By Adam Abramson
In addition to making me look bad this season, Dennis Franchione flipped College Station upside down and left Texas A&M’s football program in a state of emergency.
The former coach recruited a ton of talent to play on Kyle Field and this Web space predicted the Aggies to win the Big 12 with their stable of offensive weapons.
Instead, they flopped to a 7-6 record, showing little toughness and often forgetting football includes playing defense.
In addition to ticking everyone off with mediocre football, Franchione raked the program over the bad press coals with stunts like the “booster newsletter” that earned him, I mean his Web site, over $37,000.
A&M decided to clean its hands of Franchione and bring in Mike Sherman from the Houston Texans. While Sherman is a stranger to running a college football program, he’s no foreigner to the A&M football program. That said, leading the Aggies won’t be that foreign a task to Sherman, who served as both general manager and head coach in Green Bay.
Purely from a personality standpoint, Sherman is the perfect hire. The Aggies have to restore their great tradition of pure football and winning and Sherman is the right man to front this movement. He’s all business and has a great appreciation for what Texas A&M football was. After all, he’s been there.
“It’s kind of like going full circle,” Sherman said. “This is my third time, so there’s a lot of familiarity, but a lot of new things, as well.”
That makes sense, considering he hasn’t coached in College Station, or on the college ranks, since 1996. After over a decade in the pros, Sherman is having to adjust to the changes that come with the college game.
“The numbers that you deal with when you get your whole squad together is 130 players and in the National Football League you had 53 with about eight practice squad players,” Sherman said. “And then the issues you deal with are so different, obviously. The academic part of things, the maturity aspects, trying to get guys to be more accountable – most of the guys in the National Football League have achieved success in those areas as far as accountability and doing your job the right way. The kids here are just learning, so you’re teaching them those things.”
Sherman served as the GM and head coach in Green Bay -- experience should weather that change rather well. Sherman acknowledged the similarities between the roles of GM and head coach at A&M, citing everything from recruiting to administrative duties.
“The transition is always a difficult time. When you take something over like I did, and like other people have done, the sooner people jump in the boat, the sooner the trust factor comes your way as a leader of the football team and the sooner you can make progress.”
Progress is what Sherman is hoping to achieve right away. A&M went 32-28 under Franchione in five seasons – far below the program’s standards. Taking over at such a fragile time, Sherman knew he had to earn the trust of his new players immediately.
“What I did was I say to the players, ‘Hey, you don’t know me very well, we don’t have a relationship, but I’m going to ask you to trust me from the get-go. Give me a leap of faith and trust that I’m going to make good decisions and lead us in the right direction. If you do that, then we’ll get to where we need to be faster. And through that time, hopefully we’ll develop a relationship that will validate everything. And if I disappoint you and you can’t trust me, so be it. But hopefully that will not be the case. Understand that I have this football team and your best interests at heart and let us move forward.’ ”
“So far the players have bought into that part of it and have trusted how we’re doing things and it has allowed us to move forward a little faster.”
While Sherman gets everyone to move forward, looking at the recent transgressions of the program is something he’s not interested in.
“I don’t want to talk about changes in regard to what [Franchione] did and what I’m going to do. There are different philosophies and whatnot,” Sherman said about noticeable differences under his watch. “I don’t want to be critical of the past. I just know what our guys are going to do. Offensively, defensively and special teams, what we’re going to do – regardless of the past – is be fairly aggressive.”
Sherman admitted he didn’t look much into the past when he took over. It’s also interesting he mentioned aggressiveness, a characteristic of A&M teams questioned at times under Franchione.
With his first spring under his belt, Sherman has had time to evaluate what he inherited.
Up front, Sherman has a fairly green unit of offensive linemen that he says he’s trying to mold. Fortunately for A&M, Sherman has over a decade of coaching offensive linemen. He admitted it’s “a work in progress.”
As for strengths, Sherman didn’t have to look far: “I would say our strength is two-fold: The quarterback and running back position.”
With Stephen McGee, Mike Goodson and Jorvorskie Lane in his offensive backfield, Sherman has much to work with. And that’s not a foreign concept to him either. Remember he’s the coach who worked with Brett Favre and drafted/developed guys like Nick Barnett, Aaron Kampman and Javon Walker.
While McGee, and any other college quarterback, is a step down from the field general Sherman had in Favre, the new A&M coach is confident in McGee.
“He’s very competitive, he was out this past [offseason] with a labrum tear. It’s in his non-throwing shoulder, but when we started up, he was very anxious to get back and get on the field and pushing the envelope. He’s a tremendous competitor,” Sherman said. “He’s very intelligent and is going to be a fine quarterback.”
One thing that will have to change under Sherman is A&M’s ability to win the close football game consistently. Two years ago, A&M’s three regular season losses were by a combined six points.
“My philosophy is to get our guys to be confident in those situations that come up in games that are game-defining plays. We practice a lot of special situations,” Sherman said. “We practice the last eight minutes of the game … a lot of variables come up that define whether you win or lose. So we practice to prepare for those three or four plays to define who win a game. And it’s not just from a functional standpoint, it’s so the players gain confidence when we get in those situations. It’s so they can say ‘We practice this, we’ve been here before.' "
Sounds exactly like what the Aggies need.