POST GAME THOUGHTS: A&M BEATS UAB BY 3 TDS

UAB is a solid team. Bill Clark is a good coach. They’re likely to fall out of the top 25 with this loss (I think they were ranked in one poll) but they’ll finish with 10 wins, which is a great season for them. They weren’t your normal late season SEC cupcake team.

All that being said, we won this game convincingly, which feels good. From the very beginning with Larry Pryor picking up that fumble on the opening kick off, to the end with Trayveon ripping off long runs, this one was never really in doubt. Some good and some bad, but overall a solid win.

THE BAD

It’s like an open faced compliment sandwich. Let’s start with the bad so we can end with the good.

• In what feels like a weekly piece of the column, I’m gonna bemoan our secondary yet again. Their QB completed 25/39 passes for 306 yards. 306 YARDS TO THE UAB QB. THAT’S INSANE. Sure we picked the ball off a couple of times, but woof man, this secondary leaves so much to be desired.
• Speaking of which, the defensive line didn’t really get all that much pressure. That’s probably because we were playing vanilla fronts expecting to beat them one on one, but between us not being able to put pressure on them and their quick passing game, they kind of whipped us in that phase tonight.
• They were 10/16 on third down. That ain’t good. We gotta fix that.

THE GOOD

Lots of good things tonight too though. Couple of quick thoughts:

• I thought Kellen Mond played an excellent game tonight. He was decisive with the ball, made a number of really really good throws, and added another 40 or so on the ground. More importantly he played a clean game. He took care of the ball and didnt have a turnover. Good solid game by the sophomore QB.
• That might have a lot to do with the OL playing really well tonight as well, both in pass blocking and run blocking. They gave Kellen plenty of time.
• Redzone defense was good (also aided by that poor UAB kicker missing damn near everything)
• Run game was solid. Trayveon finished with 20 carries for 167 yards. He’s special y’all, and we need to appreciate him while he’s here. Dude is right at 1300 yards this season with one game left. Great game for 5.
• Jace Sternberger had a great game with 4 catches for 85 yards. This offense is just different with Jace and Ausbon out there.
• I really really liked our clock management at the end of the first half. We managed to steal a possession and then almost managed to steal another few points but missed the field goal. Good solid work by Jimbo.

OVERALL

It wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty damn good. I’m happy with this win. Time to rest up and get ready for the single most important game of the year. We gotta get this monkey off our back.

BTHO lsu.