Junction

#FreeJohnnyFootball

Damontre Moore

There's been a buzz around campus since they've been back, experience was breathtaking, it doesn't happen that often and it's been good for this program and this community. Still kind of awe of experiencing the community and the town.

Hundred of people waiting for them when they got back. One of the biggest spirit walks they've ever had. Heard people were driving in from Austin and Houston to meet the team. Still today walking around on campus and people are talking to them and getting excited.

In the big picture that game can do a lot of things. Been hearing the phones going off the hook with recruits calling. People want to be part of this program, part of this city. A&M is here to stay. People doubted them but they're realizing they're here. Bringing a whole new light on the program, and not just for football, brings light to basketball soccer volleyball and everything.

Feel like they haven't made the statement they want yet, not how you start, it's how you finish. Don't want to overlook anybody.

Surprising but it's not on the defense because the transition of the scheme was challenging, but they know these guys, they work together, they sweat and bleed together, for them to have the success they're having they envisioned that. They knew what they were capable of.

Williams and Carson are tremendous backs. To have that much talent and to face them in practice sets them up for good scheme and replication of Alabama. Not exactly the identical back, but the talent is there.

Just believed in the coaching staff from day one and it's paid off.

Said Manziel should win the Heisman. Never played a down of college football and breaking all these records, helping lead this team, would give him his Heisman vote.

Said on the sidelines you have to take a sneak peak sometimes to witness “amazing” when Manziel is on the field.

Jonathan Stewart

Have to keep focus, cherish the final games at Kyle Field.

Kind of shocked Alabama at first, but then it was a great battle.

It's going to be satisfying, going uphill right now but still have a season to finish. Alabama win is important for recruiting and everything, but that win is in the books. We can revisit it after the season, but during the season it's just one win. Now we just want to beat Sam Houston State.

Kirby Ennis was good, Dustin Harris was good. Everybody wanted to make plays. Everybody wanted to be the guy to make the play.

Have grown a lot. Never knew how fast the offense could go in the spring. Last year the offense went pretty fast, but first few days of spring practice were pretty tough. When they're on the sideline and they see the other defense out there dying, it's kind of funny.

Team always though the offense would work. A lot of SEC teams can win by only scoring 21 points, but against A&M there's a good chance you're going to lose.

Turnovers were huge.

Sean and him have a couple of ways to contain Johnny, but won't say it, laughing. There's a way, but you have to reinvent the will.

Sam can run the ball efficiently. They do “funky things” with their motion and sets. Haven't seen that.

Right there with those guys, help them prepare a lot. Tra Carson goes hard every day. Last week he was spinning a lot to help them prepare for Eddie Lacy, those guys are helping them a lot.

Excited to get back to Kyle Field. Always great to hear the crowd shut up and hear the Aggie War Hymn at the end of the game, but love playing at Kyle Field. Only have two opportunities left.

All of the guys, nobody is selfish, want to see everyone have success. Swope had a heck of a game. Was proud of him, love that guy, he's always working hard and we expect it again this week.

Have to make sure they don't take anybody lightly, have to make sure they prepare and take care of business and then see what happens at the end of the day.

Ryan Swope

- going to be hard to top that...

- Knew he was going to get hit but had to step up and make a play for the team. For a second he wasn't sure he would get up but knew he had to get up and send a message to Alabama.

- Very interested in the Heisman trophy race, haven't had a guy in it in a long time. Hopeful that he can just keep doing what he's doing, but it's a team effort. Looking forward to seeing what he can do.

- Repping the wheel route all week in practice and they were waiting for it to be called. Manziel was thinking the same thing and he put it right on the spot. When the ball was in the air he told himself he wasn't letting anyone else catch the football. It was cool coming down with it. It was a play they had put in that week. It was a great throw. He steps up in big moments and makes big plays. Hit Malcome Kennedy in the endzone, big time players make big time plays.

- All about knowing the system. Every system is different and you go about it different. Spending more time in the film room or with the coach. A lot of it is preparation before the game and during the week. A lot more terminology with the old offense. Took them a while to learn it. Once you got it down. It's hard to learn, but then it gets clicking. This one is easier to learn, but then it comes to doing the little things in the film room and studying the opponent.

- Obviously coming off of a high. Not really worried about it, have a great group of seniors that know what's in front of them, know what they have to accomplish. Have to realize what they've gotten themselves into and act like a mature football team.

- Working with Kingsbury has been a lot of fun. Has energy, brings energy to the offense, makes it fun. He coaches with emotion and that's a ton of fun to play for. He's going to go for the throat. Whether it's third down or in practice, "we're practicing to win."

Kevin Sumlin

- "I don't think so. It doesn't when it comes to you guys. We went through yesterday. We have Sundays off for the players. We think it's good for them to be away from us and for us to be away from them win or lose." Family time, church time, whatever they want to do. Go over the game Monday, review film, look at how they can get better.

- "That was really neat. As Coach Beatty would say, where he comes from that's what they call "a neat deal." We got wind of it and all of a sudden we were on the plane and where we landed and someone pulled out their ipad and showed him a photo of it."

-"That's one of the reasons I was excited to come back here. Texas A&M is such a unique place, the only place in the country where 30,000 stand in the game. I don't' know how many people were there, but they hung around, our players enjoyed that. As happy as we were in Tuscaloosa, as happy as the players were,"

- "Simplicity of what you're trying to do is all by design. You build off of principles. The complexity comes off of it's execution. Would rather have 11 guys know what you're going to do than have three guys know what you're doing and have it being very complex and complicated. College Football you only get 20 hours a week and you can't be with them more than four hours a day."

- "Guys have to understand each other, not just one guy who understands his position. The better your team is the more one guy understands everybody's position. I would say that it was easy to grasp, that's a good thing, I'm glad he said that."

- "Kingsbury has continued to grow. He's a really dedicated, hard working guy. He's one of the first guys in the office every day, always looking for new stuff, new wrinkles. Does a great job with the growth of all the quarterbacks. A lot of things that go into organization of staff and there's different ways to do things, he does a great job of organizing the staff." - Ultimately it's one guy that has to make tough decisions and he's grown through that. You can't have a bigger stage than what they've been on, and he's continued to grow and he's handled it.

- "He all of the intangibles and all of the it factor, he's going to be a great head coach one day."

- "We get to see him in practice, it's a lot like Kliff. You think some of the plays we run in the game are screwy you should see what we're doing at 5:00 on the practice fields." In the spring he was extremely careless with the football. He would make a great play but then give it to the defense. He's done a great job of taking care of the football and still creating offense. You look at a couple of the throws he's made, that vertical to swope. Those are great throws. Continued to develop mechanically, which is hard to do during the season. The greatest jumps at that position are between seasons. It's hard to get dramatically better week to week because of game plan and knowledge and those sort of things, in the offseason that's where mechanics and real film study come in. Not only him but I said going into the game last week that we're a different team from week one. Have to have a feel for what your players can and can't do. That's hard to know in practice. You don't really know what anybody is going to do until the pressure hits. Certain people will run from it, certain people will handle it, we've got a better feel for what guys can do and can't do over the course of the season.

- Heisman Hype comes with winning. As you win, those types of things come. A lot of awards come. I was at the Home Depot awards a few years ago and I didn't see many losing coaches there or players off of losing teams. Handling winning and handling those types of things come with it.

- "They're all different. Johnny is probably, he's completely different because of his ability to move around and extend plays. He can do it with his feet and with his arm, he's unique like that."

- "He's gotten better since week one. We'll continue to work with him. One of his strengths is he's a competitor. He wants to be good."

- "We have a lot to play for right now. Met with the seniors yesterday and really had a conversation with them, we've been through a stretch. They have two more games in their career at Kyle Field. Nobody will care as much about this game as (they seniors.) For all of them, it will be the last time they play at Kyle Field. We need their leadership right now. We're still in the hunt for a lot of different things right now and getting back home I think our guys will be excited."

- "He's got to get better. We'll continue to work with him and we'll also continue to develop some other guys in the program, that's just the way it is. Until someone steps forward better than him, he's our guy. He's struggling with PAT's and field goals, but he's been a big factor in our wins from a kickoff standpoint with all of the touchbacks."

- "The schedule is what it is, they aren't going to come in here and not think they're going to win."

- "We let some people get behind us on some double move routes. That game is just a fantastic game from a team standpoint mentally. I don't think I've been in a louder place than it was in there the last part of that game. It would have been easy, you talk about the goalline stand, wouldn't have been possible if Toney Hurd doesn't still play with effort and get him on the ground. The whole thing we've talked about is the game's not over, don't quit." Hurd got beat and still gets him on the ground. Emphasizes to our team and to us that you never know, make the guys snap it again.

- "Everyone was talking about him and saying you had to see him. Once you saw him, I didn't see him live but Kliff saw him, you see the video and it's just a highlight tape. His highlight tape, I didn't watch very much of it. You didn't have to watch it. There's a couple of guys that when coaches come back off the road and you need to see this, can we offer this guy, and you're like "why are you showing me this, you didn't offer him when you were there?" He's been that kind of player all long. He's very gifted athletically. The challenge of playing quarterback, that's difficult to do for a young guy. And handle the pressure that comes with it. Unlike any other position. He touches the ball every play. The ability to make mistakes go up dramatically and when he does they're critical.

- "Texas A&M, the tradition, the resources, the gameday atmosphere, our location, everything's in place. Moving to the SEC was the next piece. Our recruiting classes reflect that."

- Had some people out there in wait and see mode, other programs were telling them that they couldn't compete in the SEC, they've answered that. Have to make some critical decisions on who we're going to take and who we're not going to take.

- Swope has been a great leader, plays with a lot of emotion. Blocking linebackers and bigger people and he's handled that.

- "One of the great moments of last Saturday and the last few Saturdays is the seniors who were here, particularly guys like Porter and Swope who I talked about when I first got here... If you come back it's going to be a real special year for you, and it has been. This week and next week are extremely important for those guys."

- "There's another senior. Guys are flying around. I didn't know who that was until Sunday. Actually I knew when I got off the bus because I asked 'Who was that that made that hit at the two yard line' and Dustin said it was me." "Shows you how hard those guys are playing."

- Johnny gets a lot of credit, and so does Mike, but these seniors have made critical critical plays for us this season. When you have guys like him making that play or Nealy making a play in the backfield, it's not a coincidence those are the guys making those plays.

Kliff Kingsbury

- Johnny was a guy that you couldn't see on film what he could do as a quarterback, you had to drive to Kerrville to see what he could do.

- Swope's catches were game changers. The spirit in which he plays and motivates a team, he jumps up off the field, that's huge.

- That's how Swope plays since he's been there. Was an admirer of him before he got here.

- Offense goes back to the Air Raid at Kentucky with Tim Couch. If you can get them playing faster and not thinking as much you're going to have a better product. You want them to play fast and play confident.

- There's a playbook but it's "top top secret."

- Competitiveness is Manziel's best aspect. He wants every throw to be perfect. He's either got it or he doesn't, but he has it.

- Hope he continues to get better. It's up to him. Has the skill set to get better and better.

- When you watch his footwork and how he came to balance and got through his throws, that's what you want to see as a quarterback's coach. He was playing to win.

- Have to credit Sumlin, he basically promoted him from quality control to offensive coordinator and never sat in his meetings or questioned his calls.

- Likes to have players write down routes and plays on their own.

- Excited to be here, players giving good energy and great effort.

- More aggressive than SEC defenses

- I think the big deal with this team is watching them start to believe in themselves. Talk about it all summer but until you get out there and do it, people saying you can't do this or can't do that, but to get out there and do it has been fun to watch.

- Never take a day off. Want to make every catch and every throw. Competitiveness makes it fun.

- Tries not to show emotion but it just comes out. That's how he played. Liked seeing the players have success. Tried the "butt slap" becuase he thought it would get a reaction out of Sumlin who tries to act cool all the time.

- Loves going out there each Saturday to see what Manziel might do next.

- "It's about the players not the plays."

- Always felt like the offense could work, never felt they had to prove anybody wrong.

- Manziel would be successful in any system, and at wide receiver and at safety.

To is what get teams are made of... I love to hear this!