Texas A&M Football’s Combined Best 2-Deep Offense From the Last Ten Years

The off season is coming to a close and we’re tired of debating who should start at QB (I’m still a fan of a combination of all three named Hubelond). So instead, Matt and I decided to hash out a two deep for the past 10 years of Aggie football. This group played on some great teams (2012/11-2) and some god awful teams (2008/4-8), so it provides a fairly interesting cross section of talent.

In the interest of full disclosure, Matt and I met over lunch to finish this like a month ago, but I just never got around to writing it. Better late than never!

This list involved a highly scientific process of scouring the internet for rosters/2 deeps/game participation sheets etc to remind us of players we may have forgotten. Then after putting the notable starters in one google sheet, Matt and I came up with our starters that deserved to be in the two deep. We agreed on most, and disagreed on some. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts in the comments. We’ll do the offense today and the defense tomorrow.

Without further adieu, here we go:

1st team is obvious and anyone who disagrees should be drawn/quartered. Second team was where it got a little interesting. In my mind, Ryan Tannehill was one of the most talented QBs we’ve ever had, and did pretty well on the field (thinking more about 2010 than I am 2011). Watty looked at stats and thought Trevor was a better pick here.

There’s certainly going to be some controversy over us not going with Steven McGee here, and it’s absolutely unfair that McGee had to play in Fran’s crap ass offenses when he probably could have lit it up under Sherman or Sumlin, but this hey this is a subjective process and McGee will always have a fond place in our heart.

Watty knows way more about football than I do and decided to go with a 3 WR set. The only real debate here is whether Swope should be in front of Kirk, but we had to go with the overall career numbers. This certainly could change after this year if Kirk has the kind of year we think he might have.

I think sometimes we all forget just how good Fuller was, despite some of the issues he had. I wonder sometimes what he could have done in a Sumlin offense where he was asked to do more than just run come back routes.

Other names considered: Earvin Taylor, Ryan Tannehill, Malcome Kennedy, Derel Walker.

Cyrus Gray was obvious here. Outstanding running back, fantastic blocker and overall good due who actually has a bonfire tattoo on his upper arm. 2nd string is where we disagreed. I have a hard time disassociating player from scheme and Ben Malena was the perfect spread RB in my mind. But then again Watty brought up that CMike’s stats are pretty dang solid, and CMike, when he was on, was pretty darn good.

Other names considered: Jorvorskie Lane, Mike Goodson, Tra Carson, Trey Williams, Trayveon Williams

This one was tough given the different offenses we’ve had over the past 10 years. Notably absent is Martellus Bennett, and he is without a doubt the most physically talented TE we’ve had at A&M in a long long time, but the statistics don’t show that (which again is a product of the offense he played in—subjective process).
[Ed. note—-Martellus still holds the school record for receptions by a tight end and achieved it in only three seasons, we are not sure what numbers these guys looked at, don’t @ us]

The most obvious one for me was Chris Alexander. I loved watching that guy play ball. RSJ gets the surprising nod at consensus 2nd team player...but it’s tough given that he was more of a big WR than he was a true H Back/TE.

Other names considered: Jorvorskie Lane (remember when Sherman moved him to FB), Joey Thomas, Nemo Hicks

Some context for this—this is a Jim Turner roster in that there’s a lot of cross training—our guard to tackle pipeline is well represented. Additionally the gold standard for Aggie OLs is that 2012 group, and the list represents as much.

Couple of other things...for me Brian Thomas was one of the more underrated OL we had at A&M. I remember him being that flex player who, much like Jarvis Harrison, could switch between tackle and guard and perform admirably. Strangely Thomas transferred to Texas Tech to follow Jim Turner...and Turner then immediately took a job with the Miami Dolphins...which (may have) resulted in Thomas quitting the red raider team.

Also there’s the story of Yemi Babalola who flashed as a big time player in his short stint at A&M before getting in to some legal problems. Who could forget him body slamming some poor DB

So there’s the offense. We’ll come back with the defense later this week. In the mean time tell us where we’re wrong or right (mostly right) in the comments below