Maroon Weekly

By Turner Dawson

The Texas A&M football team continues to make me scratch my head as they lost on the road this past weekend in Boulder against the Colorado Buffaloes. The Aggies played well enough to win but managed to find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in a way that only the Aggies can.

The offense had one of their worst performances of the season as they were held to only 374 yards of total offense. The Aggies seemed to be out of sync in every aspect the entire game.

After two straight weeks of dominant performances on the ground, the Aggies managed just 132 yards on the ground in this game with just a 3.9 yard per carry average.

Christine Michael got more work in this game as he carried the ball 16 times for 74 yards and a touchdown for a 4.6 yard per carry average. Michael was effective in this game, but Cyrus Gray did not have much success and Jerrod Johnson never did seem to get going through the air or on the ground.

Johnson finished 20 for 36 passing the ball for 242 yards and a touchdown and one interception. Those aren’t awful numbers but Jerrod had a number of missed opportunities. Multiple times he had open receivers that he under threw. On the final offensive play of the game for the Aggies, Jerrod had pressure in his face and greatly under threw an open receiver and the result was an interception.

Early in the season, when the offense had struggles, it was because the offensive line either didn’t open up holes or couldn’t protect the quarterback. But I have to put this performance on the skill players. They have been great most of the season, but they had some opportunities to make some plays in this game and they didn’t make them.

Uzoma Nwachukwu has been an absolute stud all season but there were multiple occasions where they gave him man-to-man press coverage and dared him to make a play and he didn’t. That’s the time when, as a receiver, you are drooling at the opportunity to make a big play. But he failed to make the play several times in this game.

Johnson has been running for his life for much of the season but that was not the case in this game. Certainly there were times here and there when he got a little pressure, but most of the time he had all day to throw the football. And he missed several open receivers. I expect that the Aggies will bounce back from this because they are capable of making those plays, they just didn’t do it in this game when they needed to.

Defensively, the Aggies were a little bit of a mess. They played well in spurts and they forced some turnovers, but I don’t think I have ever seen worse open field tackling than what was on display in this game.

Kyle Mangan got absolutely abused on multiple occasions. He is solid at covering the throwing lanes but he has a very hard time taking proper angles and making plays in the open field. The problem is that his backup, Michael Hodges, struggles even more. The Aggies desperately need to find a middle linebacker.

It was extremely aggravating to watch Colorado quarterback Tyler Hansen scramble all over the field like he was Vince Young when he is far from it. The Aggies seem to have a tendency to make very mediocre quarterbacks look like Heisman candidates.

The Aggies gave up 437 yards to an offense that has struggled mightily to find any kind of success all season long. They allowed the Buffaloes to convert on 50% of their third downs and had some critical breakdowns at some crucial times. The number of missed tackles and blown coverage’s was absolutely stunning.

Bottom line is that this was a game the Aggies had to win. Colorado is a bad football team that had no business being in the game against A&M, even in the current state of the Aggie program. The Aggies now need to find a way to pickup at least one win in their next three games against Oklahoma, Baylor, and Texas to become bowl eligible.

I said before the season started that with this young team we were going to be excited and frustrated all season long. We are seeing the future of this team grow up before our eyes. But if the Aggies don’t get to a bowl game this season after going 4-8 last year, many Aggie fans are going to find it very difficult to continue to support this current coaching staff.