How Jon Sumrall is using lessons from time as Kentucky player, coach in fast start at Troy

It was the type of play that is supposed to be once in a lifetime.

With no time on the clock, Appalachian State quarterback Chase Brice heaved a desperation “Hail Mary” attempt toward the end zone. The ball was tipped by a Troy defender before landing in the hands of Appalachian State receiver Christan Horn who then ran into the end zone untouched for a 53-yard touchdown to give his team an improbable 32-28 victory.

Only the “Hail Mary” was not once in a lifetime for Troy Coach Jon Sumrall. He had been on the losing end of a last-second “Hail Mary” once before.

Sumrall was a redshirt freshman at Kentucky in 2002 when the Wildcats lost on the “Bluegrass Miracle” to LSU. That day, Kentucky Coach Guy Morriss had already been doused with Gatorade and hundreds of fans had reached the Commonwealth Stadium field when LSU quarterback Marcus Randall completed a last-second “Hail Mary” pass to Devery Henderson for the win.

So when Sumrall was tasked with leading his team past the Appalachian State heartbreak just three games into his first year as head coach, it only made sense to call on his experience as a Kentucky player.

“I think the thing you have to do as a coach is take ownership of it, don’t point the finger at the players,” Sumrall told the Herald-Leader in an interview this week. “I’ll take all the blame. We don’t finish the game the right way, it’s on me. Don’t put it on the young men. Put it on me.

“I think maybe having been there and experienced that kind of setback prepares you for when something doesn’t go the right way in another opportunity, which happened. So, you learn from every situation, good and bad.”

The 2002 Wildcats bounced back from the LSU “Hail Mary” to win at Vanderbilt a week later and clinch a winning season.

Sumrall’s Troy team has done even better in responding to its heartbreak.

The Trojans have won four consecutive games since the Appalachian State loss. On Thursday, Troy will face South Alabama for first place in its Sun Belt Conference division in a game televised on ESPNU.

Then a national audience will be introduced to the former Kentucky player and assistant coach who has started his head coaching career with a 5-2 record, matching Troy’s win total from each of the last three seasons.

It’s unlikely that success has come as a surprise to anyone in the Kentucky locker room who worked with Sumrall as the Wildcats inside linebackers coach and co-defensive coordinator the last three years.

“I was pretty happy for him because I know what type of guy he is,” UK linebacker DeAndre Square said in December after Sumrall was hired by Troy. “He’s Big Blue all the way down. He would love to stay here for as long as he can, but the opportunity that he had was just something he couldn’t pass up on.”

Dealing with the aftermath of the Appalachian State “Hail Mary” was not the only lesson Sumrall has used from his time at Kentucky as a head coach.

Sumrall was recruited to Kentucky by Hal Mumme’s staff but signed with the Wildcats just days after Mumme was fired in 2001. He played two seasons for Morriss and two years for Rich Brooks. When a spine injury ended his playing career a year early, Sumrall joined Brooks’ staff as a graduate assistant, working closely with defensive coordinator Mike Archer.

After stops at San Diego and Tulane, Sumrall was hired by Troy in 2015 as assistant head coach and special teams coordinator for head coach Neal Brown, another former Kentucky player who had just spent two years as the Wildcats’ offensive coordinator for Mark Stoops. He spent two years at Troy and a season as linebackers coach for Ole Miss before returning to Kentucky for a job on Stoops’ staff in 2019.

By then, Stoops had already built Kentucky from 2-10 in his first season to the program’s first 10-win season in 41 years in 2018, but Sumrall helped sustain that success as the primary recruiter for several high-profile prospects in the Deep South. As linebackers coach, he helped develop first-round draft pick Jamin Davis as well as current super-senior starters Square and Jacquez Jones.

“Learned a lot from both (Brooks and Archer),” Sumrall said. “Both were defensive minded guys, and both had been head coaches. For me, I think I had the privilege of seeing those two guys and then kind of came full circle having the opportunity to come back and work for Mark and see another defensive-minded head coach and how he did it.

“Without the University of Kentucky and my experiences there as a player and a coach, I wouldn’t be who I am or where I am today.”

Sumrall deepened the ties between Kentucky and Troy earlier this month when he announced the team’s offensive line meeting room would be named in honor of former UK player and coach John Schlarman, who also coached at Troy from 2007 to 2012. The honor was funded by a donation from Brown and his wife, Brooke.

Schlarman died in 2020 after a two-year battle with a rare form of cancer. He continued to coach Kentucky’s offensive line throughout his treatments.

“I decided I wanted to do what I could to recognize John and honor John immediately upon taking this job,” Sumrall said. “My first experience with Troy football was when John was the o-line coach here in 2010. I would never have even come to visit Troy probably except I was coming to see John.

“... When I took this job in my opening remarks I referenced it. John Schlarman’s legacy was going to live on in this program and that John could just as easily be standing right where I was as the head coach at Troy.”

Sumrall’s relationship with Schlarman and Brown, who were both assistants on Stoops’ inaugural Kentucky staff, gave him greater insight into the difficulty of the early years of the rebuilding project.

Even after Sumrall returned to Kentucky as an assistant coach, it was clear the amount of work Stoops and his staff still had to put in at a non-traditional football power.

“I think Mark had a really good vision of what he thought it was going to take to find success,” Sumrall said. “He worked the plan and he stayed the course and he did not react maybe to things in a knee-jerk fashion. He stayed the course and kept fighting the good fight.

“... Seeing his hard work and relentlessness pay off, I think I learned a lot from him.”

With Brown as head coach, Troy won 10 games in three consecutive seasons from 2016 to 2018, but the program’s success faltered after Brown left for West Virginia’s head coaching job.

The Trojans recorded losing records in each of the next three seasons. The only bowl berth in that span came in the pandemic-altered 2020 season when all teams were declared eligible for bowls regardless of record.

There were some advantages for Sumrall in his quest for a quick turnaround.

As an assistant for Brown, he actually helped recruit several of Troy’s current, sixth-year seniors using the extra year of eligibility granted all players in 2020 due to the pandemic. That knowledge of the roster gave him insight into the player leadership situation, helping him tap into a resource that had been critical to Stoops’ success at Kentucky.

That leadership was key in Troy’s ability to respond to the Appalachian State heartbreak.

Now, the challenge is different with the Trojans in the thick of a Sun Belt title race that features three teams with wins over Power Five conference programs.

“I think through good or bad, success or failure, I’ve sort of put in our guys’ heads, ‘So what, now what?” Sumrall said. “No different than when we lost a tough one to App. So what, now what? What do you do next? You win a game. All right, so what, now what? What do you do next?”

Sumrall took to Twitter last week to quote tweet the football program’s promotional account’s noting his team had been ranked 17th nationally by one outlet with two emojis meaning rat poison, a phrase coined by Alabama Coach Nick Saban to describe the type of positive news that can distract players.

That tweet found its way to the Kentucky locker room.

“He’s the head coach, so he’s got to be serious,” Square said with a laugh. “It’s funny to me to see him in that, but I’m happy.”

With Kentucky off this week, Square and his teammates are likely to tune in to Troy’s marquee Thursday night matchup.

Win there, and Troy clinches bowl eligibility while taking control of its division race. Bigger goals are within reach too as the Sun Belt champion will probably be in contention for the automatic New Year’s Six bowl bid awarded to the highest-ranked Group of Five conference program in the final playoff committee ranking.

Just don’t expect Sumrall to think that far ahead yet. He’s taken at least one other lesson from his time working with Stoops to Troy, too.

“I talked to our guys a lot about you get 12 regular season opportunities,” he said. “You want to give it everything you’ve got each week and lay it all on the line and play to your standard. Don’t compromise what your standard is and give each week everything you have to make it the best you can make it.”

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