By The Numbers: Texas A&M Holds Off Lamar 62-3

GOOD MORNING. These are not throwaway gimme games. Sandwiched between visiting #1 Clemson and hosting #8 Auburn, Lamar was a prime candidate for one of those zombie sleepwalking games where we put up 30 points against an FCS squad and give ourselves all a good scare. Instead, we cruised into the sixties and held them to a single field goal.

BUT WE DIDN’T SCORE TOUCHDOWNS ON EVERY SINGLE DRIVE. Calm down. It’s fine. Jimbo got is quarterback’s confidence back, got to rest his starters, and got to see what a lot of backups are capable of. Nobody got hurt, far as we can tell. Got a few teaching moments too, when things weren’t perfect. He got exactly what he wanted out of yesterday. If that’s not enough for you, not sure what to tell you.

So right up front, we’re gonna get the old caveat BuT iT’s LaMaR right out of the way. It was a football game and these numbers were damn good.

Defense

197 yards allowed. WELCOME TO THE 200 CLUB, ELKO.

10 punts forced. The other three Lamar drives ended in a blocked FG, a made FG, and....

1 fumble recovery.

8 QB hurries. Lamar’s quarterback is good. We did not sack him last night, but eight hurries is pretty good.

Offense

4 receivers with 4+ catches and 60+ yards. Sharing the wealth is only socialist outside of football.

5 drops (unofficial?). {takes deep breath} THIS is the thing about this year that’s going to give us all conniption fits if it doesn’t get cleaned up. Some of these were just wide open, comical, shovel-handed clang jobs. Auburn won’t be as forgiving next weekend.

14/116/2: We were wondering who would emerge as the go-to back with Corbin out for the season, and Isaiah Spiller looked the part in roughly 2 quarters of action, grabbing a couple of touchdowns and piling up a nice 8.3 ypc average. He also showed he could catch and make some moves in the passing game. We’ll see if he gets the nod against Auburn or if Dickey sticks to a committee approach.

2 turnovers. One very bad throw by Mond (BAD), and one careless play by a true freshman QB right after making an outstanding play (also bad, but lowercase bad).

Special Teams

Roshauud Paul: 4 punt returns for 107 yards, long of 41. We got to see some nice moves from #6. He’ll break one eventually.

Blocked field goal. Sure, it wasn’t a great trajectory, but it still counts for us.

Braden Mann punted once, and pinned Lamar deep with it.

SNEAK PEEK

Auburn rolled up 467 rushing yards on Kent State yesterday, if you’re wondering if our front seven will be tested this week.