It's a good thing Tulane did not practice today (Thursday) because I have a nasty non-Covid related cold and the fever to go with it. Hopefully I will feel better tomorrow morning.
Sumrall was great yesterday after Tulane returned from its practice at the Saints indoor facility, talking for 18 minutes with Jeff Duncan in the house.
SUMRALL
"We'll never go more than three straight really hard days. Monday the first pre-practice activity started at about 7:40 and the practice ended at about 10 (technically 10:08), same as yesterday (which ended at exactly 8:00). Now today the first pre-practice activity didn't start until 8:10, 30 minutes later, and we still ended at 10. From flex until the end of practice the first two days we were two hours. From flex until the end of practice today was an hour and 26 minutes. Today was the first day in shells, shoulder pads. The first two days were just spider pads, so really we try not to crater the guys, where you dig them such a hole from a hydration standpoint that they can't recover. Day 1 we were pretty good hydration wise. Yesterday we had some crampers at the very end. It was at the last 10 minutes you started seeing guys start to drop and lock up, and then today obviously none. You go from high 90s temperature that feels like 100 to inside. While the construction is going on it may not be as cool as it would be normally, but it was still probably in the mid-to-high 70s or at worst 80 and no sun. The amount of hydration they lost and the amount they sweated was a lot different today, so it's nice to be able to have access to that. I'm grateful to the Saints for letting us using it."
On having that available on campus with indoor bubble down the road:
"Down the road we'll have one we can use here. I'm not in charge of the timeline. You can ask that question and I'll have no answer."
On hot weather being something you have to deal with and account for:
"There's two reasons you want to be able to go indoors and not have to use a gym, really three. One is you have to have the field markings. We do our nighttime walk-throughs in the gym and some at Hertz. There's no substitute for hey, here's the hash, here's the numbers, here's the sideline. You can't make that up in the gym, but where it's mandatory is obviously if there's lightning within eight miles, we get shut down for 30 minutes every time there's a lightning strike. That's a killer, and with what the last two weeks have looked like around here, it's going to be a thunderstorm. It's just a matter of what time of day, so you have to deal with that, and the other is yes, you need some of the elements--that's part of training for the game. Game 2 is an 11 o'clock kick here. You better be conditioned for that and I think we will be, but also in training camp when you're going three or four days in a row you don't want to run guys into the ground, so the lightning piece is a part of it and then also the health and safety of your players and being fresh and taking care of their bodies is a part of it, and then the field spacing is needed. Right now the Superdome is kind of offline with concerts and their renovation stuff as well, and then the Saints indoors, it was good for us today. There was still some work being done, but we were able to use the football field. That was huge. We'll go over there maybe once a week if we can. It won't be like every other day or anything. We'll go out here Friday and Saturday and we may go back over there once next week and then once the following week if it works out schedule wise."
On how much time he spends on logistics:
"Some days as a head coach I'm like all right, how much football do I get to do today? We have a great support staff, so I'm able to give them what I want to do and then let them run with it, but I look at the weather like an untrained meteorologist, so I feel pretty good about my ability to tell you when it's going to rain or not rain because I look at that. I look at humidity, practice-schedule approaches. We look at this sports science stuff really close, too. I meet with our strength staff, with our trainers, with our nutritionists about our guys' hydration levels, about weight loss, weight gain. Anytime we lose more than two percent at a practice we monitor those guys to make sure they put the weight back on. There's a lot of things that go into putting a practice together that have nothing to do with what play to run, so a ton of time. Some days it's at least half my time, others it's not as bad, and then once it gets into the flow of the season, Monday is Monday, Tuesday is Tuesday and it kind of rolls along, but training camp is a little bit more all intensive on every little detail on that stuff."
On how it has changed dramatically from when he played:
"In my days freshmen reported three or four days before the returners, so as a freshman you show up and had a morning practice, a special teams practice in the middle of the day and then a nighttime practice, so it's kind of like two real practices and the one in the middle wasn't a practice but it was like a practice. There'd be the 25 signees when there was a hard cap of signing 25, and then seven, eight, 10 walk-ons in that freshman class, so there'd by 35 kids and you practice for three or four days, just y'all. And then the old guys came in and this was when real practice starts. It was like, all right, if I'm not chewed up already. It's very much changed. Our awareness on player safety has changed, too. When I played, if you cramped, it was like who cares? Now we're trying to make sure we take care of the guys. You still have to have that toughness, but you've got to be smart about what you're doing."
On what he is evaluating when he picks a starting quarterback:
"You have to function, execute and lead the offense. Protect the football. Leadership's a big part. I let the quarterbacks have it today in the middle of practice, just like step up and lead every rep. Not when it's comfortable, not when it's convenient, every rep. In bad situations, lead. Every play doesn't have to be perfect. All of our guys have the physical traits to play the position. It's about executing at a high level, leading at a high level, being a great teammate and doing those sort of things. I've referenced this, but the last couple of years we had a solid quarterback at Troy (Gunnar Watson). He was not a physical off the charts guy, but he won a lot of games, was a great leader and was super tough. He wasn't going to blow you away with any physical trait. We have some guys here that are going to wow you with physical traits. We have to get them to do everything little thing the right way to lead the team every second and just have a little urgency. We're getting there. I like the direction that some things are going, but it has to be an all-the-time thing, not a some-of-the-time thing. I've said this. Ty and Kai, we can win with either one of them. Today, Mensah had one of those day again where you're like, OK, I'm not saying it's the young kid's time yet, but it's coming and those other two guys better kick it in gear because if they don't, I have no problem starting Darian Mensah, who's a redshirt freshman if he's the best one in the next two weeks. We're going to build for this year, but we're also going to build for the long term of this program, and if Darian gives us what we need better than the other two guys, he will start. The other two guys didn't do anything wrong, but Mensah had one of those days today where I was like, all right boys, y'all see what the youngster's doing. Don't let him be the guy that's leading. If he's the guy that's leading, they y'all are going to be watching."
On how he divvies up the reps:
"Very even. Ty and Kai are getting more with the 1s than Mensah has. You'll see they alternate in who goes with the 1s in certain periods and certain racks, so very balanced so far. There's not been like one guy's getting 60-40 or whatever. It's been really split."
On Sean Payton saying QB was like pilot of plane, either flying his guys into the side of a mountain or landing them safely:
"There's some of that. In college football you see the position played a lot of different ways, so there's some guys that are pocket passers and some guys that are really great runners and throw it average. Competitiveness, leadership and grit matter, and in that position you've gotta have that drive and that desire to be the best, and there's a couple of parts to that. One is your individual best. That's easy, though. Wanting to be your best individually is easy. It's how do you help the team become its best. That's not easy. Everybody that goes to practice wants to do their best, but it's how do you, while pursuing your best, get the whole organization going in that direction, too, and getting guys to rally behind you and believe in you. That's where the secret sauce is a little bit. I look at Mensah and I see some of those things that I'm like, OK, he's got some of it. I'm not saying the other guys don't either, but you can make all the throws and not win games. You can run a 4.4 40 as a quarterback and not win games. Now it makes it easier to win if you've got those physical traits, but we can win games with physical traits being not elite, with the person, the leader, the teammate being elite."
"
Sumrall was great yesterday after Tulane returned from its practice at the Saints indoor facility, talking for 18 minutes with Jeff Duncan in the house.
SUMRALL
"We'll never go more than three straight really hard days. Monday the first pre-practice activity started at about 7:40 and the practice ended at about 10 (technically 10:08), same as yesterday (which ended at exactly 8:00). Now today the first pre-practice activity didn't start until 8:10, 30 minutes later, and we still ended at 10. From flex until the end of practice the first two days we were two hours. From flex until the end of practice today was an hour and 26 minutes. Today was the first day in shells, shoulder pads. The first two days were just spider pads, so really we try not to crater the guys, where you dig them such a hole from a hydration standpoint that they can't recover. Day 1 we were pretty good hydration wise. Yesterday we had some crampers at the very end. It was at the last 10 minutes you started seeing guys start to drop and lock up, and then today obviously none. You go from high 90s temperature that feels like 100 to inside. While the construction is going on it may not be as cool as it would be normally, but it was still probably in the mid-to-high 70s or at worst 80 and no sun. The amount of hydration they lost and the amount they sweated was a lot different today, so it's nice to be able to have access to that. I'm grateful to the Saints for letting us using it."
On having that available on campus with indoor bubble down the road:
"Down the road we'll have one we can use here. I'm not in charge of the timeline. You can ask that question and I'll have no answer."
On hot weather being something you have to deal with and account for:
"There's two reasons you want to be able to go indoors and not have to use a gym, really three. One is you have to have the field markings. We do our nighttime walk-throughs in the gym and some at Hertz. There's no substitute for hey, here's the hash, here's the numbers, here's the sideline. You can't make that up in the gym, but where it's mandatory is obviously if there's lightning within eight miles, we get shut down for 30 minutes every time there's a lightning strike. That's a killer, and with what the last two weeks have looked like around here, it's going to be a thunderstorm. It's just a matter of what time of day, so you have to deal with that, and the other is yes, you need some of the elements--that's part of training for the game. Game 2 is an 11 o'clock kick here. You better be conditioned for that and I think we will be, but also in training camp when you're going three or four days in a row you don't want to run guys into the ground, so the lightning piece is a part of it and then also the health and safety of your players and being fresh and taking care of their bodies is a part of it, and then the field spacing is needed. Right now the Superdome is kind of offline with concerts and their renovation stuff as well, and then the Saints indoors, it was good for us today. There was still some work being done, but we were able to use the football field. That was huge. We'll go over there maybe once a week if we can. It won't be like every other day or anything. We'll go out here Friday and Saturday and we may go back over there once next week and then once the following week if it works out schedule wise."
On how much time he spends on logistics:
"Some days as a head coach I'm like all right, how much football do I get to do today? We have a great support staff, so I'm able to give them what I want to do and then let them run with it, but I look at the weather like an untrained meteorologist, so I feel pretty good about my ability to tell you when it's going to rain or not rain because I look at that. I look at humidity, practice-schedule approaches. We look at this sports science stuff really close, too. I meet with our strength staff, with our trainers, with our nutritionists about our guys' hydration levels, about weight loss, weight gain. Anytime we lose more than two percent at a practice we monitor those guys to make sure they put the weight back on. There's a lot of things that go into putting a practice together that have nothing to do with what play to run, so a ton of time. Some days it's at least half my time, others it's not as bad, and then once it gets into the flow of the season, Monday is Monday, Tuesday is Tuesday and it kind of rolls along, but training camp is a little bit more all intensive on every little detail on that stuff."
On how it has changed dramatically from when he played:
"In my days freshmen reported three or four days before the returners, so as a freshman you show up and had a morning practice, a special teams practice in the middle of the day and then a nighttime practice, so it's kind of like two real practices and the one in the middle wasn't a practice but it was like a practice. There'd be the 25 signees when there was a hard cap of signing 25, and then seven, eight, 10 walk-ons in that freshman class, so there'd by 35 kids and you practice for three or four days, just y'all. And then the old guys came in and this was when real practice starts. It was like, all right, if I'm not chewed up already. It's very much changed. Our awareness on player safety has changed, too. When I played, if you cramped, it was like who cares? Now we're trying to make sure we take care of the guys. You still have to have that toughness, but you've got to be smart about what you're doing."
On what he is evaluating when he picks a starting quarterback:
"You have to function, execute and lead the offense. Protect the football. Leadership's a big part. I let the quarterbacks have it today in the middle of practice, just like step up and lead every rep. Not when it's comfortable, not when it's convenient, every rep. In bad situations, lead. Every play doesn't have to be perfect. All of our guys have the physical traits to play the position. It's about executing at a high level, leading at a high level, being a great teammate and doing those sort of things. I've referenced this, but the last couple of years we had a solid quarterback at Troy (Gunnar Watson). He was not a physical off the charts guy, but he won a lot of games, was a great leader and was super tough. He wasn't going to blow you away with any physical trait. We have some guys here that are going to wow you with physical traits. We have to get them to do everything little thing the right way to lead the team every second and just have a little urgency. We're getting there. I like the direction that some things are going, but it has to be an all-the-time thing, not a some-of-the-time thing. I've said this. Ty and Kai, we can win with either one of them. Today, Mensah had one of those day again where you're like, OK, I'm not saying it's the young kid's time yet, but it's coming and those other two guys better kick it in gear because if they don't, I have no problem starting Darian Mensah, who's a redshirt freshman if he's the best one in the next two weeks. We're going to build for this year, but we're also going to build for the long term of this program, and if Darian gives us what we need better than the other two guys, he will start. The other two guys didn't do anything wrong, but Mensah had one of those days today where I was like, all right boys, y'all see what the youngster's doing. Don't let him be the guy that's leading. If he's the guy that's leading, they y'all are going to be watching."
On how he divvies up the reps:
"Very even. Ty and Kai are getting more with the 1s than Mensah has. You'll see they alternate in who goes with the 1s in certain periods and certain racks, so very balanced so far. There's not been like one guy's getting 60-40 or whatever. It's been really split."
On Sean Payton saying QB was like pilot of plane, either flying his guys into the side of a mountain or landing them safely:
"There's some of that. In college football you see the position played a lot of different ways, so there's some guys that are pocket passers and some guys that are really great runners and throw it average. Competitiveness, leadership and grit matter, and in that position you've gotta have that drive and that desire to be the best, and there's a couple of parts to that. One is your individual best. That's easy, though. Wanting to be your best individually is easy. It's how do you help the team become its best. That's not easy. Everybody that goes to practice wants to do their best, but it's how do you, while pursuing your best, get the whole organization going in that direction, too, and getting guys to rally behind you and believe in you. That's where the secret sauce is a little bit. I look at Mensah and I see some of those things that I'm like, OK, he's got some of it. I'm not saying the other guys don't either, but you can make all the throws and not win games. You can run a 4.4 40 as a quarterback and not win games. Now it makes it easier to win if you've got those physical traits, but we can win games with physical traits being not elite, with the person, the leader, the teammate being elite."
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