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Before we get too far into this, let’s acknowledge this streak. 8 wins. None of them have been easy. But 8 straight against the hogs. Two different head coaches, countless QBs, and yet A&M still manages to keep the streak alive. That’s the good news.
Earlier this week I had a fevered dream about this game where Nick Starkel somehow led the Hogs on a game winning drive to win the thing. Fortunately that didn’t happen, but I’ll be honest I feel worse given that Ben Hicks almost did it. There’s so much bad in this game.
THE OFFENSE
The WRs had a good game. Quartney Davis, Jhamon Ausbon, and Ainais Smith carried us this game. What was so delightful to see was yards after the catch from both Smith and Davis. Smith planting his foot and getting up field almost made me cry. Good solid game from them.
Kellen Mond had a good game. 65% despite being harangued in the backfield (more on that later). He completed some tough passes. Despite the one god awful horrible terrible bad pass he threw on that INT, he played well today. There are a lot of people who think he played poorly and you’re wrong. The team being mediocre makes Kellen look bad. He was one of the good enough guys today. We want him to be the guy that puts the team on his back and wills them to a dominant win, but you know what this team is too full of dead weight for him to do that. Lay off Kellen.
Let’s talk about what wasn’t fine and what is a huge issue and will continue to be an issue moving forward: the OL. 33 rushes for 89 yards. To put that into perspective, Portland state ran for 75 yards against this defense. Colorado State had 220. And we had 89 yards. And at least 5 sacks. I don’t know if that’s talent, I don’t know if it’s Henson, but it’s bad. And we’re not going to win a lot of games with this OL.
THE DEFENSE
We gave up 400 yards to Arkansas. As many yards as Portland State did. I know that this game always gets super weird, and we got stops when we needed them but damn man. This was a bad game for our defense.
In the same way that our OL struggled, our DL struggled too. We have no speed off the edge, and are relying on brute force to do anything on the field. I don’t know about every other spot. You tell me.
OVERALL
Hey we won. That’s good. It was a bad game against a bad opponent and we didn’t play well and we have so many questions going into the rest of the season that I don’t even know where to begin. Really no clue. But we won, so that’s that.
BTHO alabama