Two of his former five-star quarterbacks at Texas A&M, Kyler Murray and Kyle Allen, shined in the NFL on Sunday, but it wasn’t a good look for Kevin Sumlin.
It’s been four wins in a row for the Arizona Wildcats after dropping their Week 0 game on the road against the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors, but it’s not all great for head coach Kevin Sumlin. Sure, his Wildcats look to be in good shape in the Pac-12 South, but he can’t help be reminded of the quarterback mismanagement he had at his previous employer at Texas A&M University.
At one time, Sumlin had two five-star quarterbacks on his roster at the same time: Kyle Allen from Scottsdale, Arizona and Aggies legacy Kyler Murray from Bedford, Texas. Murray’s father Kevin Murray played quarterback for the Aggies in the 1980s.
Within days of each other, Allen and the younger Murray would leave the A&M program for presumably greener pastures. Allen did not have a great time at the University of Houston, while Murray won the Heisman Trophy last year at the University of Oklahoma. Murray went on to be the No. 1 pick in the 2019 NFL Draft, while Allen went undrafted out of Houston in 2018.
But fate would find themselves aligned this fall Sunday in the NFL. Murray won his first game as the Cardinals’ starting quarterback, as Arizona eked one out over the Cincinnati Bengals on the banks of the Ohio River. Allen, however, has now won his last four starts for the Panthers dating back to Week 17 of last season. How did Sumlin not make it work with these two?
Well, the old saying is when you have two starting quarterbacks, that just means you don’t have one. Recruiting them too closely together and then thinking that a platoon between two former five-stars was going to be acceptable was 100 percent, not the case. Allen is succeeding in Charlotte and Murray is well on his way to success in Glendale.
This mismanagement of star signal-callers was the beginning of the end for Sumlin in College Station. He was fired after the 2017 NCAA season after six years in the SEC and has spent the last two years in Tuscon attempting to coach the Wildcats back to relevancy in the Pac-12 South.
Truthfully, Sumlin probably wants to see these two talented kids succeed. With both Allen and Murray moving on to bigger and better things in the NFL, hard feelings towards their former ball coach will only fade with time if they haven’t already.
All three men can have successful 2019s this football season, but it’s still crazy to think all three were in the same program at one time and it did not come together for the Aggies at all. Texas A&M is now in the second year of the Jimbo Fisher era in College Station. All four parties have moved on, but Sunday was a shining example of what could have been for the Aggies in the SEC.