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This game started off as an offensive explosion and had all the markings of a wild 60-59 type of game. But then in the second half both defenses settled in and manage to stymie the offensive efforts of either team. This win wasn’t exactly pretty, but going on the road and beating an SEC west opponent is good any way you can get it. Couple of thoughts:
Defense
A&M’s defense gave up 324 yards in the first half. It seemed like Jordan Ta’amu couldnt miss either running or throwing the ball. But Chavis went in to the locker room, made some adjustments, and his defense came out with their hair on fire in the second half. Chavis’s squad only gave up 60 ish yards in the second half. Think about that...from 324 to 60. That’s pretty dang impressive.
Derrick Tucker
The true freshman safety had himself a day. He finished the game with 16 tackles, a pick 6, a tackle for loss, and a forced fumble. He was all over the place and seemed to do everything in his power to keep this defense in the game. Dude definitely deserves a game ball.
Offense
Ehhhhhh. It was a mixed bag tonight. First half showed a lot of promise, both running and passing the ball. Second half was a different story, and much of that can be attributed to Ole Miss making solid adjustments, but some of it was our predictable play calling. At one point even the announcers were saying that we had to try something other than running on first down.
The offensive line struggled greatly tonight, which contributed to our inability to run the ball. Bad snaps kept stalling the offense and man Ole Miss’s defensive line seemed to own the LOS tonight.
Punting
Shane Tripucka had a pretty darn good night too with 8 punts averaging 47 yards per punt. In what turned out to be a field position driven game, his work tonight put the Aggie defense in a good spot to get the stops they need
The game wasn’t pretty. Honestly, I’m kind of struggling to come up with a lot of positives from tonight, but we got the win. Time to clean stuff up and get read to head over to Death Valley.
BTHO lsu.