If you are looking for Texas A&M’s Damontre Moore, he shouldn’t be too hard to find.
He’s a big man at 6-foot-4, 250 pounds. He plays defensive end. He wears number 94, and he can usually be found in an opponent’s backfield wreaking havoc.
It is what he does best.
Last season as a sophomore, he led the Aggies in tackles for loss with 17.5 after starting 10 games at the “JOKER” position. He was at his best down the stretch, making at least six tackles in each of the final six games, including 12 tackles against both Kansas State and Texas. He also finished second on the team in sacks with 8.5 for 50 yards.
This came on the heels of a freshman season in which he was named a Freshman All-Big 12 after producing 40 tackles, including 5.5 sacks, and had an interception and a team-high three forced fumbles.
After a brilliant high school career in Rowlett, TX., Moore decided on Texas A&M over Oklahoma State and Baylor. Aggies coach Kevin Sumlin is glad he did, although at the time Sumlin was coaching at Houston and had no idea that Moore would cross his path at Texas A&M.
This season, Moore is up to his old tricks. He is second on the team in tackles (27) and has 10.5 tackles for losses of 53 yards, which ranks him third in the nation. He also has six sacks for 39 yards in losses, three quarterback hurries and one forced fumble. He gives a lot of the credit to defensive line coach Terry Price.
“He’s the only coach on the staff that has coached in this league,” Moore said of the former Texas A&M star who went to three bowl games as a player and has coached at Ole Miss and Auburn. “We hang on his every word. We’re like little sponges. We soak it up. We’ve done some good things. We can do a lot better but with the things that we’ve done it proves that he’s right and we just need to sit there and listen.”
One area of the game that Moore and the rest of the Aggies have improved on is in taking penalties; or to be more exact, not taking penalties.
“That switch flipped when I got tired of losing,” Moore said. “I don’t want to be the reason we lose or have a game-changing experience. I don’t want to hurt my team. I don’t want to hinder us. I want to be an asset.
“We had this big talk in two-a-days of assets and liabilities. What do you view yourself as: an asset or liability? I want to be an asset. I want to do everything in my game and perfect it as much as I can so I can help my team and put them in the best situation possible.
“Then, not to mention, Coach Sumlin; He’s pretty hard on us,” Moore said. “You get those penalties and it’s not going to be a good look on Mondays. No matter how much we win by, he comes in there and points out all the bad stuff so we don’t get complacent. He motivates us that we can play much better. Coach Sumlin says play harder, play smarter and play physical. That penalty thing falls under that play smarter thing so everybody is trying to play smarter and elevate their game to another level.”
The Aggies are getting results from playing harder, smarter and more physical. After losing its opening game to Florida, Texas A&M has won three consecutive games and is coming off its first Southeastern Conference victory, a 58-10 win over Arkansas. One reason the Aggies are winning has been their success with moving players around to different positions, particularly in the secondary.
“It’s really nice. It doesn’t limit our team. If somebody goes down we have somebody that is just as talented to come right behind us to come in and do what the other player was doing,” Moore said. “It’s really good for us and the coaching staff because they can use a lot of people and different techniques. It lets us know if somebody gets hurt we’re not falling off too far.”
Moore had a big play in the Arkansas game against one of the Razorbacks’ biggest players—Knile Davis.
“It happened so fast,” Moore said. “I got back there and thought I should have had a TFL but I let him slip out and he bounced out to the right. I was so determined, since I missed that tackle, that I needed to go back and make something happen and be a “difference maker.
“Our coaches preach about how we need to be difference makers and get our turnover margins up. I saw the perfect opportunity. They already had some fumble issues earlier in the game and he didn’t see me. I came from behind and just punched the ball out.”
The Aggies recovered the fumble and went on to demolish the hapless Razorbacks. It was the first win over Arkansas in Moore’s career and that made it special.
“We all came into the locker room, whooping and hollering, splashing Gatorade all over the place,” Moore said in the locker room after the game. “The seniors are in the middle and everybody is just coming close together. It just felt like a big relief. Coach has been telling us that stuff like this can happen anytime if we put our minds to it and we just stick to the scheme. Just to see it all come in to play and work out like the coaches said, everybody is overwhelmed.”
Moore knows that the Aggies can’t let up now with a road game against Ole Miss on the horizon.
“We have to be very disciplined,” he said. “(Bo Wallace) is the most athletic quarterback we’ve played all year. He’s a little more agile. They run the zone read as well as anybody in the country. It puts more of an emphasis on us as a defensive line to be fundamentally sound. It puts a huge emphasis on practice this week. If we can play fundamentally sound this week we’ll be successful.”