sherman said. “What remains to be seen is how it plays out in the Big 12. At this point, I’m pleased with what they’ve done so far. We still have a lot of work to do.”
Terry Douglass is sports editor for The Independent.
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