The Aggies have a lot of room to grow. The SEC will be a new football game. The best thing about Saturday for Texas A&M was South Carolina’s 38-35 victory over Georgia. That allowed the Aggies to move up another spot in both polls, to sixth by the Associated Press and seventh by the coaches. But more importantly it was a reminder of how big that 52-28 victory at South Carolina was to open the season. And most of all, how well A&M played against a quality opponent. A&M remained unbeaten with an efficient 38-10 victory over Rice on Saturday night at Kyle Field. It wasn’t an effort that had Aggie fans beating their chests. A&M’s offense started slowly, and while it eventually got rolling, the Aggies didn’t exactly just roll Rice. Of course, it’s hard to roll up 60 points if you have the ball for only 16 minutes, 46 seconds. That’s the least amount of time A&M’s had the ball in coach Kevin Sumlin’s 29 games. Time of possession typically means little with spread offenses, and A&M had split the other two games it had the ball less than 20 minutes in the Sumlin era — beating Sam Houston State in 2012 and losing to LSU last year. But no matter how explosive a team’s offense is, it’s hard to score without the ball. Saturday, A&M scored on six of its first nine possessions – not counting a kneel-down to end the first half. That’s great production, considering all five touchdown drives covered at least 69 yards. Rice prevented a blowout by having seven possessions of at least eight plays, though the Owls scored on only two. Rice eventually misfired or A&M’s defense stepped up, though more than likely it was a combination of both. Statistics don’t lie, though, as Rice rushed for 240 yards on 55 carries. That’s a concern, because A&M’s defense played so well against the run in the first two games, allowing only 157 yards total. Yeah, A&M beat Rice making the Aggies 6-5 under Sumlin when the opposition rushes for at least 200 yards. But five of those victories were last year, against Rice, Sam Houston State, Arkansas, Mississippi State and Duke when the Johnny Manziel-led offense basically just outscored the opposition. A&M did the same thing Saturday behind sophomore quarterback Kenny Hill, who threw for 300 yards with four touchdowns. That’s good, but history shows if A&M allows 200 yards rushing, winning is basically a 50-50 deal, and the better the opponent, the less likely A&M wins. A&M has five opponents left who are averaging more than 200 yards rushing. A&M doesn’t have to worry this week with Southern Methodist, which is averaging minus 8 yards rushing per game to rank last in the FBS at 124th. (Side note, I wonder if Eric Dickerson or Craig James were ever caught for an 8-yard loss?). The week won’t be wasted by Aggie defensive coordinator Mark Snyder as he’s got two weeks to get the troops ready for Arkansas’ punishing running game. The Razorbacks ran over Texas Tech 49-28 on Saturday by rushing for 438 yards on 68 carries with Alex Collins (27 carries-212 yards, 2 touchdowns) and Jonathan Williams (22-145, 4 TDs) doing most of damage. “We knew it was coming, we just didn’t get it stopped,” Texas Tech head coach Kliff Kingsbury said. Tech, though, is not very good period against the run. The Red Raiders allowed Central Arkansas 178 yards rushing and Texas-El Paso 277. It’s hard to say how good A&M is against the run. Against Rice, the Aggies were missing their two best linebackers, sophomores Jordan Mastrogiovanni and A.J. Hilliard. Junior cornerback De’Vante Harris – who had 56 tackles last season - has yet to play with a urinary injury. Although A&M has quality depth, you can’t keep plugging in reserves and not have a drop-off. A&M at times had four or five true freshmen on the field facing an impressive dual-threat quarterback in Rice’s Driphus Jackson. Behind him, Rice controlled play, showing balance by also passing for 241 yards. Rice just couldn’t come up with explosive plays, having only one of more than 20 yards – a 35-yard reception for its only touchdown. A&M, though it had 32 less snaps, had six plays of more than 20 yards and all of them came on scoring drives. If A&M plays just a smidgen better defense against Rice, the Aggies probably score another touchdown or two, and a 52-10 score would have covered Las Vegas’ 32-point spread and everyone could have convinced themselves it was better than last year’s 52-31 victory. But even without the what-ifs, the Aggies won by four touchdowns. The defense still was better than the one that played Rice a year ago, and it will get better, by getting players healthy and younger ones getting more snaps. So the sky is not falling, which is good because Kyle Field’s turf could barely handle the rain that fell Friday night (more on that later). It’s hard to tell if A&M is a Top 10 team or not, but there’s no evidence to say its not. Some say you can’t win a championship in September, you can only lose it. But if you can lose something, then you also can win it, or least a piece of it. Yeah, It’s early, and no FBS team has played more than four games. And 33 teams have played two or less games. Yet, 94 teams have lost at least one game. With all of October ahead and all those meaningful November games, there’s only 34 unbeaten teams and the SEC has eight of them. And if there’s one conference that will get two teams in the College Football Playoff it will be the Southeastern Conference. A&M could have played much better Saturday, but don’t lose sight that it played good enough. And when A&M needed to play its best, which was at South Carolina, it did. Bottom line: A&M is 3-0. • Heavy rains Friday night and early Saturday resulted in several large divots on the grass surface of Kyle Field that was installed in early August. A&M grounds crew members kept smoothing out the surface, especially in the second half as the teams for the game combined for 81 rushes and 456 yards which seemed to take its toll. “The field was kind of bad but both teams had to play on it so you can’t say that the field was bad and that’s why we didn’t play as good as we could have,” said A&M redshirt freshman Ricky Seals-Jones who had five catches for 42 yards with a score and blocked a field-goal try. “Conditions are not always perfect.” A&M junior defensive end Julien Obioha said he slipped a few times trying to make plays. “Kyle Field is a new field and it’s a pretty bad field, we gotta get used to it,” said Obioha, who had eight tackles. “Conditions aren’t always perfect.” Sumlin said it could have been worse had there been rain Saturday afternoon or during the game. “Both teams played on it,” Sumlin said. “It was something we kept an eye on. If we thought it was gonna be a really, really big issue, there would have been decisions made, not necessarily by me but in conjunction with a lot of other people.” Rice, which opens defense of its Conference USA championship next week at home with Old Dominion, was comfortable enough with the field conditions to leave its starting quarterback in until 5 minutes to go and the outcome obviously decided well before that. The good news for the field is A&M will be away for the next three weeks and won’t return to Kyle Field until Oct. 11 against Ole Miss. • Hill has started his Aggie career with 139 attempts without an interception, bettering the start Manziel had. Manziel, the 2012 Heisman winner, started his career by completing 91 of 133 for 1,130 yards with 10 touchdowns before throwing an interception in game five against Ole Miss. Hill, who played four games last season while mopping up for Manziel, is 97 of 139 for 1,277 yards with 12 touchdowns.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 15:18:20 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015