Post-game thoughts: Texas A&M loses to Mississippi State 35-28

It wasn’t our day. Nothing at all worked, and everything was pretty terrible overall. Let’s break down this awful no good terrible horrific loss with three quick thoughts.

1) MISSISSIPPI STATE IS PRETTY GOOD (no really)

Gotta give credit where credit is due. Fitzgerald is an excellent running QB which as it appears is our achilles heel. Despite slowing down late, he was able to put together a clock eating, soul devouring drive late in the game to put the nail in the coffin.

2) GAME WAS LOST AT THE LINE OF SCRIMMAGE

On both ends...the A&M offensive and defensive lines were outmatched. Mississippi State owned the line of scrimmage and seemed to neutralize anything that we did on either end. Cant make plays with the defense in your face, and cant stop plays if your DL gets blown off the LOS.

3) COACHING

Trevor going down wasn’t the death knell. It was survivable. What wasn’t survivable was bad play calling all the way through. We followed Trevor’s shoulder injury with 5 straight throws. On a 3rd and 1 in the Mississippi State redzone, we run an RPO instead of a simple dive play giving us two chances at the first down. On third and 8 with basically the game on the line in the fourth we run a draw with our back up QB. Jake was capable of winning this game, but we just didn’t do enough to put him in position to do so.

I’m willing to chalk up our defensive performance to good play by Mississippi State. I love John Chavis, but we’ve struggled with the run all year long and this game was no different. They did what they did and we did what we have the tendency to do on defense. This was not out of character for us. But I’m having trouble forgiving the offensive play calling we saw. We just weren’t good enough today.

OVERALL

This is a bad loss that kills whatever goals we may have had when the week begins, but there’s still a lot to play for. 10 win season, and a decent bowl is still on the line against a fairly dangerous Ole Miss team. This sucks pretty bad, but still got 3 games left to play.

BTHO ole miss