Auburn 26, Texas A&M 10: Instant Reaction

We've got some serious issues. Serious serious issues right now.

Kudos to Auburn. They schemed well for us. They knew our edge defense was bad, so they gashed us there early. Then when we got that covered, they gashed us in the middle. Regardless, offensively they schemed to take advantage of every single weakness that we had. They got us back for last year.

i dont even know where to start. Let's just break this down.

Defense

We gave up damn near 300 yards on the ground to a team that is not that great at running the ball. Our linebackers still struggle with their run fits and are consistently out of position. The talent level is certainly lacking there, but man. When you're giving up that many yards it's not just talent anymore. But then again after giving up 14 points in the first half to two quick TDs, the defense played well enough...key words "well enough" to hold Auburn to 4 field goals in the second half. Given how much we were getting gashed and how many big plays we were giving up, that's not terrible. 26 points should be enough to put us in position to win. That should have been good enough.

But make no mistake, the defense did not have a good day at all. They just weren't the main issue here.

Offense

How many games this year has our offense been stagnant? It's so tiresome to write this line: Jake Spavital relies on out-tallenting other teams. If the other team has equal to or greater talent to ours then we're going to lose. There is no synergy between offensive play calling and talent and that's squarely on the play caller. Our play calling is predictable, unimaginative and just plain dumb at times.

Kyler had a bad day. I can absolve him of responsibility for the first pick because Ratley needed to have that. But the other two were a true freshman trying too hard to make a play. He's not 100% ready to be the starter here, but we dont have much of a choice because Allen is injured and Hubenak is not good enough.

But sadly the QB coach isn't good enough to get him ready to play week in and week out. Kyler bears some responsibility for his play tonight, but the playcalling and scheme did absolutely nothing to put him in position to be successful. This game combined with Ole Miss should be enough to cause changes.

Kevin Sumlin

Sumlin wants to be a CEO head coach. He wants to hire good people and let them do their job while he manages the bigger picture as far as the program goes.

But in order to do that he has to manage his personnel well. Jake Spavital is not meeting our standards and hasn't been for quite some time. Spavital's own incompetency is on him, but his incompetency as it is continuously impacting the team is on Kevin Sumlin.

Kevin Sumlin is paid too well for this. This season will end up as fool's gold...we're at 6 wins right now and it's likely that we get at least two more (although Vandy is no gimme). We'll go to some middle tier bowl and probably win because we're good with time to prepare and end up with an 8-9 win season which is better than what we had last year. But that 8-9 win season means nothing...absolutely nothing when you lose to Alabama, Ole Miss, and Auburn and maybe (ok probably) LSU. At what point do we rise above that 4th spot in the west? How are we defining "good enough"?

A different play caller gets us more wins this year. I have no doubt about that. But I'm so damn tired of that line of thought. A different defensive coordinator gets us more wins last year--but who's fault is it that Snyder stuck around after that abysmal 2013 season?

Kevin Sumlin will be our football coach next year. That is without question. But whatever good will he had with our decision makers might be gone after tonight. We're reaching a win-or-go-home watershed moment for his tenure as A&M football coach.

Final Thoughts

This was the worst loss in Sumlin's tenure. You can point to 59-0 and a few others but at least then we were losing to teams that were better than us. This team has more talent than Auburn .We had no business losing this game in the manner that we did. No other way to spin this...tonight was a bad night for our Aggie football program.

B.T.H.O western carolina