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What can be said about this game? What can be said about this season? I genuinely have no words at all to describe what transpired tonight. I really don't. On third and long with the game in reach, we throw a WR screen. We punt to end the game putting the defense, who bless their hearts had been playing way above their pay grade all game long, to win the game. Earlier we went away from everything that was working and decided not to run the ball. We know that three man lines don't work for us, yet we forced them.
I have nothing. I genuinely have nothing. This has been the most maddening season of Aggie football in recent memory...maybe even more than 2011. I don't know. I just don't know.
And I know I'm talking about a loss on the road to the #5 team in the country. And I know that we only lost by 7. And I know we are the walking wounded (at least the heart of our offense is).
But I take no consolation in any of that. None. I just have nothing. From top 10 to barely in the top 25 (probably out). From 11 wins last year to possibly 8. Complete and utter failure.
Y'all know my style. During losses, I don't look at the box score. So here we go.
Defense
I mean what more could you ask from them? They put us in position to win the game. They did their part to the best of their ability. The youngsters played very well... but oddly enough we were let down by some of the veterans. Either way, only allowing 28 to a team that probably averages much more than that is not too shabby at all.
The only positive I take away from this game is that someday (and man I hope it's soon), our DL is going to be damn good. Daeshon Hall is going to be a star. Mark that down. Jay Arnold plays inspired and energetic ball. Golden and Walker will be all-SEC type players.
The problem is that those guys are 18-19.
But team them up with guys like Myles Garrett and DeShawn Washington and you have the makings of a solid DL.
I tweeted earlier that I thought DeVante Harris was the best member of our secondary, and I stand by that. His size leaves a lot to be desired and makes him a liability sometimes, but who is better? Everett has regressed. Our safeties struggle. So yeah, I stand by the statement that DeVante is the best member of our secondary.
Offense
Let's go position by position:
OL
Jake struggled today and for a guy that's a surefire top 5 pick in April, that's disappointing. Ced had a false start on a promising drive. The OL struggled.
RBs
Kudos to them for playing well for the most part. I'm still absolutely perplexed as to how we use them and how we make the decision on who's going to play when, but like many elements of our offense those things are mysteries that we will never solve. If I had to rank our backs in order right now, I think I'd put them at 1a) Trey 1b) Tra 2) Brandon 3) Ben.
TEs
It's criminal how underutilized Cam Clear is.
WRs.
What happened to Mike Evans? Are teams doing something schematically to shut him down? Why is it that Labhart is the only WR who consistently gets open? What happened here?
QB
Johnny was a gamer. Normal criticisms apply... I wish he'd see the field better. I wish he'd take off quicker. I wish he'd STEP UP INTO THE POCKET. But Johnny's Johnny. He does what he does. This is the first game all year that I thought he ran the gameplan to perfection...but the gameplan was inherently flawed.
Coaching
I have zero...absolutely zero faith in our play calling. None whatsoever. All season long we have not proven that we have the ability to effectively utilize the many weapons we have. The entire year has been Johnny playing street football, and that's on the coaches. For two weeks straight now the offense has let us down...mainly in the area of playcalling. No confidence whatsoever. There hasn't been a single game where I thought we had a solid gameplan from our coordinators.
Overall
Where do we go from here y'all? We just gave Coach Sumlin a lot of money, and I do think he's the right guy to lead us, but where do we go from here?
This was supposed to be the year. This was supposed to be the year that things clicked. And here we are. 8-4 and fourth in our division.
What needs to change? What the hell happened to the future we all envisioned back in August? Were our expectations just too high?
