Mitigating factors:
- it’s early, and wins were against weaker opponents.
- couldn’t watch the Badgers, didn’t ppv for the Ags
- Cardinal and Aggies wins still leave concerns about future success.
For the Ags, the future is next Saturday, when Alabama comes to town with vengeance on their minds for last year’s upset at their place. TAMU was already replacing several stalwarts from last year’s defense: NFL pick DaMontre Moore, and less well-known players like Spencer Nealy (who dominated Bama’s All-America center last year) and Dustin Harris (who made a critical stop in the late goal line stand), Sean Porter, Jonathan Mathis, Jonathan Stewart and Steven Terrell. See Good Bull Hunting’s archives for more on these former students. This meant DC Mark Snyder’s squad would be young and thin even without injuries and early suspensions. Several players will be back for Bama, but will not have any game time going in. Starting safety Floyd Raven came back from a suspension only to break his clavicle yesterday. The Tide are not who you would normally want to use to get the rust out of your game, but there’s no choice now. Concern about the D has been high after giving up points, yards, and big plays to both Rice and Sam Houston State.
The high-flying offense led by Johnny Manziel also lost some key performers, but was expected to be less of a problem than the D. The O has put up lots of points in the two warmups, but can the Ags do it to Bama again? We shall see. It’s going to be the most-hyped game at Kyle field in my time here.
The schadenfreude is especially strong in reading the fan reactions from Austin, after the ‘sips were trounced in Provo by a BYU team that had lost the week before to mighty Virginia. I saw a little of that game while waiting for Stanford to come on in the late game. It was actually kind of shocking to see how bad the Texas Defense looked in that game.
The best game of the day was probably South Carolina at Georgia. The momentum in that game seemed to go back and forth until Georgia opened a two-score 11-pt lead in the final quarter on an 85-yard pass play. S. Carolina looked to cut it to less than a TD by driving deep into the red zone on the next possession. But they were thwarted on a goal line stand with 8:28 to go where they couldn’t punch it in on 4th and goal from the 1. The Dawgs then took over and ran out the rest of the clock.