Everything Rhett Lashlee said at ACC Kickoff touting SMU’s alignment, winning pedigree

SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee ruffled some feathers with some shots at the playoff system, but mainly, he focused on his Mustangs. On Friday for ACC Kickoff, Lashlee led off the day at the podium. Here’s what he said. RHETT LASHLEE: All right. Good to be with everyone. Excited to be here for our third ACC media days and kickoff. I think for me, just genuinely filled with a lot of gratitude and thankful to be the head coach at SMU, work with an incredible staff, phenomenal players. We got three great players representing our team today. Thankful to be where I am, get to do what I do. Grateful to represent the ACC. Humbled to represent our university. We have an incredible president in Jay Hartzell; our provost, Rachel Mersey; our athletics director, Damon Evans; our board chair, Rich Templeton. And all our many donors and all our university partners are just so fantastic. For me and our players to get to come represent SMU is great. We have great alignment at SMU. You hear that word a lot. I think the way college football is going more and more now, people can’t fake it. You either have it or you don’t, and it shows. We clearly have it. I’m thankful for that, to get to represent them. Secondly, I want to congratulate Manny Diaz and Duke on winning the conference championship. A lot of good friends there in Jonathan Patke, Jonathan Brewer, David Feeley. What they did last year winning the league was incredible, in a very competitive league. I think we all know they should have easily been in the Playoffs. When you win the ACC, the way they did and who they beat, they should have been in instead of a team from the Sun Belt. But hopefully things get learned and that doesn’t happen again. We should have been a two-bid league. But congratulations to Duke on what they did. Really, really incredible. For me, the summer was fun. We got a chance to work hard through June. Our guys have been working really hard. We get a couple weeks off for coaches before this, which signals our season. For me and my family, it was kind of low-key summer. We just hung out at the lake a little bit. We did get to go to Montana for a week. I’m going through some challenges right now. I have two sets of twins. My girls are 10, getting older. Hi, Rowyn and Scarlet, watching right now. Hudson and Thomas are turning 16 in September. I bought two vehicles yesterday. Now I’m in the process of getting them insured. A lot going on there (smiling). Fortunately my father-in-law was an insurance agent so he can help me out knowing how bad it’s going to be. My wife, Lauren, is fantastic. Missing them right now. We had a good summer, now we’re geared up and ready for the season. When you start looking at where we are as an ACC, I think our league has never been better or healthier. The commissioner outlined those things the other day. In a time where for whatever reason recency bias seems to be the thing that carries the day until it doesn’t, I think we have to be honest with ourselves. Nothing that happened last year and the past has any effect on this year, for league, our team, college football. Everything is a blank slate. That’s what’s exciting about the game. This league is the best league because of what they did in the past. Let’s look at the past and be honest with ourselves. Last year we went 8-6 against the SEC. And it’s funny. I ruffled some feathers last year here, unintentionally, when I said since 1963, the same six schools have won a certain conference every year. And ironically, it held through last year. I think what our league has done, 8-6 against the SEC last year, 7-4 in the post-season against Power Four opponents, then you look at what we’re continuing to do. Our league is continuing to tout how many non-conference games we play. Everybody is playing 10 Power Four games, some 11. We play more big non-conference games than any other league; yet at some point these FPIs and all these algorithms you think will catch up to that reality. Whenever some of y’all figure out how we can have pre-season strength of schedules and power rankings before anybody has played a game, y’all let me know. Two years ago we got two teams into the first 12-team Playoff. This past year we should have had two, as I said. And one of our teams played for the national title. So I think we’ve continued to solidify ourselves as a national title contender. We’ve won three in the last 15 years. Only three leagues can say that. So our league is in great place. I think it’s arguably as good as it’s been this year. There’s probably eight to ten teams at least that could easily be justified as winning our league this year. It’s going to be a lot of fun to compete. When you start thinking about SMU, we’re not a blue blood, but we are a new blood. When you start thinking about it along those lines, new blood is what we’re currently doing. We’re present. Blue blood means it’s what you’ve done in the past. We’re not resting on what we’ve done in the past. We’re living in what we’re doing now. When you look at it from that standpoint, in the last three years we’re a top 10 team. The reason I can say that is we have the eighth most wins in America in the last three years. We have the most wins in the ACC in the last three years. We have the most wins in the state of Texas. We have the most road wins in the state of Texas. We’re 17-2 at home in Ford Stadium, the best home record in the ACC. We have yet to lose an ACC game at home. We’ve had a good start. We’re so thankful to be here. Candidly, we’ve been good. But we’re in pursuit of great. We haven’t achieved it yet. We have a lot of work to do. That’s what these guys and I are all focusing on, is how can we be great. I want to talk about these guys. We have PJ Williams here, starting offensive tackle from Dickinson, Texas; Coach John Snelson, a legendary coach in our state. We have Brandon Booker, a linebacker for us from DeSoto; Coach Claude Mathis. We have Kevin Jennings, our quarterback; Jason Todd at South Oak Cliff. Three great young men from the state of Texas representing us. We’ve been promoting Kevin this week a lot, and deservedly so. I think his stats speak for itself, when you start returning Power Four quarterbacks, nobody has a better winning percentage of guys that have started for at least two years. He’s got the third most wins returning in the country, fifth in passing yards, fifth in total offense, fifth in touchdowns in returning Power Four quarterbacks. In the ACC, he’s first in returning passing yards, first in total yards, first in wins, first in winning percentage as a returning quarterback. It’s not just what we think, there’s actually evidence in two years to back it up. He’s healthy now. So we’re excited to push him. We know it’s a team and a player. We have to win, play well all year. If we do, there’s no question in our mind he’s one of the best players in America. With that being said, on behalf of our staff, I have a fantastic staff. We’re just so happy to be here representing SMU. We’re excited. I’m excited about our team. I like our team. I like the makeup of our team, not just physically and all those attributes, but the intangible attributes. We’re excited to make the SMU family proud this year with what we do out on the field. With that, questions. THE MODERATOR: Questions, please. Q. You bet on yourselves as an institution to leave the American, to come here to the Power Four. You played for an ACC championship. What that says about where SMU was and why betting on yourself and having that faith has paid off so far, why this is something that’s not a fluke but what we can expect. RHETT LASHLEE: Great question. I mean, we bet on ourself. You have to go perform. Fortunately we were able to make a good first impression. Last year was important that we backed it up. I know we didn’t win the league, but to go win nine games, go 6-2 in the league, play well, have some good moments. I think backed up that it wasn’t a fluke. We have a chance to have staying power, to be a great member of this league, to compete for this league year in, year out, to compete for the College Playoff year in, year out. That’s our goal. We have great supporters. We’re able to bet on ourselves because our university and supporters are fantastic. Like I said, we’ve been good, but we’re still in the pursuit of great. We haven’t won anything special. We haven’t done anything special. We know there’s a lot of hard work ahead of us. I think it just validated to everyone else and to ourselves that we are where we’re supposed to be. We can achieve the things we want to achieve. That’s what we’re still working on. Q. You have a lot of returning talent on the offensive line. Can you speak about the importance of returning an offensive line and how important it is to gain that continuity. RHETT LASHLEE: Obviously PJ is here. PJ has been with us the last three years, just been an incredible level of consistency and talent for us. Now he’s set, First Team All-American, should be a first-round draft pick if he stays healthy this year. But it’s not just him. I think Garin Justice and Reggie Bain, our offensive line coaches, have done a great job of recruiting, bringing guys in, developing, growing that room. You’ve got PJ, Josh Bates at center, Addison Nichols returning at right guard. Andrew Chamblee played a ton of football for us. Four guys who have played a lot of football, four guys that were starting when we beat Miami last year. Returning guys. We have a lot of good, young players, too, competing at left guard, other spots on our line. It’s not just that we do have a veteran group coming back, it’s the depth. As we all know, it’s hard to play O line. You can ask PJ. Injuries happen. In big-time college football, it’s not about starting your O and D line. It’s what’s behind them. What’s the depth? When a guy gets nicked up, misses a game, what’s coming in behind him? Offensively we have to be able to run the ball to control the game, protect the quarterback. O-line is the engine. Nobody on that field can do anything without those five guys. It’s huge for us to have a lot of veteran guys coming back this year. Q. With three co-coordinators on offense and two on defense, how have the responsibilities and workflow divided itself? Why did you choose to label the staff that way? RHETT LASHLEE: I’m just not good at making decisions (smiling). No, so a couple things. It’s a great question. We’ve been blessed for four years haven’t had to change coordinators. That’s been pretty cool. It helps a first-time head coach his first four years to have Scott Symons, Casey Woods. Casey is going to be a fantastic head coach at Missouri State. I can’t believe we have to play them week four. And then Scott, getting to be the linebacker coach for the Dallas Cowboys, not even having to move, where he grew up. Both those guys did so much for our program. But you also look at the health of a program and as a staff and go, when that happens, we got a chance with, again, our A.D. and our resources to go out and hire the best in the country. And we’re able to look inward and find the best. So to have someone like Maurice Crum and Rickey Hunley Jr. sitting there — Rickey Hunley has been with Scott Symons for 10 years. Incredible success together defensively and obviously at SMU. They’ve changed the culture of defense at SMU. He’s been a huge part of that. Maurice Crum, who has been with us the last three years, was a two-time captain linebacker at Notre Dame, been a coordinator at other places. Those guys, they get what the identity of our SMU defense is. I think those guys have done a fantastic job taking what we’ve done, carrying it on, and then how do we get better? Kind of put their own personality on it. Then you go to offense, Rob Likens has been with me since my two years at Miami. He’s incredible. He already had a co-OC tag, kept that. He obviously is doing some other things. Not obviously, he’s doing some other things for me from a chief of staff role and other things as an associate head coach that is really vital to me. It allowed us to take Garin Justice, who has been fantastic. He had a co-offensive title already. And then D’Eriq King, a fantastic young coach. You can ask Kevin about D’Eriq. He’s a rock star. So now to have our quarterback coach and O-line coach in lockstep and our receiver coach, who also is doing a bunch of other things, and Rob and Garin and I have been together for now — we’re going on our seventh year. D’Eriq played in our system. There’s a lot of continuity. Rarely can you say we changed our coordinators and feel like it was a smooth transition. For me I didn’t feel like we had new coordinators this spring. Casey Horny is running our special teams. Has been with us the last few years. He’s fantastic. Got over 25 years of experience. He was our assistant coordinator. Kyle Cooper was running it well. With the transitions on offense, we moved Kyle to full-time offense because he’s going to be a coordinator someday. So Kyle is just another part of that offensive team that’s helping us on offense and allows Casey to kind of take over the special teams. That’s kind of how it worked. It’s not always going to work that way. When you can look inward and find the best options, it’s going to be great.