You read that correctly. Of course, if you've read the most recent post here at GBH you would have seen that Robert Behrens beat me too it. I determined this for myself by compiling the rosters and stats from the past four seasons, including all the non-scholarship players. Insane I know, well I'm currently unemployed and I had to do something. I would have spent forever editing this but Mr. Behrens article prompted me to put this out sooner rather than later.

This started with a hunch and a little bit of intuition, a few days later I had compiled four seasons worth of stats and gone through it several times to try and weed out errors. I have no doubt some still remain, but I'm am reasonably confident in my results. I'm a big believer in experience, its one of the strongest predictors of success. So strong that its often used to doubt the capability of teams who haven't been to the playoffs in the past, regardless of their records in the season. With this in mind I wanted to compare the A&M spring rosters between 2023 and 2022 based on lettermen, games played, and prior starts. The results were immediately obvious and interesting at least to me. In 2022 A&M fielded a roster with 182 starts, 687 games played, and the average player experience I quantified at 1.72 essentially a freshman. Compare this with 2023 where A&M will field a roster with 301 starts, 862 games played, and the average player experience was quantified at 2.12 a sophomore. The table below gives a general overview of the last four years of A&M's spring roster.

A&M Spring Roster 2020-2023:

While 2023 does not have the seniors of 2020, or the veteran experienced Offensive Line or Quarterback, it does return more starts, games played, and has the least freshman. What is immediately apparent, is if one were to pick a team to be good based on returning experience 2022 would not be it. Based on experience 2023 would be the year, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Turns out looking at the rosters only whetted my interest and so I decided to compile the stats of the players on the roster and look at the returning production. It's immediately obvious that 2022 is an outlier with exceptionally bad returning production. I have put together a few tables to help illustrate this.

Returning production from previous year Defense.

For defense 2023 is relatively on par with the years 2020 and 2021 as far as returning starts and games played, while exceeding every other year in returning production for any other category. 2022 however, was abysmally low in returning experience. The DB's carried the lion's share of returning tackles and interceptions in 2022 more than doubling any other position that year in both categories. If not for the depth at DB 2022 would have been far worse and last in every category.

Returning production from previous year Offensive Skill positions.

When looking at the returning offensive skill production, we finally see a table where 2023 is not obviously positioned well. While having comparable starts and games played to the leading year of 2020, it is very mediocre to even bad from there on. But offense as a whole isn't as easy to judge based on skill positions alone and without stats that reflect the depth and experience of the offensive line. So, I made another table with the starts and experience of the offensive line through each spring.

Returning production by year for Offensive Line.

Immediately it can be seen that while 2023 is not the leader it is far more comparable to 2020 than to either 2021 or 2022 where the Offensive Line was in shambles. From 2021 to 2022 the average O-lineman had at most 7 games of starting experience. 2021 would look a lot worse if not for one player, Kenyon Green, to which belonged all 23 starts and 23 of the games played. Green did not return for 2022 despite still having eligibility remaining.

While 2021 presented an OL with essentially zero experience outside of one player. In 2022 the A&M OL had, somewhat predictably, zero true veterans. The O-lineman with the most starting experience was a true sophomore in Bryce Foster. Foster would be injured during the 2022 season only to appear in four games. In fact, A&M entered 2022 with only four OL who had ever started a single game, and zero who had started for more than one season, two of those four would appear in only four games including the only player to have started a full season.

When considering this it becomes immediately clear why the A&M passing game would have struggled in the past two seasons. For those two seasons A&M returned essentially zero experience at QB and at the same time had hardly any returning experience on the offensive line. This means no time for the inexperienced QB's to make decisions at a time when they needed it most. At the same time when you need to lean on your run game to take pressure off your QB there are little to no holes being created. Further, injuries depleted OL's that were already paper thin, that's a recipe for disaster no matter who you are. For better or worse 2023 will field more experienced QB's and OL than either 2021 or 2022.

When including the offensive line 2023 returning offensive experience is a clear upgrade over 2022. It becomes more comparable with 2021, with better returning experience generally and particularly at OL as well as QB. Further by comparing 2020 and 2021 we can get a hint at the relative importance of OL and QB experience versus RB and receiver experience. While QB and Receivers share a mutually beneficial relationship you would be hard pressed to argue that the QB is not the more significant driver of success. The same is generally true for OL and RB, additionally, OL play is nearly as integral to passing as it is to rushing.

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This piece has set aside accounting for talent or other individual attributes such as size or power. And while experience is a significant factor it is not the be all and end all in measurement predictors of success. It is important to remember that other factors play a significant role in predicting performance as well. That said I would point out though that it is rather uncommon for a true freshman to supplant a seasoned veteran starter at any position, no matter how talented, fast, or strong they may be. True freshman starters are uncommon to begin with and generally, but not always, appear when a seasoned veteran starter is lacking or when there is an extreme talent deficit. Regardless of whether you think experience or talent is more important, more experience is better than less and 2023 will be the most experienced team in four years.

One thing I wanted to note in closing is that 2023 has more sophomores and juniors than any of the previous three years. On offense in 2024 A&M is projected to lose one OL, one TE, one RB, and two WR's, only three of whom are expected to start or contribute significantly this season. On defense in 2024 A&M is projected to lose three DBs, one DL, and two LB's, again only three are expected to start or contribute significantly. This means in 2024 A&M has the potential to return an even more experienced team, including a possibly more seasoned starting QB, in the same year that neither Alabama or Georgia is on the schedule. 2024 has the potential for big things if Fisher and co can keep most of their sophomores and juniors.